Steve Bruce was on the warpath. “It is absolutely the biggest pile of shite I have ever heard,” the Newcastle United head coach said, adding a coating of characteristic indiscretion. It was January 2021 and his team were in the midst of a winless run which eventually stretched to 11 matches and Tyneside was bubbling with rumour; that Bruce had three games to save his job, that Eddie Howe was among the candidates to replace him.
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Bruce lasered in on one publication. “I give respect,” he said. “When I see polls, the next manager and the fella from Bournemouth, I find it disrespectful, I have to tell you. Your paper was gunning for a manager that got a team relegated last year.” The reality of Mike Ashley’s ownership and its glass ceiling was hitting home. “Am I alone with the managers at Newcastle over the last 15 years? Hasn’t every manager been in exactly the same situation?” Bruce asked.
Bruce was angry — Newcastle was an angry place back then, everybody barricaded into opposing camps and sniping at each other — but it was an interesting definition of giving respect. “The fella from Bournemouth” and “a manager that got a team relegated last year,” felt dismissive of Howe, who had done nothing wrong, and needlessly belittling, a sour interpretation of a lifetime’s relationship and years of overachievement.
Yet when Howe did succeed Bruce, 10 months later, those words reflected wider concerns. Was “the fella from Bournemouth” really cut out for a flailing leviathan like Newcastle, that could only feel bigger post-takeover? And was “a manager that got a team relegated last year” the right man for another relegation battle? When Howe ended his introductory press conference with a plea for journalists “not to speculate too much”, a voice piped up, “good luck with that.”
We all know what happened next (thank goodness). Howe’s fit with Newcastle proved seamless, his dedication and eye for detail were a necessary antidote to years of drift and, backed in the market, he led the team to safety, repairing fractured relationships along the way. Records were obliterated and some myths shattered; supposedly one of football’s great fundamentalists, Howe built his side from the back. As much as anything else, they were tough.
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Newcastle host Bournemouth this weekend, Howe’s first encounter with the club he played for and then reshaped, leading them through the divisions, since leaving. “To put it quite bluntly, he has made Bournemouth what they are today,” says Charlie Daniels, the former defender who rose up from League One to the Premier League with Howe. “The structure, how the club is run, the philosophy they have and the type of club they want to be, that’s all down to him. That’s why he’s seen by some fans as an almost god-like figure.”
Ahead of what will be a poignant reunion, it feels a natural moment for reflection, not only about Howe’s legacy there, but the way football pigeon-holes and stereotypes.
In his recent interview with Alan Shearer, Howe was asked about perceptions, about being painted as the man who took Bournemouth down in 2020. “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t irritate me, even just hearing the word relegation … It lived with me from the minute it happened and it still lives with me now,” he said. “Because it’s factual.
“Over time, I wouldn’t say I’ve learned to accept it, but I look back at Bournemouth with maybe an overview rather than just that last year. But I do believe I learned so much from that year, so sometimes with negativity or disappointment or setbacks or failure, if you look at it right and deal with it right, it can be a turning point. That’s what I tried to do, ultimately. It was about coming back better. I didn’t want to come back the same manager.”
An overview would tell you that Howe began his spell in management with Bournemouth in the relegation zone in League Two; from there, it was a sharp upwards rise until he kept them in the Premier League for five years. You don’t do that without strength and sharp elbows, without knowing how to win. “We’ve always been pragmatic and always tried to find a way,” Howe said. “Maybe it just gets highlighted a bit more being here.”
So did the game get the fella from Bournemouth all wrong, or is he simply different? And if so, how much?
As Howe told Shearer, “I’m probably not as nice as I was” and “football does change you.” Perhaps most managers start with an idealised concept of how they want to play and behave, things which can be eroded by the reality of their players, limitations, events, compromises and the need for results, to take hard decisions.
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Yet the idea that Bournemouth under Howe was nirvana for happy-clappy football was never fully accurate. And, while he hopes to “try and recapture” the essence of Kevin Keegan’s ‘Entertainers’ at Newcastle, Howe wants his side to retain the edge that has made them so uncomfortable to play against.
Howe has what he terms his “footballing principles” and an overarching desire to deliver an attacking style, but he also demands that his players carry out the “fundamentals”. He believes those basics underpin everything else.
“In the Championship, we got heavily beaten by Huddersfield and Watford,” Simon Francis, the former defender who played for Bournemouth between 2011 and 2020, told The Athletic last year. “We were beaten physically. We thought we could turn up and just play nice, passing football and the tempo wasn’t there, the intensity wasn’t there. That was probably the first time I saw a different side to him because he realised, and he let us know, that it’s not just about that pretty side of football.
“First thing we did on a Monday morning, as boring as it was, we were defending crosses as a back four. We were heading the ball. You wouldn’t necessarily put that alongside a successful Bournemouth team but it was, it became that, because we knew we had to do that to get out of the Championship.”
Howe is uncompromising when it comes to developing a winning mentality. And he always has been.
His post-victory dressing-room photos may have generated much debate on Tyneside, but they were a staple on the south coast. In fact, Howe would have preferred the pictures to remain private, as they did for the most part at Bournemouth, given their intended purpose was solely to further foster that winning mindset.
Those who have worked with Howe at Bournemouth and Newcastle cite how “ridiculously intense” and “competitive” his training sessions are — and always have been. The “we train as we play” motto Howe has adopted at Benton was also present at Bournemouth, with “trainer of the month” awards handed out and points given to those who were on the winning side in individual drills. A slip in standards is unacceptable.
“The level of intensity in training is very, very high,” Daniels says. “I was fortunate enough to be with him for so long, but when new players came into the club, it used to take them a good two weeks to get used to the way we trained. That is the level he demands. There are no shortcuts and no exceptions.”
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“He’s got a definite way that he wants to work,” a former player, who wished to remain anonymous to protect their relationship, told The Athletic last year. “If you imagine us as a squad of robots and he puts this kind of chip into you. If you follow the programme that he wants you to follow, he’ll back you to the hilt. If you malfunction, he will quickly push you to the side and get you out of the club because he wants to do things his way. His way is a way that has been thought out, probably over hours and weeks and months. It’s not something he just came up with while having his breakfast.”
In Austria during pre-season, Howe, in front of the watching media, stopped a session to reprimand his Newcastle squad for lacking energy. “If you’re lethargic and don’t work as a team, you’ll get fuck all!” he told them. When the drill restarted, there was an immediate upsurge.
Jurgen Klopp’s complaints about Newcastle’s “timewasting” at Anfield last month are nothing new, either. Although Howe’s Bournemouth team were renowned for pretty football, those who were at Dean Court with Howe recall similar gamesmanship. When necessary, they would show what some at Bournemouth referred to as their “shithousery side”.
In Jason Tindall, his long-term assistant, Howe also has what a director at a rival Premier League club refers to as his “resident wind-up merchant” alongside him on the touchline.
The pair were Bournemouth team-mates in their playing days, before uniting as a coaching unit, and, while Howe often exudes calm or passes on instructions to his players from the technical area, Tindall regularly questions decisions with the fourth official and has been known to get into heated discussions with opposition backroom staff. During Newcastle’s opening-day victory over Nottingham Forest, Tindall also appeared to listen to the opposition coaching staff as they discussed an imminent substitution, before turning to Howe and apparently relaying the upcoming tactical change.
“He will do whatever it takes to win and, if it means going somewhere difficult like Anfield and slowing it down and timewasting to quieten the opposition crowd, or quickening the game up to make it hostile at home, he’ll do it.” says Daniels. “He won’t go somewhere and roll over just because that’s what Klopp or Pep Guardiola want him to do. He is driven by winning and he’ll use every trick necessary to achieve that. He thought about those small margins meticulously.”
There is also nuance to the “nice guy Eddie” persona that built, at least to those outside of the Bournemouth bubble, during his time at Dean Court. “There’s definitely two sides to him,” says Daniels.
Those who worked with him there insist Howe was not an “arsehole” who would come across as clubbable in public and then suddenly switch into a different personality behind the scenes. Rather, Howe had an “aura” about him that, when he walked into a room, made everyone respect and recognise: “I’m in charge”.
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“The baby-faced, impeccable public-facing speaker is who Eddie is,” says a former Bournemouth colleague, who agreed to speak anonymously to protect his position. “But he was still the opposite of a walkover privately. He was the boss and no one was in any uncertain terms about that, even if he has a great manner about him.”
“The way he is with the media and the way he is on the training pitch, it’s totally different,” Daniels says. “In press conferences, he’s composed and knowledgeable about what he’s going to say, but also very relaxed. On the training pitch, he’s composed and knowledgeable about what he wants you to do and why, but he’s very intense and he’s extremely demanding. You know you have to deliver, otherwise he’ll tell you in no uncertain terms and you won’t play come the weekend.”
One of the accusations sometimes levelled at Howe, particularly at Bournemouth, was that he often employs his friends. Tindall and first-team coach Stephen Purches are his former team-mates, while Simon Weatherstone coached with Howe previously. All three followed him to Tyneside, as did Dan Hodges and latterly, Andy Howe, his nephew and head of domestic scouting. Mark Leyland, the coach analyst, who worked with Howe at Burnley, also joined Newcastle from Liverpool.
Some critics suggested it was “jobs for the boys” at Bournemouth. But the former colleague disputes that, stressing that while Howe does cherish “familiarity”, that “boils down to people he knows he can trust” and nothing to do with nepotism. “If people weren’t up to scratch, they were told in no uncertain terms and they simply wouldn’t get jobs with him in the first place.”
The ex-player agrees. “You can’t have any passengers,” he said. “He doesn’t ever make you think that you are there because you’re his friend as a player. You’re there because you can do a job for him.”
Following Newcastle’s limp FA Cup exit to Cambridge United of League One in January, Howe admitted his players would see a “different” side to him. He prefers the carrot to the stick approach but, when necessary at Bournemouth, he would confront those who had fallen below the expected levels of behaviour or performance.
“I think a lot of people see him and he has this look of a young school teacher,” the former player said. “But if you were to overstep the mark, you definitely see a different Eddie Howe. Go out of line, he’ll let you know about it. And you probably get one warning and then you’ll be out of the football club.”
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When Howe first became Bournemouth manager in 2008, he quickly refreshed the squad, and some at Dean Court suggest he even moved on many friends and former team-mates so that he could shift the then-League Two club away from an old-school culture towards a modern, driven professional one.
He does not let sentiment cloud his judgement, either.
Club legend Marc Pugh was not offered a new contract in 2019 after nine years with Bournemouth, going back to Howe’s first spell in charge when they were first promoted from the fourth division, because it was not felt he could contribute as meaningfully at first-team level anymore. At Newcastle, stalwarts of the promotion side like Isaac Hayden, Ciaran Clark and Dwight Gayle had been moved on.
Crucially, although Howe is unafraid to take difficult decisions, his honesty and empathy is still apparent when delivering those messages. None of the players who have departed Newcastle have criticised Howe publicly, while even Mark Gillespie, the goalkeeper who has been omitted from the Premier League squad to make way for Loris Karius’ arrival, is said to be content with how the head coach handled the situation.
At Bournemouth, meanwhile, Howe gave a speech to commemorate Pugh’s legacy in his final days. “It was really emotional,” Pugh said last year. “The gaffer, deep down, he puts on a tough front, and he’s really professional and motivated. But when you have a one-to one-chat with him, he really is an emotional character and a family man. He cares about people, he cares about his players, and I think he found it difficult to let me go but I think he knew it was the right thing to do at the time.”
For anyone involved in relegation, it is mentally and physically energy-sapping. That is magnified exponentially when the bonds are as tight as Howe’s were with Bournemouth.
“Everyone was drained by it, but especially Eddie,” Daniels says. “COVID-19 and the circumstances around that only made it worse. It was a huge burden on him and it clearly affected him. The stress of taking his club, Bournemouth, basically as far as he could and unfortunately getting relegated in the final season, it took its toll on him, without doubt.”
Almost two years on and Howe is at a club with huge ambitions and is in the process of undertaking a different sort of rebuild. The drive, the desire and the spark are back, as strong as ever.
“He seems like Eddie again,” says Daniels. “He’s fully committed to everything he does. He’s full-on and he’s re-energised by this new challenge. He’s not satisfied with what they’ve done so far. They want to build, they want to go long and take the club as far as they can. It’s something I know has captured his imagination.”
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During his 15 months out, Howe vowed a personal reset. He wanted to re-evaluate himself and his approach to coaching so that, when he returned, he was a “better manager”.
“Eddie is massive on self-improvement, both for players and himself,” says Daniels. “When we climbed the divisions at Bournemouth, I saw his approach evolve by bringing in more staff the higher we got. There were more coaches, analysts, backroom staff; everything got bigger and more professional. It relieved him of a lot of direct responsibilities. He always had the final say and had control over everything, but more staff helped him. He still spoke to players and was the man in charge, but he didn’t have to do everything all of the time anymore.”
That was organic growth while at Bournemouth. But what about now, following his time out? What are these alterations Howe is adamant have occurred?
“He’s reflected on what has happened before,” says Daniels, who visited Newcastle’s training ground in May. “He watched every training session from Bournemouth back and how he has changed is probably in the way he goes about training. He allows his staff to take a lot more sessions, allows his staff to have the freedom and the input to help him on the training pitch. In terms of his work ethic and desire, that will never change. It’s just been about refining himself and his methods.”
Although he grew up in east London, Daniels is a lifelong Newcastle fan, having been inspired by Keegan’s special side as a child. He was angered by those who disparagingly dismissed Howe’s credentials for the Newcastle job last year, having witnessed his Bournemouth revolution first hand.
“I always felt Newcastle needed a manager like Eddie, one who is highly driven, has a high work ethic and sets high standards he expects, to get a grip on them and put them on the right path,” Daniels says. “He’s made for that club.”
To borrow from Shearer, “The fella from Bournemouth” is a “Newcastle man” now.
(Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)