They looked good but we beat them quite well i thought.
So let's talk about Eddie Howe....
- Thread starter Wayne's World
- Start date
Their entire team cost less than Pogba. They ravaged us for the first 35 mins.
That's just your close mindedness. If you were able to bag a SAF or Pep from a small club, you wouldn't because 'you don't do that' and 'those days are gone'? That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Yes it's a big jump. But we've seen how poor decorated managers used to the occasion have been so sweeping generalisations clearly don't make any sense.
Of course there's no comparison. That's my point. Even if Bournemouth get relegated nobody is going to call howe a bad coach. If he loses 2 games in a row at Manchester Utd he is on the front pages of the rags, he can get on with his work without outside influence. Nobody notices Howes mistakes, why would they? Also at Manchester Utd he'd be expected to win trophies( not at Bournemouth) this us why I feel Spurs would be an ideal place for him as that pressure isn't so great there either.
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I don't actually necessarily disagree with you. I know the club would never go for him or anyone in his position.
With that said, we got Moyes who had managed a team regularly to the best it could be with the budget they had, and he couldn't handle it. We got Gaal who was a name and had won things, and he couldn't handle it, and now we have Mou, who is definitely a name, has definitely won things and look where we are right now. If you limit the search to "has won things, has managed a top 5 side in a top 5 league, has spent millions" then in quite short order you're going to run out of options, more so given that certain options are off the table before you even start looking.
It's all irrelevant anyway, we'd never offer the job to someone like Howe, and I'm not sure Howe will ever leave there ever again.
I'd love to see the club have the minerals to do it, I'd love to see them accept the growing pains and let him do his thing. I'd love it if the press would let him do it and not hammer him for not being in the top 4 by the end of September. None of these things would happen.
Joke's on him. He lost to the "worst United team in recent history." 
Should be sacked tbh.
Should be sacked tbh.
Thanks for the latest post @Will Dance For Chocolate. It's absolutely crazy what Howe had to work with, a team that could rightly be described as being "dilapidated". And he still displayed enough gumption to engineer such great results from them. Straw Hats off. That's nothing short of a miracle. The chairman was a regular Farquaad though.
Who said that? Howe?Joke's on him. He lost to the "worst United team in recent history."
Personally I think you have to show something in Europe and the cup competitions to have sniff at the United job. Saying that, it’s difficult to do that at Bournemouth. At a team like Spurs of course, it’s possible.
When it comes to knock out and crunch games you can show your tactical work and how you do under pressure.
When it comes to knock out and crunch games you can show your tactical work and how you do under pressure.
Can we have @Will Dance For Chocolate's posts threadmarked please mods. They were great reads, wouldn't want them going unnoticed.
@Will Dance For Chocolate - thank you for great reading! Looking forward to new posts.
And my point is that there are different types of pressure, including the pressure of avoiding relegation whilst operating with a tiny budget, a pressure that no United manager ever has to deal with, and that one type of pressure is not necessarily less than another.
It simply doesn't wash to focus on the pressures faced by a United manager and to imagine that these are greater. Teams near the bottom of the table tend to sack their managers more readily, precisely because of relegation pressure, so it's silly to say that such managers are under less pressure.
A lot of people completely ignore this.
No, we wouldn’t have picked up SAF from Aberdeen had he not broken the Old Firm dominance in Scotland, beaten Real Madrid in a European final and had international experience at a WC, that’s the point.
Eddie Howe has won promotion with an historically small club and consolidated them in the Premier League. Great achievement but not enough.
Going by your argument you may as well let me have a go as I was quite good on Championship Manager back in the 90’s.
@Will Dance For Chocolate
These are a couple of my favourite Bournemouth games from your last seasons in league one:
Aug 27th 2011: Bournemouth 0-2 Walsall
January 2012: Walsall 2 Bournemouth 2 (Walsall were 2 up in that one. Last minute equaliser by club legend Steve Fletcher.)
Sep 29th 2012: Bournemouth 1 Walsall 2 (Randomly David James was your keeper that day).
January 2013: Walsall 3 Bournemouth 1 (That was your only league one defeat in TWENTY ONE games. You won 15 of them).
Fair to say those results feel a very long time ago now! Those Walsall results were in the early stages of Dean Smith era but sadly Walsall couldn't keep that team together (Will Grigg, Jamie Paterson etc) while obviously Bournemouth could with you going up that year.
I agree the scouting has been top class. Not just the non league bargains like Harry Arter but I remember Lewis Grabban had a couple of seasons where he scored 20 + in the championship. You lost him to Norwich and that could've set your team back a season or two but Calum Wilson coming in was probably even better.
In a way their development over last 5-6 years reminds me a lot of how Curbishley built Charlton up early in the 2000s. Curbs probably stayed at Charlton a year or two longer than he should so that could be something Eddie needs to think about.
Also the danger of it all falling apart if/when he leaves (we also saw this when Big Sam left Bolton). Which manager would you like to see the club go for post Howe, foreign or maybe a lower league manager like Chris Wilder if he hasn't got Sheffield up as he's got a similar eye for a lower league player when you look at Sheffield United 11.
These are a couple of my favourite Bournemouth games from your last seasons in league one:
Aug 27th 2011: Bournemouth 0-2 Walsall
January 2012: Walsall 2 Bournemouth 2 (Walsall were 2 up in that one. Last minute equaliser by club legend Steve Fletcher.)
Sep 29th 2012: Bournemouth 1 Walsall 2 (Randomly David James was your keeper that day).
January 2013: Walsall 3 Bournemouth 1 (That was your only league one defeat in TWENTY ONE games. You won 15 of them).
Fair to say those results feel a very long time ago now! Those Walsall results were in the early stages of Dean Smith era but sadly Walsall couldn't keep that team together (Will Grigg, Jamie Paterson etc) while obviously Bournemouth could with you going up that year.
I agree the scouting has been top class. Not just the non league bargains like Harry Arter but I remember Lewis Grabban had a couple of seasons where he scored 20 + in the championship. You lost him to Norwich and that could've set your team back a season or two but Calum Wilson coming in was probably even better.
In a way their development over last 5-6 years reminds me a lot of how Curbishley built Charlton up early in the 2000s. Curbs probably stayed at Charlton a year or two longer than he should so that could be something Eddie needs to think about.
Also the danger of it all falling apart if/when he leaves (we also saw this when Big Sam left Bolton). Which manager would you like to see the club go for post Howe, foreign or maybe a lower league manager like Chris Wilder if he hasn't got Sheffield up as he's got a similar eye for a lower league player when you look at Sheffield United 11.
United is not the tougher job because of pressure only(of course different teams have different goals) but because of the level of scrutiny the job of managing the biggest club in England entails (allied to the pressure of winning trophies, something Howe has never done).
Yeah sure, managing Man United and Bournemouth carry the same equal pressure. Yeah of course, sure.
Hardly any money to operate? What? Maybe do some homework, Bournemouth have spent plenty since getting promoted.
If he can prove himself elsewhere at a midtable club then yes why not but not straight from Bournemouth to man utd, recipe for disaster i think and again the expectation and pressure would be too much for him.
Would managing Aberdeen carry the same pressure as managing united?
Howe-t Of Control: 14th January 2011 - 11th October 2012 - League One
As I said it would, this post covers the period when Howe was at Burnley. I expect I’ll ramble on quite a bit and have a few rants as this holds some dark memories for me. It was a crazy period. If this was a band biopic, this is the section where they just discover hard drugs and things begin slowly to spiral before suddenly falling off a cliff and we see a series of cut-shots that show the band doing things that defy belief or logic before they get their act back together.
If you’re only interested in Howe related stuff you can skip down to the bottom where I’ll do a one paragraph summary titled ‘Here’s The Short Version’. For all the inglorious details, strap yourselves in.
It actually started so well for new manager Bradbury. Ok, we lost on 14th January but you can’t really blame him for that. In the next ten games we won six and drew four which is pretty outstanding all things considered. The results were good but the team didn’t look quite the same in terms of performance. However, it was early days to be too harsh and judge his ability as a new manager against what was an exceptional spell under Howe. Sadly, five defeats and two draws in the next seven left us scrambling for even a play off spot, eventually sneaking in by a single point.
On the positive front, Ings was starting to look a real player and credit must go to Bradders for also backing him. He’d also brought in a young creative midfielder called Donal McDermott on loan from Man City amongst a couple of other players (no fees involved, of course).
In the play off semi final we were up against Huddersfield who we had drawn with twice in the league and we also drew the first leg at Dean Court 1-1 with Ings missing a penalty. The second leg was a real ding dong affair, 2-2 at full time and 3-3 after extra time. So in four matches and an extra time period that season we’d drawn every one! Penalties it was but it wasn’t to be for us.
In case you have some time to fill and fancy watching highlights of a League One play off zinger here they are:
So far, so normal. You’re probably wonder what I was going on about at the start. It’s time to start introducing our supporting cast of characters.
The club at this point was owned by Eddie Mitchell, a well known local builder (that’s important) who had taken over during some of the dark days. I had no personal knowledge of him but some fans were very upset saying they’d not had particularly good experiences with him outside of football. You may wish to form an opinion on his character from the name he chose for his company. The first six had all gone bust so he named the new one ‘Seven Developments’. Whether you see that as a sign of a good sense of humour or someone who couldn’t give a toss and wanted to stick two fingers up at his critics is up to you.
He’d previously owned Dorchester Town who, shortly after he bought them, signed his son Tom Mitchell as a player. When Eddie Mitchell took over at AFCB a couple of years later and was forced to divest his holding in Dorchester his son was shortly afterwards released as a player by Dorchester. Coincidence? Maybe. Luckily for Tom, he suddenly got the opportunity to start training with the AFCB first team even though I don’t think he was ever officially signed as a player. Coincidence? Maybe.
From the time Howe left until the end of the summer, these players were sold:
Marvin Bartley (£450k), Danny Ings (£1 million), Jason Pearce (£500k), Anton Robinson (£250k), Liam Feeney (£200k) and we also lost some first team players on frees. The play off team had been taken to pieces.
Meanwhile a lot of building work was being done around the stadium to spruce it up and fix things. A lot. I think you can work out which building company won all those contracts. It seems mysterious where all the money came from to suddenly pay for all those jobs to get done as it wasn’t cheap. Meanwhile, the club seemingly could barely afford to pay a fee for any players despite all the player sales.
The club also created a new champagne bar called Bubbles. A League 1 club with barely any space for a supporters bar suddenly needed an opulently fitted out champagne bar? To be honest, I thought Mitchell had botched the name job and missed off the first half which should have been ‘Beelze’.
AFCB isn’t a club that has ever really had that nasty element in the crowd but around this time, and for the first time I can ever remember, the atmosphere was getting genuinely toxic. The frustration at seeing everyone sold off and almost none of the money coming back to the team was boiling things over. Then things started to get unpleasant.
We signed Gary Bowles. A hitherto unremarkable non-league footballer at Dorchester Town who was only really known because he had a conviction for GBH. Shortly after signing for us he beat up his girlfriend for which he was also convicted. Why we would want someone like that associated with our club I’ll never know. You don’t even have the (very poor) excuse that he had any talent.
Then at the annual fans forum when he was asked what had happened to all the transfer money Mitchell told the fans “If you don't like it go and support Southampton”. Let me know how you think Man Utd fans would respond if told by the owners to go support City. It didn’t go down well...
After next game Mitchell decided to go for a post-match walkabout on the pitch (10th September and we were now 2nd bottom) and responded to the abuse from the crowd by getting hold of the stadium microphone and used it to ask one of the fans to come on the pitch for a fight with him. This made national sporting headlines at the time.
An aside now: I want to tip my hat at a football agent. If ever an agent ever earned his % this is the man! We were desperate for defenders (free transfer ones anyway) and signed up unattached former Plymouth Town player Stéphane Zubar. Bearing in mind the history of the club at this point and the state it was now in with all the players being sold, his agent insisted that his contract include a one year extension if we got promoted to the PL. I’m going to guess they laughed and said ‘no problem’ at the time. He never made a single appearance once Howe returned but his contract was just running out as we did get promoted to the PL so he got that extra year! Sure, it was money drained from my club for nothing but even so well done that agent.
Remember all that sprucing up of the stadium and the champagne bar? It turns out Mitchell did have a plan besides the one of which he was often accused by fans of just giving his other businesses work. Mitchell was gambling on something. He’d rebuilt a house on Sandbanks for a wealthy Russian and had been wooing him to invest but felt he couldn’t get him on board unless the club looked the part. This is why Mitchell is still lauded by some as that gamble came off. If it hadn’t and with the supply of players to sell off exhausted I wonder if we’d have been the seventh company he took under. For that reason I can’t see it as an acceptable risk. He could have walked away in that scenario but I would have lost my club. The fact is though, in November 2011 Max Demin bought 50% of the club with Mitchell still owning the other 50%.
Demin is a slightly mysterious figure as he’s almost always kept himself from the limelight. He’s often referred to (by fans of certain other clubs) as a billionaire oligarch. However, from what we know his money was made from trading petrochemicals rather than buying up state assets and there is no proof at all that he’s anything like a billionaire. The only time I’ve seen an estimate of his net worth it put him at £150 million. Stupidly rich, yes, but no Abramovich. He also has a history in football. He bought a stake in a lower league Russian team before getting them into the top division and building them a new stadium before selling on his share. He also did the same with a German team. So he wasn’t coming to this completely cold.
Overnight the world changed for us. Although we had to wait for January we could suddenly buy players for serious cash as he invested £££ in the team.
Some of the signings made in that first window were players Lee Bradbury knew and were excellent acquisitions in the long term: Charlie Daniels (£150k), Steve Cook (£150k) and Simon Francis (£80k – he was referred to by Charlton fans as the worst player to ever wear their shirt. What do we fans know?).
Others made us wonder what was going on...
It’s strange supporting a team that almost never signs players for money. You can’t help but cast envious glances at supporters of other teams who get to enjoy the excitement of a highly rated new guy coming in. We weren’t even first choice for the ‘released on a free’ players. We’d always been like a third pressing olive oil. Still a league club so considered a good choice for players but only after all the top quality frees had been picked up by those league clubs with deeper pockets. However, it was my club and I couldn’t and would never want to change it so that was just accepted.
From the mid-90s until this story started the only players I can off-hand recall us paying a fee for were Christer Warren for £50k and Scottish alleged striker ‘Deadly’ Derek Holmes also for £50k. I was always confused why he was nicknamed Deadly since he was anything but that. Ultimately I decided I had misunderstood the deadly entirely and it was actually meant in reference to him having mobility comparable to a corpse.
Given all that, I wanted to enjoy this spending of money but the club did something so stupid with it, I wanted to cry.
We know the Pogba story for you but instead of him leaving you on a Bosman I want you to imagine you released him on a free. Then a couple of years later you took him on loan to have a fresh look but decided against picking him up for a nominal fee. He then has a purple patch playing for a team in the league below you and you respond by paying a transfer fee about seven times higher than you’ve ever paid for anyone before. That’s what we did with Matt Tubbs when we randomly decided to pay £900k for him that window. He was not a success at the club.
Then in February 2012 the club was making headlines again with the news that the new owner’s wife had decided to give a half-time team talk. What on earth was going on? Given everything that happened before and after I still don’t understand how that came about since at no other point has Demin seemed to try and get involved. A very strange episode.
Mitchell responded to the headlines by going on 606 on BBC radio and swearing repeatedly to the point where, I think, they cut him off and he was banned from the station.
At this point our heads are spinning. We seem to be cash rich but spending it randomly with completely looses canons in charge at the top.
Whether it affected the on-field performance or not is hard to say but we were firmly ensconced in mid-table and not playing particularly well which, given the outlay on players, was deemed unacceptable so Bradbury was fired as manager at the end of March.
Bearing in mind the club had money available so probably had a selection of options, Mitchell decided to replace him with Paul Groves. A man who’s only previous experience was as manager of Grimsby where he had been an abject failure (win rate 23%) with the feedback from their fans that he was dire for them. They were utterly bemused how he got the job. He also had some experience as an assistant manager with spells at Portsmouth and West Ham. During his time at them they were both relegated. I remain confused about his appointment to this day.
The Groves spell covered the end of the 2011/12 season and start of 12/13 one. I’ll go over the summer transfer business before I talk about the team Groves played.
I’m going to guess that they hung fluffy pictures of all the professional footballers they could identify in a dark room and then walked through the room wearing a Velcro suit. Any pictures of players sticking to the suit when they came out were made transfer targets.
Why else would we have signed that Dutch guy Davids? No, not Edgar. His cousin Lorenzo. Or Frank Demouge, another Dutchman who was reportedly given a £10k/week contract - back then our top earner would have been on about £2k/week. He made two appearances during his stay with us. Lewis Grabban and Tommy Elphick were bought – lucky hits! - but we also re-signed Josh McQuoid from Millwall. You may recall Howe had converted him into a striker where, under Eddie’s direction and attacking football, he’d had a purple patch and scored a load before being quickly sold to Millwall? He flopped at Millwall so we gave them their money back. We signed Benjamin Büchel, the Liechtenstein number three goalkeeper. Seriously! Then David James was brought in. Yes, that one.
To say there was no rhyme or reason to it would be an understatement.
You may think this was all at the behest of Groves who was bringing in players to fit his system but that would be a forlorn hope. He wanted us to play a diamond formation but these players didn’t fit that and on the pitch served up the most disorganised mess I can ever recall seeing.
It was a life lesson for me. After all those years looking at other clubs with envy when they signed players for money, now I was seeing what happens when buffoons are allowed to spend the cash. I don’t know if it was Tom Mitchell (You remember Eddie Mitchell’s son? He had given up trying to get into the AFCB team as a player and had now been appointed Director of Football. Based on… erm… not sure) signing these players or Groves but it was painful to watch.
On the pitch I can honestly say I have never seen a team play so badly. I feel sorry for the guy but honestly, Groves was just a really, really, really, really, really bad football manager. The worst in the history of the club (statistically true with a win rate of 15%) which was ironic since he was the first to get significant money to spend. It wasn’t even like the matches were good to watch, it was dour stuff.
Having been placated a bit by the cash being spent although highly suspicious of the Groves appointment, seeing what was being served up the crowd quickly started to turn. I really want to emphasise that even when unhappy I can’t recall seeing that aggressive atmosphere in the crowd at AFCB before and yet here it was all bubbling up again for not the first time in the Mitchell era. There were fan protests and confrontations with Mitchell after a match.
Then, on 3rd October 2012, with the by far most expensively assembled AFC Bournemouth team in history sitting in the League One relegation zone Paul Groves was sacked.
Demin had intervened. He’d got interested in the club watching Howe’s exciting attacking football and apparently wasn’t happy with seeing how his money had been spent or the football that was being delivered. Mitchell was reportedly given the brief ‘Get Howe back, whatever it costs’.
Meanwhile at Burnley, Howe was experiencing some major personal difficulties due to the passing on of his mother and how it affected him and his siblings. On the pitch his team was scoring lots but also conceding lots and their fans weren’t so impressed with this, presumably believing he wouldn’t be able to score enough or tighten things up to get them back up the table and into promotion contention. So the Burnley board were reasonably receptive when the approach came in. The compensation figure bandied about was £1 million but I don’t know if that’s true.
In a way I’m thankful to Paul Groves. If he’d been even mildly competent we probably wouldn’t have got Howe back. His sheer ineptitude forced the club to act and it worked out for us in the end.
Here’s The Short Version (skip if you’ve read the long version)
Bradbury was an ok manager but was on a hiding to nothing trying to come after Howe. We lost in the play offs and then almost the whole team was sold off. Eddie Mitchell, the owner, lost the plot and tried to start a fight with the fans on the pitch and, seemingly, spent all the transfer money on using his building company to do up the stadium rather than players. He then brought on board a Russian investor and the club started wildly and randomly spending cash. The Russian investors wife gave a halftime team talk and Mitchell had a sweary rant on BBC radio. Bradbury was sacked and the club replaced him with Paul Groves, presumably based on his record playing the computer game Football Manager because I struggle to believe it was based on his real life record. More wild and ridiculous signings were made whilst Groves won only 15% of his matches before being sacked in October 2012 with the team in the relegation zone.
End of The Short Version
Next time we’re back on the Howe train which is probably more of interest to you as I cover the rest of the 2012/13 season. However, I wanted to give all the background so you could understand the mood around the team and the crowd when he arrived. It was actually also quite cathartic to get that off my chest after all these years!
As I said, Howe came back to a mess. Some players on insane wages, especially when compared to most of the others. A squad with no discernible tactical direction or identity. Some positions where we had a surfeit of players, other positions where we had none. Some seemingly good quality players (not that we’d seen it yet), others much less so. A run of terrible results with the team sitting in the relegation zone. Who knows what the mood was in the camp but I doubt it was happy. As for the board room... I don't even want to comment on that. Let’s see what he can do with all that.
As I said it would, this post covers the period when Howe was at Burnley. I expect I’ll ramble on quite a bit and have a few rants as this holds some dark memories for me. It was a crazy period. If this was a band biopic, this is the section where they just discover hard drugs and things begin slowly to spiral before suddenly falling off a cliff and we see a series of cut-shots that show the band doing things that defy belief or logic before they get their act back together.
If you’re only interested in Howe related stuff you can skip down to the bottom where I’ll do a one paragraph summary titled ‘Here’s The Short Version’. For all the inglorious details, strap yourselves in.
It actually started so well for new manager Bradbury. Ok, we lost on 14th January but you can’t really blame him for that. In the next ten games we won six and drew four which is pretty outstanding all things considered. The results were good but the team didn’t look quite the same in terms of performance. However, it was early days to be too harsh and judge his ability as a new manager against what was an exceptional spell under Howe. Sadly, five defeats and two draws in the next seven left us scrambling for even a play off spot, eventually sneaking in by a single point.
On the positive front, Ings was starting to look a real player and credit must go to Bradders for also backing him. He’d also brought in a young creative midfielder called Donal McDermott on loan from Man City amongst a couple of other players (no fees involved, of course).
In the play off semi final we were up against Huddersfield who we had drawn with twice in the league and we also drew the first leg at Dean Court 1-1 with Ings missing a penalty. The second leg was a real ding dong affair, 2-2 at full time and 3-3 after extra time. So in four matches and an extra time period that season we’d drawn every one! Penalties it was but it wasn’t to be for us.
In case you have some time to fill and fancy watching highlights of a League One play off zinger here they are:
So far, so normal. You’re probably wonder what I was going on about at the start. It’s time to start introducing our supporting cast of characters.
The club at this point was owned by Eddie Mitchell, a well known local builder (that’s important) who had taken over during some of the dark days. I had no personal knowledge of him but some fans were very upset saying they’d not had particularly good experiences with him outside of football. You may wish to form an opinion on his character from the name he chose for his company. The first six had all gone bust so he named the new one ‘Seven Developments’. Whether you see that as a sign of a good sense of humour or someone who couldn’t give a toss and wanted to stick two fingers up at his critics is up to you.
He’d previously owned Dorchester Town who, shortly after he bought them, signed his son Tom Mitchell as a player. When Eddie Mitchell took over at AFCB a couple of years later and was forced to divest his holding in Dorchester his son was shortly afterwards released as a player by Dorchester. Coincidence? Maybe. Luckily for Tom, he suddenly got the opportunity to start training with the AFCB first team even though I don’t think he was ever officially signed as a player. Coincidence? Maybe.
From the time Howe left until the end of the summer, these players were sold:
Marvin Bartley (£450k), Danny Ings (£1 million), Jason Pearce (£500k), Anton Robinson (£250k), Liam Feeney (£200k) and we also lost some first team players on frees. The play off team had been taken to pieces.
Meanwhile a lot of building work was being done around the stadium to spruce it up and fix things. A lot. I think you can work out which building company won all those contracts. It seems mysterious where all the money came from to suddenly pay for all those jobs to get done as it wasn’t cheap. Meanwhile, the club seemingly could barely afford to pay a fee for any players despite all the player sales.
The club also created a new champagne bar called Bubbles. A League 1 club with barely any space for a supporters bar suddenly needed an opulently fitted out champagne bar? To be honest, I thought Mitchell had botched the name job and missed off the first half which should have been ‘Beelze’.
AFCB isn’t a club that has ever really had that nasty element in the crowd but around this time, and for the first time I can ever remember, the atmosphere was getting genuinely toxic. The frustration at seeing everyone sold off and almost none of the money coming back to the team was boiling things over. Then things started to get unpleasant.
We signed Gary Bowles. A hitherto unremarkable non-league footballer at Dorchester Town who was only really known because he had a conviction for GBH. Shortly after signing for us he beat up his girlfriend for which he was also convicted. Why we would want someone like that associated with our club I’ll never know. You don’t even have the (very poor) excuse that he had any talent.
Then at the annual fans forum when he was asked what had happened to all the transfer money Mitchell told the fans “If you don't like it go and support Southampton”. Let me know how you think Man Utd fans would respond if told by the owners to go support City. It didn’t go down well...
After next game Mitchell decided to go for a post-match walkabout on the pitch (10th September and we were now 2nd bottom) and responded to the abuse from the crowd by getting hold of the stadium microphone and used it to ask one of the fans to come on the pitch for a fight with him. This made national sporting headlines at the time.
An aside now: I want to tip my hat at a football agent. If ever an agent ever earned his % this is the man! We were desperate for defenders (free transfer ones anyway) and signed up unattached former Plymouth Town player Stéphane Zubar. Bearing in mind the history of the club at this point and the state it was now in with all the players being sold, his agent insisted that his contract include a one year extension if we got promoted to the PL. I’m going to guess they laughed and said ‘no problem’ at the time. He never made a single appearance once Howe returned but his contract was just running out as we did get promoted to the PL so he got that extra year! Sure, it was money drained from my club for nothing but even so well done that agent.
Remember all that sprucing up of the stadium and the champagne bar? It turns out Mitchell did have a plan besides the one of which he was often accused by fans of just giving his other businesses work. Mitchell was gambling on something. He’d rebuilt a house on Sandbanks for a wealthy Russian and had been wooing him to invest but felt he couldn’t get him on board unless the club looked the part. This is why Mitchell is still lauded by some as that gamble came off. If it hadn’t and with the supply of players to sell off exhausted I wonder if we’d have been the seventh company he took under. For that reason I can’t see it as an acceptable risk. He could have walked away in that scenario but I would have lost my club. The fact is though, in November 2011 Max Demin bought 50% of the club with Mitchell still owning the other 50%.
Demin is a slightly mysterious figure as he’s almost always kept himself from the limelight. He’s often referred to (by fans of certain other clubs) as a billionaire oligarch. However, from what we know his money was made from trading petrochemicals rather than buying up state assets and there is no proof at all that he’s anything like a billionaire. The only time I’ve seen an estimate of his net worth it put him at £150 million. Stupidly rich, yes, but no Abramovich. He also has a history in football. He bought a stake in a lower league Russian team before getting them into the top division and building them a new stadium before selling on his share. He also did the same with a German team. So he wasn’t coming to this completely cold.
Overnight the world changed for us. Although we had to wait for January we could suddenly buy players for serious cash as he invested £££ in the team.
Some of the signings made in that first window were players Lee Bradbury knew and were excellent acquisitions in the long term: Charlie Daniels (£150k), Steve Cook (£150k) and Simon Francis (£80k – he was referred to by Charlton fans as the worst player to ever wear their shirt. What do we fans know?).
Others made us wonder what was going on...
It’s strange supporting a team that almost never signs players for money. You can’t help but cast envious glances at supporters of other teams who get to enjoy the excitement of a highly rated new guy coming in. We weren’t even first choice for the ‘released on a free’ players. We’d always been like a third pressing olive oil. Still a league club so considered a good choice for players but only after all the top quality frees had been picked up by those league clubs with deeper pockets. However, it was my club and I couldn’t and would never want to change it so that was just accepted.
From the mid-90s until this story started the only players I can off-hand recall us paying a fee for were Christer Warren for £50k and Scottish alleged striker ‘Deadly’ Derek Holmes also for £50k. I was always confused why he was nicknamed Deadly since he was anything but that. Ultimately I decided I had misunderstood the deadly entirely and it was actually meant in reference to him having mobility comparable to a corpse.
Given all that, I wanted to enjoy this spending of money but the club did something so stupid with it, I wanted to cry.
We know the Pogba story for you but instead of him leaving you on a Bosman I want you to imagine you released him on a free. Then a couple of years later you took him on loan to have a fresh look but decided against picking him up for a nominal fee. He then has a purple patch playing for a team in the league below you and you respond by paying a transfer fee about seven times higher than you’ve ever paid for anyone before. That’s what we did with Matt Tubbs when we randomly decided to pay £900k for him that window. He was not a success at the club.
Then in February 2012 the club was making headlines again with the news that the new owner’s wife had decided to give a half-time team talk. What on earth was going on? Given everything that happened before and after I still don’t understand how that came about since at no other point has Demin seemed to try and get involved. A very strange episode.
Mitchell responded to the headlines by going on 606 on BBC radio and swearing repeatedly to the point where, I think, they cut him off and he was banned from the station.
At this point our heads are spinning. We seem to be cash rich but spending it randomly with completely looses canons in charge at the top.
Whether it affected the on-field performance or not is hard to say but we were firmly ensconced in mid-table and not playing particularly well which, given the outlay on players, was deemed unacceptable so Bradbury was fired as manager at the end of March.
Bearing in mind the club had money available so probably had a selection of options, Mitchell decided to replace him with Paul Groves. A man who’s only previous experience was as manager of Grimsby where he had been an abject failure (win rate 23%) with the feedback from their fans that he was dire for them. They were utterly bemused how he got the job. He also had some experience as an assistant manager with spells at Portsmouth and West Ham. During his time at them they were both relegated. I remain confused about his appointment to this day.
The Groves spell covered the end of the 2011/12 season and start of 12/13 one. I’ll go over the summer transfer business before I talk about the team Groves played.
I’m going to guess that they hung fluffy pictures of all the professional footballers they could identify in a dark room and then walked through the room wearing a Velcro suit. Any pictures of players sticking to the suit when they came out were made transfer targets.
Why else would we have signed that Dutch guy Davids? No, not Edgar. His cousin Lorenzo. Or Frank Demouge, another Dutchman who was reportedly given a £10k/week contract - back then our top earner would have been on about £2k/week. He made two appearances during his stay with us. Lewis Grabban and Tommy Elphick were bought – lucky hits! - but we also re-signed Josh McQuoid from Millwall. You may recall Howe had converted him into a striker where, under Eddie’s direction and attacking football, he’d had a purple patch and scored a load before being quickly sold to Millwall? He flopped at Millwall so we gave them their money back. We signed Benjamin Büchel, the Liechtenstein number three goalkeeper. Seriously! Then David James was brought in. Yes, that one.
To say there was no rhyme or reason to it would be an understatement.
You may think this was all at the behest of Groves who was bringing in players to fit his system but that would be a forlorn hope. He wanted us to play a diamond formation but these players didn’t fit that and on the pitch served up the most disorganised mess I can ever recall seeing.
It was a life lesson for me. After all those years looking at other clubs with envy when they signed players for money, now I was seeing what happens when buffoons are allowed to spend the cash. I don’t know if it was Tom Mitchell (You remember Eddie Mitchell’s son? He had given up trying to get into the AFCB team as a player and had now been appointed Director of Football. Based on… erm… not sure) signing these players or Groves but it was painful to watch.
On the pitch I can honestly say I have never seen a team play so badly. I feel sorry for the guy but honestly, Groves was just a really, really, really, really, really bad football manager. The worst in the history of the club (statistically true with a win rate of 15%) which was ironic since he was the first to get significant money to spend. It wasn’t even like the matches were good to watch, it was dour stuff.
Having been placated a bit by the cash being spent although highly suspicious of the Groves appointment, seeing what was being served up the crowd quickly started to turn. I really want to emphasise that even when unhappy I can’t recall seeing that aggressive atmosphere in the crowd at AFCB before and yet here it was all bubbling up again for not the first time in the Mitchell era. There were fan protests and confrontations with Mitchell after a match.
Then, on 3rd October 2012, with the by far most expensively assembled AFC Bournemouth team in history sitting in the League One relegation zone Paul Groves was sacked.
Demin had intervened. He’d got interested in the club watching Howe’s exciting attacking football and apparently wasn’t happy with seeing how his money had been spent or the football that was being delivered. Mitchell was reportedly given the brief ‘Get Howe back, whatever it costs’.
Meanwhile at Burnley, Howe was experiencing some major personal difficulties due to the passing on of his mother and how it affected him and his siblings. On the pitch his team was scoring lots but also conceding lots and their fans weren’t so impressed with this, presumably believing he wouldn’t be able to score enough or tighten things up to get them back up the table and into promotion contention. So the Burnley board were reasonably receptive when the approach came in. The compensation figure bandied about was £1 million but I don’t know if that’s true.
In a way I’m thankful to Paul Groves. If he’d been even mildly competent we probably wouldn’t have got Howe back. His sheer ineptitude forced the club to act and it worked out for us in the end.
Here’s The Short Version (skip if you’ve read the long version)
Bradbury was an ok manager but was on a hiding to nothing trying to come after Howe. We lost in the play offs and then almost the whole team was sold off. Eddie Mitchell, the owner, lost the plot and tried to start a fight with the fans on the pitch and, seemingly, spent all the transfer money on using his building company to do up the stadium rather than players. He then brought on board a Russian investor and the club started wildly and randomly spending cash. The Russian investors wife gave a halftime team talk and Mitchell had a sweary rant on BBC radio. Bradbury was sacked and the club replaced him with Paul Groves, presumably based on his record playing the computer game Football Manager because I struggle to believe it was based on his real life record. More wild and ridiculous signings were made whilst Groves won only 15% of his matches before being sacked in October 2012 with the team in the relegation zone.
End of The Short Version
Next time we’re back on the Howe train which is probably more of interest to you as I cover the rest of the 2012/13 season. However, I wanted to give all the background so you could understand the mood around the team and the crowd when he arrived. It was actually also quite cathartic to get that off my chest after all these years!
As I said, Howe came back to a mess. Some players on insane wages, especially when compared to most of the others. A squad with no discernible tactical direction or identity. Some positions where we had a surfeit of players, other positions where we had none. Some seemingly good quality players (not that we’d seen it yet), others much less so. A run of terrible results with the team sitting in the relegation zone. Who knows what the mood was in the camp but I doubt it was happy. As for the board room... I don't even want to comment on that. Let’s see what he can do with all that.
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Blimey you learn something new every day. Never knew Lee Bradbury (remember him as a Man. City flop in the late 90s) was the one who actually signed Daniels, Cook and Simon Francis. Though they were there when Eddie first went to Burnley.
Ha! A good run of results against us for sure.@Will Dance For Chocolate
These are a couple of my favourite Bournemouth games from your last seasons in league one:
Aug 27th 2011: Bournemouth 0-2 Walsall
January 2012: Walsall 2 Bournemouth 2 (Walsall were 2 up in that one. Last minute equaliser by club legend Steve Fletcher.)
Sep 29th 2012: Bournemouth 1 Walsall 2 (Randomly David James was your keeper that day).
January 2013: Walsall 3 Bournemouth 1 (That was your only league one defeat in TWENTY ONE games. You won 15 of them).
Fair to say those results feel a very long time ago now! Those Walsall results were in the early stages of Dean Smith era but sadly Walsall couldn't keep that team together (Will Grigg, Jamie Paterson etc) while obviously Bournemouth could with you going up that year.
I agree the scouting has been top class. Not just the non league bargains like Harry Arter but I remember Lewis Grabban had a couple of seasons where he scored 20 + in the championship. You lost him to Norwich and that could've set your team back a season or two but Calum Wilson coming in was probably even better.
In a way their development over last 5-6 years reminds me a lot of how Curbishley built Charlton up early in the 2000s. Curbs probably stayed at Charlton a year or two longer than he should so that could be something Eddie needs to think about.
Also the danger of it all falling apart if/when he leaves (we also saw this when Big Sam left Bolton). Which manager would you like to see the club go for post Howe, foreign or maybe a lower league manager like Chris Wilder if he hasn't got Sheffield up as he's got a similar eye for a lower league player when you look at Sheffield United 11.
If/When (when... but I dream of if) Howe leaves I honestly feel it will fall apart like a house of cards. I have no confidence at all in any of the other people currently installed in senior positions at the club to make a good decision. I guess it's possible they may promote from inside the team that has been built up and there may be a gem there but I think it will be somebody external and be a disaster. Charlton on steroids.
If I have a choice then Wilder would definitely be worth a look but I think he'd probably want to stay at Sheffield. However, there are a few other good young managers knocking around the Championship and further down. I don't think we'd have the imagination to go for one of them though. I fear the board would think we're suddenly big time and try to bring in some big name disaster zone like Pardew or Bruce. I shudder even thinking about it.
I also think a lot of the more intelligent managers would be very wary of coming in to follow Howe as they would know, in many respects, they would be on a hiding to nothing. It's a bit like whoever was going to follow Alex Ferguson. If Moyes had done well he was still likely to have been inferior to what had gone before and so judged unduly harshly in comparison to that. The fact that Moyes didn't even do 'well' meant it was a brief stint. Relatively speaking, it would be the same with us.
Sarri didn't have to do that? Did well enough at Empoli for Napoli to go straight in rather than see if he can replicate the success at a Sampdoria/Genoa.
Still abroad domestic managers who overachieve at relegation candidates get a direct line to biggest jobs in the country. Still happens in Germany and Italy, not so much Spain anymore as Valverde was operating at higher level than that.
Why do you have some muppet hammering a drum all day at Bournemouth? Interesting read about the recent history of Bournemouth. Especially the ‘bought by a builder and guess who got all the renovation work?’ . Sounds like a club in Manchester?
Yes ok I agree but foreign managers have a different style of coaching compared to english managers.
How many English managers have won the premier league ? 0 howard wilkinson was the last one just before EPL started.
If eddie howe, then why not gareth southgate he got england to the semi finals of the world cup.
Surely that's just by numbers though? Let's say in a parallel universe rest of the season Eddie Howe managed Chelsea, Sean Dyche managed Liverpool and Southgate became Man. City manager, one of those would win the league.
The point is hardly anyone gets that chance anymore. Just 1 or 2 every five years (Moyes and Rodgers, neither of whom are English anyway), they are percieved as failures (even though Rodgers still has finished higher in PL than Klopp has) and so clubs don't want to know.
In Italy you get likes of Sarri and Allegri doing excellent jobs at relegation strugglers like Empoli and Caglairi and Meelan and Napoli are straight in, no appointing the latest in craze foreign manager or waiting for those two to win a trophy or qualify them for europa league as seems to be the demand of Eddie Howe to even make a shortlist.
When managers of the calibre of LVG and Mourinho (as it stands) are percieved as failures at the job I don't see why it would be such a disaster area for Eddie Howe to take the job, the bar has been set pretty low in recent times after all. Guess Woodward just wants to keep appointing big name managers to keep the investors happy.
I've watched Bournemouth play us live twice now, and on both occassions they looked a more coherent team than us, a clear philosophy of how to play, good tactical execution, and enjoyable to watch. How we beat them both times when I considered us to be playing a poorer standard of football is beyond me.
12th October to the end of the 2012/13 Season – League One
So, we’ve played eleven games of the season and have eight points following a run of four defeats on the trot. Meanwhile, at the top of the table the pace setters are Tranmere Rovers who have twenty seven points.
Looking at it with present day eyes the squad has plenty of quality but at that point none of them had shown it. There are a number of players in that team who I don’t believe would have got anywhere near the Premier League with any other manager.
Steve Cook, fourth choice at Brighton and deemed not good enough for the Championship. Ditto for Tommy Elphick who was now even further down the pecking order for them. Lewis Grabban who had been sold to a League 2 team by Championship Millwall as they didn’t think he would cut it at that level. Simon Francis, the afore-referenced ‘worst player to ever wear a Charlton shirt’.
Harry Arter is there and has shown some flashes of quality but has major on-field discipline issues. This season he’s already been sent off for two bookings by the 26th minute in one match.
After the caretakers oversaw a victory, Howe’s first match back in charge is home to top of the table Tranmere Rovers. The atmosphere in the stadium was like night and day to before with the fans very much back on board. The only diamonds on show were off the pitch with a reversion to a classic and, at this point, fairly basic 4-4-2 on the pitch. Remember there had been a huge turnover in players since Howe left so it made sense to keep it simple at the start. Despite going behind a 3-1 victory was recorded including an Arter goal. We were back on track!
A week later Arter was offered a new long term contract which he signed and from that moment on he was a lynchpin in the team until the start of this year.
The turnaround in results was extraordinary. Including the caretaker’s game, from 13th October until the end of the year in the league AFCB played thirteen matches of which we won ten and drew three. This was despite more hodgepodging. There was no right winger in this squad of randomly assembled players and so the 4-4-2 formation was achieved with makeshift options out there.
Sometimes you see teams that are dragged to success through what appears to be a combination of momentum and the sheer force of personality of the person in charge. This felt like one of those spells. We weren’t the best or most balanced team but the players weren’t without talent, seemed to realise they now had a man in charge that knew how to get the maximum from them and the crowd were 100% on-side. So we rolled on.
31st December and we’re now 5th in the table and a mere six points off Tranmere who are still top. We’ve also been scoring plenty and been entertaining to watch once again. Oh joy!
Howe was also pretty ruthless with some of the squad detritus that had been collected. Highly paid Dutchman Frank Demouge never got a look-in. Lorenzo Davids was likewise shifted on at the first opportunity. Teddy’s son Charlie Sheringham (what was the logic behind signing people related to good players?) never played for the club again. And so on. Howe was firmly stamping his authority over all the nonsense that had been going on. It didn’t matter who had recommended the player or sanctioned the signing, if he didn’t like the look of him he was gone. He may not look it but there are plenty of times when Howe has shown an utterly ruthless streak.
I’m not sure if this was a psychological gambit with the board or his genuine number one target but the only player brought in during the period from his return to the end of the calendar year was Brett Pitman on loan. You may recall him as the striker who had previously fired us up from League Two only to be sold from under Howe with none of the money then made available. Pitman’s time at Bristol City was an odd one. His goals to game ratio was alright when you consider the number of appearances that were late substitute ones and the BC fans I spoke with said they thought he looked really good but for some reason his face had never fitted. More fool them since we ultimately re-signed him permanently come January for £60k.
It’s easy for managers to get pigeon-holed. Oh he’s a promotion expert. He’ll save you from relegation. He isn’t good with big egos. And so on. At this point in his career Howe had a stellar reputation for achieving a lot on a little but having left Burnley with the job incomplete there were people out there who questioned his ability in spending money. If you look back at some of the players he signed for Burnley for money then it’s easy to refute but at this point it was something that was whispered quite audibly.
In a way, this made the January window a genuine test of his abilities, especially as we started the month with two draws and a defeat and so needed a boost.
He signed a keeper on a free from Leyton Orient, Ryan Allsop, and released David James. Allsop was to prove a more than solid addition for the rest of the League One campaign. Meanwhile the first big purchase he was to make with Demin’s money was a young Scottish player earmarked to fill the gaping right winger void in the squad. It’s fair to say 18 year old Ryan Fraser joining us for £400k caused a meltdown in ranks of Aberdeen fans who couldn’t believe their starlet would forgo European football with them to bump around the lower leagues of English football. Especially at a never-has-been club like AFC Bournemouth.
A few words on Ryan Fraser.
Ryan Fraser then was not the Ryan Fraser you see today. He’s bulked up so much as he’s filled out over the years but back then he was as was slight as he was/is short. He’s also made huge leaps forward technically and in his footballing intelligence. However, for the rest of my days and despite all that has happened since, his first few appearances for us will still count as some of the most enjoyable individual appearances from an AFCB player I have ever experienced watching.
He had all his speed then and it’s fair to say the League One defenders didn’t have a clue who he was or, once they saw him move, what he was. Maybe a miniature T-1000. It was like he was using a Mario Kart speed boost as they helplessly tried to slide tackle him only to realise he was long gone. It was worse for the better players since he would still outpace them that much that their tackles were merely extremely late and often resulted in yellow cards.
The memory of the fear on their faces as they stood up after seeing him run at them for the first time is something I treasure.
Back to the story and down the years we’ve had to sell off the likes of Matt Holland or Sam Vokes amongst others to stave off another imminent financial doom so it’s something we well understood. We were now to find ourselves on the other side of that equation. We’d apparently been rebuffed by Swindon Town in the summer in making a £1 million bid for Matt Ritchie with their quiet and calm (ha!) manager Paulo Di Canio declaring he was worth £15 million. Under him Swindon were doing very well and were as much in the mix for a play off place as us. However, it seems they were bluffing in turning down our summer bid in the hope a bigger one would come from somewhere as on 30th January it was circulated to clubs that all their players were for sale as long as it was a cash up front deal done immediately. The only offer that arrived was £500k in cash from us for Ritchie so they accepted.
A bitter pill for them to sell him to a promotion rival but it was either that or go into administration which would have meant a ten point deduction so would have been equally damaging to their promotion hopes. Di Canio reacted by resigning not too long afterwards.
Ritchie must have wondered what on earth was going on as an injury crisis at this point meant he made his debut for us as an emergency left back. Howe tried to plug the gap by signing yet another defender from Brighton, this time a left back on loan called Marcos Painter. He showed that Howe doesn’t always get it right. To say he was a little boy lost on the football field would be an understatement. I felt sorry for him but there was no sentiment from Howe. After an utterly abject performance he wasn’t seen again.
Back then Howe was still what is sometimes called a streaky manager. The good ones lasted much longer than the bad ones but the bad ones still came. After a good run of results from mid-Jan to mid-Feb, five straight wins, we hit the top of the table by a single point. Disaster struck though with a run of five defeats and some of us started to wonder if we’d simply run out of steam. You see that sometimes with teams that go on incredible runs.
We’re still playing 4-4-2 with the inverted wingers of Pugh and Ritchie both now in place. We look a good side but it just wasn’t happening and we had dropped down to seventh, ten points off the top. As he’s always done though, Howe stuck to his principles refusing to make sweeping changes to style or philosophy believing that instilling and sticking with what he sees as the right way forward will eventually pay more dividends than any short term fix.
Knowing he was still being judged for how he spent money, this was a crucial time and luckily the team responded with yet another inverse of the streak. Eight wins on the trot and we’re promoted with one game to go as the only two teams that can catch us, Doncaster and Brentford, have to play each other on the final day of the season. Whatever happened, we all knew that promotion would still be a monumental achievement considering where we were when Howe came back. Remember that although the club was founded in 1899, we'd only ever spent two years in the second tier with Redknapp with every other season being lower down the pyramid than that. So it was a Charlie Big Potatoes time for us fans.
That last day of the season had some interesting potential outcomes.
If Brentford beat Doncaster, they’d take the second promotion spot from Doncaster. If Doncaster won they could overtake us to win the title if we didn’t win. If Brentford and Doncaster drew, then we’d go up as champions with Doncaster taking the second promotion spot. Unless we lost to Tranmere 7-0 in which case Doncaster would be champions with a draw. Got that?
We were away to Tranmere who had fallen away badly from their early front running to ultimately finish 11th. It was one of those days and we just couldn’t break them down and the game finished 0-0.
Meanwhile the Brentford and Doncaster match was still ongoing and all ears turned to the radio to follow what was going on. It was 0-0 and all was looking good for us. Then in the 94th minute Brentford got a penalty. Score and they’re promoted! Meanwhile, we knew that even if it went over the game was finished. Our fans went wild and the celebrations started! Brentford contrived to hit the bar and in the melee that followed, Doncaster broke up to the other end to score the winning goal and take the title with the last kick of the season.
Oh football you can be a cruel mistress. However, it’s one of those things that deserves a watch now you know what’s at stake for both teams from this passage of play. I just tried to watch it but had to turn it off…
Denied the League 2 title by Notts County spending fake Middle East money and now the League 1 title by this twist. Promotion is all well and good but when was Howe going to win something? After all, we all know a manager is never rated by fans of other teams until he has trophies in the cabinet...
Anyway, Howe is back and now has an owner giving him money to spend. Fraser looks young and raw but also the first AFC Bournemouth owned player I’ve ever seen live who I was 100% certain would end up in the Premier League. Ritchie was the missing piece in the jigsaw for the team on the right wing. Meanwhile, Pitman scored 20 goals in 29 games and could now justifiably claim to have fired us to promotion from both League 2 and League 1.
A Championship adventure awaits in 2013/14 with the hope being that we can avoid a relegation scrap but the expectation being that is what we would face all season long. Please remember to us AFCB fans this really was reaching the heights at this stage. I was stupidly excited to be watching us play at that level.
As for Howe, he was probably back in the Championship far quicker than he expected considering the position AFCB were in when he came back. It was now a challenge to prove that the Burnley situation was one that he would have cracked in the end.
Two posts of the pre-PL Howe period to go. Next time we’ll see his first real tactical change away from 4-4-2 and his first foray into the overseas transfer market.
If you’ve had enough of the rambling just let me know. We’re now a lot closer to your home so this may now be familiar territory.
So, we’ve played eleven games of the season and have eight points following a run of four defeats on the trot. Meanwhile, at the top of the table the pace setters are Tranmere Rovers who have twenty seven points.
Looking at it with present day eyes the squad has plenty of quality but at that point none of them had shown it. There are a number of players in that team who I don’t believe would have got anywhere near the Premier League with any other manager.
Steve Cook, fourth choice at Brighton and deemed not good enough for the Championship. Ditto for Tommy Elphick who was now even further down the pecking order for them. Lewis Grabban who had been sold to a League 2 team by Championship Millwall as they didn’t think he would cut it at that level. Simon Francis, the afore-referenced ‘worst player to ever wear a Charlton shirt’.
Harry Arter is there and has shown some flashes of quality but has major on-field discipline issues. This season he’s already been sent off for two bookings by the 26th minute in one match.
After the caretakers oversaw a victory, Howe’s first match back in charge is home to top of the table Tranmere Rovers. The atmosphere in the stadium was like night and day to before with the fans very much back on board. The only diamonds on show were off the pitch with a reversion to a classic and, at this point, fairly basic 4-4-2 on the pitch. Remember there had been a huge turnover in players since Howe left so it made sense to keep it simple at the start. Despite going behind a 3-1 victory was recorded including an Arter goal. We were back on track!
A week later Arter was offered a new long term contract which he signed and from that moment on he was a lynchpin in the team until the start of this year.
The turnaround in results was extraordinary. Including the caretaker’s game, from 13th October until the end of the year in the league AFCB played thirteen matches of which we won ten and drew three. This was despite more hodgepodging. There was no right winger in this squad of randomly assembled players and so the 4-4-2 formation was achieved with makeshift options out there.
Sometimes you see teams that are dragged to success through what appears to be a combination of momentum and the sheer force of personality of the person in charge. This felt like one of those spells. We weren’t the best or most balanced team but the players weren’t without talent, seemed to realise they now had a man in charge that knew how to get the maximum from them and the crowd were 100% on-side. So we rolled on.
31st December and we’re now 5th in the table and a mere six points off Tranmere who are still top. We’ve also been scoring plenty and been entertaining to watch once again. Oh joy!
Howe was also pretty ruthless with some of the squad detritus that had been collected. Highly paid Dutchman Frank Demouge never got a look-in. Lorenzo Davids was likewise shifted on at the first opportunity. Teddy’s son Charlie Sheringham (what was the logic behind signing people related to good players?) never played for the club again. And so on. Howe was firmly stamping his authority over all the nonsense that had been going on. It didn’t matter who had recommended the player or sanctioned the signing, if he didn’t like the look of him he was gone. He may not look it but there are plenty of times when Howe has shown an utterly ruthless streak.
I’m not sure if this was a psychological gambit with the board or his genuine number one target but the only player brought in during the period from his return to the end of the calendar year was Brett Pitman on loan. You may recall him as the striker who had previously fired us up from League Two only to be sold from under Howe with none of the money then made available. Pitman’s time at Bristol City was an odd one. His goals to game ratio was alright when you consider the number of appearances that were late substitute ones and the BC fans I spoke with said they thought he looked really good but for some reason his face had never fitted. More fool them since we ultimately re-signed him permanently come January for £60k.
It’s easy for managers to get pigeon-holed. Oh he’s a promotion expert. He’ll save you from relegation. He isn’t good with big egos. And so on. At this point in his career Howe had a stellar reputation for achieving a lot on a little but having left Burnley with the job incomplete there were people out there who questioned his ability in spending money. If you look back at some of the players he signed for Burnley for money then it’s easy to refute but at this point it was something that was whispered quite audibly.
In a way, this made the January window a genuine test of his abilities, especially as we started the month with two draws and a defeat and so needed a boost.
He signed a keeper on a free from Leyton Orient, Ryan Allsop, and released David James. Allsop was to prove a more than solid addition for the rest of the League One campaign. Meanwhile the first big purchase he was to make with Demin’s money was a young Scottish player earmarked to fill the gaping right winger void in the squad. It’s fair to say 18 year old Ryan Fraser joining us for £400k caused a meltdown in ranks of Aberdeen fans who couldn’t believe their starlet would forgo European football with them to bump around the lower leagues of English football. Especially at a never-has-been club like AFC Bournemouth.
A few words on Ryan Fraser.
Ryan Fraser then was not the Ryan Fraser you see today. He’s bulked up so much as he’s filled out over the years but back then he was as was slight as he was/is short. He’s also made huge leaps forward technically and in his footballing intelligence. However, for the rest of my days and despite all that has happened since, his first few appearances for us will still count as some of the most enjoyable individual appearances from an AFCB player I have ever experienced watching.
He had all his speed then and it’s fair to say the League One defenders didn’t have a clue who he was or, once they saw him move, what he was. Maybe a miniature T-1000. It was like he was using a Mario Kart speed boost as they helplessly tried to slide tackle him only to realise he was long gone. It was worse for the better players since he would still outpace them that much that their tackles were merely extremely late and often resulted in yellow cards.
The memory of the fear on their faces as they stood up after seeing him run at them for the first time is something I treasure.
Back to the story and down the years we’ve had to sell off the likes of Matt Holland or Sam Vokes amongst others to stave off another imminent financial doom so it’s something we well understood. We were now to find ourselves on the other side of that equation. We’d apparently been rebuffed by Swindon Town in the summer in making a £1 million bid for Matt Ritchie with their quiet and calm (ha!) manager Paulo Di Canio declaring he was worth £15 million. Under him Swindon were doing very well and were as much in the mix for a play off place as us. However, it seems they were bluffing in turning down our summer bid in the hope a bigger one would come from somewhere as on 30th January it was circulated to clubs that all their players were for sale as long as it was a cash up front deal done immediately. The only offer that arrived was £500k in cash from us for Ritchie so they accepted.
A bitter pill for them to sell him to a promotion rival but it was either that or go into administration which would have meant a ten point deduction so would have been equally damaging to their promotion hopes. Di Canio reacted by resigning not too long afterwards.
Ritchie must have wondered what on earth was going on as an injury crisis at this point meant he made his debut for us as an emergency left back. Howe tried to plug the gap by signing yet another defender from Brighton, this time a left back on loan called Marcos Painter. He showed that Howe doesn’t always get it right. To say he was a little boy lost on the football field would be an understatement. I felt sorry for him but there was no sentiment from Howe. After an utterly abject performance he wasn’t seen again.
Back then Howe was still what is sometimes called a streaky manager. The good ones lasted much longer than the bad ones but the bad ones still came. After a good run of results from mid-Jan to mid-Feb, five straight wins, we hit the top of the table by a single point. Disaster struck though with a run of five defeats and some of us started to wonder if we’d simply run out of steam. You see that sometimes with teams that go on incredible runs.
We’re still playing 4-4-2 with the inverted wingers of Pugh and Ritchie both now in place. We look a good side but it just wasn’t happening and we had dropped down to seventh, ten points off the top. As he’s always done though, Howe stuck to his principles refusing to make sweeping changes to style or philosophy believing that instilling and sticking with what he sees as the right way forward will eventually pay more dividends than any short term fix.
Knowing he was still being judged for how he spent money, this was a crucial time and luckily the team responded with yet another inverse of the streak. Eight wins on the trot and we’re promoted with one game to go as the only two teams that can catch us, Doncaster and Brentford, have to play each other on the final day of the season. Whatever happened, we all knew that promotion would still be a monumental achievement considering where we were when Howe came back. Remember that although the club was founded in 1899, we'd only ever spent two years in the second tier with Redknapp with every other season being lower down the pyramid than that. So it was a Charlie Big Potatoes time for us fans.
That last day of the season had some interesting potential outcomes.
If Brentford beat Doncaster, they’d take the second promotion spot from Doncaster. If Doncaster won they could overtake us to win the title if we didn’t win. If Brentford and Doncaster drew, then we’d go up as champions with Doncaster taking the second promotion spot. Unless we lost to Tranmere 7-0 in which case Doncaster would be champions with a draw. Got that?
We were away to Tranmere who had fallen away badly from their early front running to ultimately finish 11th. It was one of those days and we just couldn’t break them down and the game finished 0-0.
Meanwhile the Brentford and Doncaster match was still ongoing and all ears turned to the radio to follow what was going on. It was 0-0 and all was looking good for us. Then in the 94th minute Brentford got a penalty. Score and they’re promoted! Meanwhile, we knew that even if it went over the game was finished. Our fans went wild and the celebrations started! Brentford contrived to hit the bar and in the melee that followed, Doncaster broke up to the other end to score the winning goal and take the title with the last kick of the season.
Oh football you can be a cruel mistress. However, it’s one of those things that deserves a watch now you know what’s at stake for both teams from this passage of play. I just tried to watch it but had to turn it off…
Denied the League 2 title by Notts County spending fake Middle East money and now the League 1 title by this twist. Promotion is all well and good but when was Howe going to win something? After all, we all know a manager is never rated by fans of other teams until he has trophies in the cabinet...
Anyway, Howe is back and now has an owner giving him money to spend. Fraser looks young and raw but also the first AFC Bournemouth owned player I’ve ever seen live who I was 100% certain would end up in the Premier League. Ritchie was the missing piece in the jigsaw for the team on the right wing. Meanwhile, Pitman scored 20 goals in 29 games and could now justifiably claim to have fired us to promotion from both League 2 and League 1.
A Championship adventure awaits in 2013/14 with the hope being that we can avoid a relegation scrap but the expectation being that is what we would face all season long. Please remember to us AFCB fans this really was reaching the heights at this stage. I was stupidly excited to be watching us play at that level.
As for Howe, he was probably back in the Championship far quicker than he expected considering the position AFCB were in when he came back. It was now a challenge to prove that the Burnley situation was one that he would have cracked in the end.
Two posts of the pre-PL Howe period to go. Next time we’ll see his first real tactical change away from 4-4-2 and his first foray into the overseas transfer market.
If you’ve had enough of the rambling just let me know. We’re now a lot closer to your home so this may now be familiar territory.
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Incidentally, Howe won PL MotM for October. The photo to announce it on the club website includes the whole backroom team. Another clear statement from him recognising the contribution that others make to our success and it not being about him and his ego.
I bet he keeps the trophy though!
I bet he keeps the trophy though!
Nice one! Eddie Howe got more points in our eyes days after days through your writing.
Really interesting video which describes his meticulous and hands on approach to management. The more I think about it the more he seems exactly what we need at OT.
Fancy Bournemouth to beat Arsenal on Sunday.
I'd love the 442/4411 back at United
I agree, he'd need a lot of time and the fans would have to be patient though. There is a flavour of the month feeling surrounding him at the moment but I genuinely think he is class, the fella (Will Dance For Chocolate) that has been keeping us up to date in this thread is likely opening a lot of peoples eyes. If Mourinho were to go in the summer I'd go for Howe.
Tin hat on
I'd be willing to give plenty of time if we had a manager who ticks all my boxes - giving you a chance, developing young/other players well, playing an exciting brand of football and generally heading in what I feel is the right direction.I agree, he'd need a lot of time and the fans would have to be patient though. There is a flavour of the month feeling surrounding him at the moment but I genuinely think he is class, the fella (Will Dance For Chocolate) that has been keeping us up to date in this thread is likely opening a lot of peoples eyes. If Mourinho were to go in the summer I'd go for Howe.
Tin hat on
Personally I feel Howe should be considered. Yes it's a step up but there's no rulebook that says you have to go down this sort of path Ipswich>Fulham>Stoke>Bournemouth>Everton>Spurs>United. Sometimes managers have that quality and sometimes they don't. Plenty of managers have 'appeared'. Howe doesnt have to of course given he's been an excellent manager for years.
Quality.Incidentally, Howe won PL MotM for October. The photo to announce it on the club website includes the whole backroom team. Another clear statement from him recognising the contribution that others make to our success and it not being about him and his ego.
I bet he keeps the trophy though!
Game is on Sky @ 13:30.
Thought Newcastle was the better team in the last Bournemouth, but the states say Eddies team had 60% possession and more passes.
Thought Newcastle was the better team in the last Bournemouth, but the states say Eddies team had 60% possession and more passes.
He should be your next manager, but he will need time.
Would fully support bringing in a new young coach with an identity for our style of play. He has done a tremendous job
He's hot again.