Despair, Howe would not have gotten his first job had it not been for the despair that paralyzed the minds of an entire club, so much so that the best solution for its officials was to step up the youth coach to lead the first team.
The youth coach was also young, in his prime in fact; the first team had one of the youngest ages in the tournament, however, it had 6 players older than him. This is the degree of despair that gave Howe his first job as a technical director, when he moved, within months, from a professional player with a chronic knee injury to a retired player trying to satisfy his passion for coaching, then to a coach of one of the youth teams, and then a technical director of the first team, without gathering any real experience or experience that qualifies him for any of this. (1) (2)
Unconventional hero
Not many tales start like this, but on Christmas Eve in 2008, despair was the first champion; Bournemouth were languishing 23rd out of 24 League Two clubs, the hairline between professionalism and hobby, because the end of the season meant it automatically moved to Non-League, or at least that's what everyone in the South thought.
Mark McAdham, the Sky journalist who was close to Howe in those days, tells of a worse reality: Bournemouth were punished for financial irregularities in their accounts, deducting a full 17 points that season, and when Howe took charge he was told that relegation to the "Non-League" was not the worst thing that awaited this club, but the fact that there would be no club to play in those competitions. Relegation means the dissolution of the club and the control of creditors over its property. (1)
In 2008, Bournemouth were 23rd out of 24 clubs in League Two on the gap between professionalism and hobby, because the end of the season meant they automatically moved to non-league. (Getty Images)
It was at that very moment that Howe began to work, and that work was without resources. Of course, in most cases where the term "no resources" is used, the meaning is "scarcity of resources", but this was not one of these cases. Howe started his work with no real resources; no previous coaching experience, no proper squad of players, no budget for signings, not even an assistant staff.
That was the degree of Bournemouth going bankrupt these days, and Howe started working completely alone with no assistants, analysts or scouts and no medical staff, so much so that the man would hire a professional masseur, out of his own money, on match days, to deal with the team's muscle injuries. (1)
McAdam was present at the first brainstorming session. We don't know if it could be called a "session" because it only included Howe and McTAdam, and when the latter went into the former's office, he found all the usual obsessiveness you usually see in movies: walls covered with numbers and graphs, huge headlines, arrows, questions, and scattered papers containing notes on several topics.
Some of those questions must have been funny, because Howe, at that moment, didn't even know how he wanted to play, what his philosophy was, how to apply it, whether this was the right timing to apply any philosophy in the first place, and was there an opportunity to swap some players during the January transfer window? If there is a chance, who will want their players? Originally what characteristics of the players does Howe want in his team?
Howe's Bournemouth set out to secure their survival in the League Two with two games to go, and within the next six seasons, the young Englishman was crowned champion of the Champions League en route to the Premier League. (Reuters)
From that moment, somehow, Howe's Bournemouth set out to secure their survival in the League Two with two games to go, and in the next 6 seasons, the young Englishman was crowned champion of the Champions League on his way to the Premier League, having been the weakest candidate in every league he had played up to that point, and was about to start a new life with Bournemouth that neither of them had experienced before, a life that began on the other side of despair as Sartre believes.
Bookmark here and there
During those seven years between the night of December 31, 2008, and the end of May 2015, Howe's office walls remained intact albeit gradually seeped into the system; observations increased, graphs became complex, numbers became more complex than data scientists use, and conversely, the number of questions declined.
Howe discovered that he prefers 4-4-2 with its derivatives because it allows him to use as many attack elements as possible in compression. This is the same thing Juanma Leo discovered in the nineties with Real Oviedo when he switched a 4-4-2 to a 4-2-3-1 for the first time, pressing four players at once when his opponents try to build their attack from behind. (3)
Howe had the same greed and, against the best opponents in major matches, often switched to a 4-3-3 to enable his players to occupy the five channels of the field, but at the same time he used unusual combinations of pressing.
During the defeat to Liverpool in the FA Cup for the 2013-2014 season, Howe used his attacking wings as part of a central unit that identified with the midfielders while pressing. This is one of the tactical glimpses that Howe's plans have not yet been, and you can easily notice them in the current Newcastle squad.
Notice here, for example, how the pivot players move when the ball moves from Liverpool's right to its left, and notice the exchange of ascension between the two wingers smoothly that facilitates the pressure on the closest players to the ball carrier, without the team hindering the classifications of positions between attack and midfield. In the last shot, the front trio consisted of the main striker, Luis Grabán, the right pivot, and the right winger, while the left wing became part of the central trio that occupies the reverse space on the other side of the field.
Photos: Bournemouth's midfielders and attack develop while pressuring Liverpool in FA Cup clash 2013-2014 – (Source: The Athletic)
This dynamic of space reference pressure is very intelligent and practical, but its implementation is also very difficult. Every coach dreams that his players will reach this degree of understanding first, and understand the general tactical framework second. Howe didn't come up with the idea, of course, but his players were the first to apply it so accurately in the lower tiers of English football.
Over time, more features began to become clear. Howe was obsessed with speed and technical skill for the simple obvious reason that they were his worst nightmare as a player. McTAdam says that in his early days as a coach, he used to say that having players with speed and technical skill gives you all the solutions, but that luxury was not actually achieved until the 2016-2017 season of the Premier League, after the club managed to break its record for signings in one season with 55 and 40 million euros respectively in the summers of 2015 and 2016. (1) (4)
Bennick Afobi from Wolves, Joshua King from Blackburn, Gordon Ebe from Liverpool and Jack Wilshere on loan from Arsenal are on loan from Arsenal in a bid to salvage his crumbling career, with Ipswich Tyrone Mings and Nathan Ake on loan from Chelsea. (4)
This is the same team that spent £50,<> the summer before Howe took over, and if he were the club's CFO, he would have done enough, but the achievement meant adding a tremendous amount of speed and technique to a team with a severe lack of space, and Howe was about to make the most of it in his best season of coaching ever.
Bring us Chelsea!
Now the team is ready to hurt opponents – in English terms – during possession as well. At that moment, the second distinctive feature of Howe's tactical personality with the ball emerged: the use of fast-tech wingers as playmakers in transitions, specifically in depth and half-spaces. Again, there was a clever idea behind that use.
Wilshere was the No. 10 playmaker behind Avopy or Wilson, but the biggest work went to Joshua King, who occupied the left half of the space in possession, and then once the ball was lost he was a third player in the middle.
The same behaviour is shown by Ryan Friger in this succession against Manchester United: the rise of the backs in possession – another important feature of Howe's tactical personality – allows the Scot to occupy the middle space between the tip and the depth, and then Harry Wilson repeats the same thing when the ball arrives, and suddenly Manchester United finds themselves having to accumulate their players in front of their goal, leaving space for Adam Smith, the left-back, to catch King with his cross that he turned past De Gea.
Photos: Howe used his wings and showed him against Manchester United in the 2016-2017 season (Source: The Athletic)
Ironically, the most significant manifestation of this phenomenon came against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge the following season, 2017-2018, when Bournemouth produced their best tactical and technical display ever under Howe in a three-goal clean sheet victory over the hosts, despite Conte's very conservative start, with a defensive line-up as his most games of the season. (5) (3)
Here Eby, the winger, receives the ball in the central space, and immediately the movements of King and Wilson begin in the channels between the defenders. The idea here is that dragging the winger from the end to the depth leaves the opponent with a difficult choice between accompanying him and leaving space or vice versa, thus escaping close control and allowing him an extra second on the ball.
This second creates all possible chaos in the opponent's defenses, as Bakyoko and Kante prepare to pounce on Eby, Kehill is forced to turn around to follow Eby's movement, leaving Wilson to attack the space behind his back. This is what happens when fast, technical players sneak deep into the pitch in transitions; only one of them, even if they are not as competent as Eby, can distract the attention of three or four players at once, fearing what they might do if they decide to drive the ball forward.
How did Howe deliberately tilt the pitch against Chelsea to create voids in his defence? (Source: The Athletic)
Note here that Chelsea's overwhelming numerical superiority did not help him for the same reason mentioned above; Bournemouth decided to limit play to a vertical half only, and this gave him a qualitative advantage in the same possession situation, through which holes and channels appeared in Conte's defense, and attacking the space became as easy as possible.
The wisdom of despair
Of course, you know what happened after that; the performance curve began to gradually fall, and the spree of beginnings and the desire to achieve after ensuring stability in the Premier League disappeared, and reassurance and tranquility leaked after it, and then the human soul did its usual thing, and everyone began to treat what they accomplished as taken for granted, that do not need the same effort, focus and caution to maintain them, and by the end of the 2019-2020 season, Howe was leading Bournemouth to a position similar to the one he found in it, but at 5 higher steps on the English football ladder.
Eskils, the Greek philosopher considered by many to be the first tragedy in history, believed that despair is man's greatest teacher, because it frees him from pursuit, ambition, competition and the desire to achieve. Only in despair do we give wisdom, and wisdom led Howe to a year-long hiatus, during which he moved between Diego Simeone's training in Madrid and those led by Klopp and his assistant Pep Leenders at Liverpool. (6)
That was one of Howe's unconventional qualities: that his simple football and social background, combined with his rapid meteoric rise, did not lose his senses or prevent him from being humble like most cases of sudden transformation. This is confirmed by all those who have dealt with the man, and is evident in his balanced statements and quiet press conferences.
At that moment, another club was slipping into despair with Steve Bruce, a man who broke down emotionally after his sacking, due to the bullying and harm he received from Newcastle fans, and after a transition period with Graeme Jones, one of Howe's aides at Bournemouth ironically, Howe ran for the job. (7) (8) (9)
Newcastle's new management probably saw Howe as a temporary savior, just as Bournemouth's management saw him on the last day of 2008. Jones probably had a hand in his nomination as well, but the man had turned into a more sophisticated version of himself; the same main ideas but evolved, but with incredible sharpness, lethal speed, as you might expect from a coach who spent his last year with Klopp and Simeone. (10)
In a long, hearty analysis of The Athletic, Jacob Whitehead explains Howe's tactical development to the present moment, and the similarities between Bournemouth and Newcastle: the man remained loyal to high and medium pressure, but became more used to 4-3-3 than others, in which he relied on the trio of Guimarães, Joelinton and Longstaff, and used his wings Saint-Maximan and Almiron, in the same way. (3)
In the following sequence, you notice how the central trio dumped spaces in depth to extract the ball in that particular space, and then embark on rapid transitions attacking spaces in the back of defenders, and this is what produced Wilson's first goal against West Ham after Willock, Longstaff and Joilinton pressed Paqueta. Also note how Saint-Maximan and Almiron maintained their position in the half-spaces, taking the backs out of play, turning a 5-on-3-wide position into 3-on-3 pitch-wide once either of them received the ball.
The sequence that produced Wilson's goal at West Ham during the current season 2022-2023 (Source: The Athletic)
That goal started with a clever twist from Swiss Fabian Schar to pre-empt the longitudinal pass to Antonio, one of those rediscovered by Howe and the team's biggest star man this season, Miguel Almiron, and this exceptional ability for individual development came mainly from Howe's early days at Bournemouth, when he learned to do everything himself. (11) (12)
Howe Wall
McAdam hasn't visited his old companion in years, but if he had visited now, he would have found his office wall with different numbers; this team has much better technical capabilities, so the ambitious Saudi takeover will probably only lead it upwards.
This season, Newcastle are second in the Premier League behind Manchester City in terms of expected goals against them (xGA) according to the site "FBREF", which specializes in football statistics and digital analysis, and seventh in the level of expected goals (xG), and fourth in terms of expected goal difference per game (xGD/90). These are qualitative criteria that confirm that the Howe team occupies its natural and logical place in the standings. (13)
Bruno Guimarães: “Newcastle will be in the Champions League every year in the future. I think about staying here for a long time. I want to make the club story as priority”, tells Daily Mail 🇧🇷 #NUFC
“Eddie Howe will become the England manager one day, I’m sure”. pic.twitter.com/u92tMsM3ju
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) March 7, 2023
The most important of all was the space that turned radically at Newcastle, under the leadership of Steve Bruce, the team was the most passive in the Premier League without the ball, with record pressing, and was the lowest in the competition over the previous five seasons, and Howe managed to turn that into the exact opposite in a few months, and by the middle of the third month of the current edition, Newcastle were at the top of the standings in terms of the number of recoveries in the top third of the pitch. (7) (13) (14)
Similarly, the rate of passes per defensive action (PPDA) fell to an all-time low of close to 10 passes, meaning the intensity of black and white pressure was at its peak.
Eddie Howe proud of his #NUFC team pic.twitter.com/zlASaoMIt1
— Newcastle Fans TV (@NewcastleFansTV) February 26, 2023
This particular characteristic has become a general character of the team under Howe, so much so that it has been the main driver of the recent changes in the starting line-up, with the entry of Murphy and Swede Alexander Isaac with Joe Willock, at the expense of the likes of Almiron, Wilson and Longstaff, to return the team to its vitality and former unity during the victory over Wolves, leading a new offensive line that the Wolves defense struggled with during preparation. (14)
The future holds more to it, of course. They may or may not qualify for the Champions League this season, but what Newcastle have accomplished with Howe so far is only the beginning, and nothing prevents him from switching to another Chelsea or Manchester City in the future, even if it is done with less spending, greater wisdom and slower steps, and even if Eddie Howe is just a stage in the grand future scheme.
Surprisingly, it all started with another moment of despair, a despair that earned Howe wisdom and Newcastle found life on his other side. Brilliantly, what began with another attempt to avoid relegation turned overnight into a cohesive winning team that competes for the champions' seats and aspires to the future, led by an unconventional champion who understands that one is not defeated when one loses, one is not defeated when doubted, one is not defeated even when one despairs, one is defeated when one gives up, and Edward Frank Howe does not seem to be defeated anytime soon.
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Sources:
- 1- Eddie Howe's Evolution Journey
- 2- List of Bournemouth players in the 2008-2009 season – Transfermarkt
- 3- From Bournemouth to Newcastle. Eddie Howe's Tactical Evolution – The Athletic
- 4- All Bournemouth transfers – Transfermarkt
- 5. Master Class, Eddie Howe – The Coaches' Voice
- 6- Brainy Quote
- 7. The facts about Newcastle Steve Bruce – The Athletic
- 8. Steve Bruce: "This may be my last job" – BBC
- 9. Graeme-Jones' coaching career – Transfermarkt
- 10 - Newcastle players have embraced Howe's sharp style of high pressure. And now their work is reaping its rewards! – The Athletic
- 11. Tactical analysis: How Newcastle transformed with Eddie Howe – The Football Faithful
- 12. Newcastle Eddie Howe: Tactical Analysis – The Master Mind Site
- 13- Premier League statistics for the 2022-2023 season – FBREF
- 14 – Eddie Howe's new attack led by Alexander Isaac reignites Newcastle's season – The Athletic