- Joined
- May 8, 2002
- Posts
- 370,631
- Reaction score
- 43
You must be registered for see images attach
Eddie Howe’s highly impressive coaching CV covers all four divisions - Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images
Could Eddie Howe ever be Liverpool manager? Perhaps the moment has passed forever, and this job is now Arne Slot’s for the life cycle of this current team and beyond. Maybe Howe is bound to Newcastle United for the time being, as the leading English manager of his generation and one less decision that the admittedly restless Saudis have to make. So much would have to change, so much would need to align. But of all the many things that may never happen in football, you might consider this one the likeliest of all the unlikely.
The new post-Jürgen Klopp regime at Liverpool may win its first trophy against Howe’s Newcastle in Sunday’s Carabao Cup final. The Premier League title is surely not far away either. It is shaping up to be one of those pivotal summers when Liverpool should be able to sign players from a position of strength. Yet whatever way Sunday’s final goes for Liverpool, the people running the club will have Howe in mind. He remains a close friend of Michael Edwards, the controlling power at Fenway Sports Group – the FSG chief executive of football – and his closest aide, Richard Hughes. Had the pieces fallen differently, Howe, Edwards and Hughes could well have been on the same side.
It is Hughes, appointed by Edwards as Liverpool technical director in March after eight years in a similar role at Bournemouth, through whom Howe and Edwards met. It all happened at Portsmouth in the mid-2000s when Hughes was a senior player. Also in the squad was Howe, albeit by then in the grip of the serious injury that would ultimately end his career. Edwards was Portsmouth’s analyst, working for contractors Prozone, and riding the first uncertain wave of data analytics in football.
In those days the traditional hierarchy of the game would have placed the analyst somewhere around the level of the kit man. But Edwards is now the most powerful of the three, running the FSG football empire from its Cheshire offices. There was a point in the early 2000s when Hughes and Howe were poised to join Wigan Athletic, then under the management of Paul Jewell. They would have gone as a package but the move fell through. Hughes had a very solid Premier League career with Portsmouth and then went into recruitment at Bournemouth post-retirement where his old team-mate Howe was taking the club up through the divisions.
You must be registered for see images attach
Liverpool executive Michael Edwards (left, with Jürgen Klopp) remains an admirer of his close friend and former colleague Howe - John Powell/Getty Images
Those who know these things say that it is through Hughes that Howe got to know Edwards, and that Hughes is chief conduit of the bond. It would be no exaggeration to say that if those running Liverpool had to lose a final to anyone it would be Howe. They know as well as anyone what a remarkable route to the top he has taken.
Howe did not have a high-profile playing career to power his coaching career. He has managed in all four divisions to get to where he is today, including, at the start, Bournemouth, a club that was on life support. Little wonder that those who appreciate him the most are the colleagues who knew him when his playing career was in crisis and saw him build a coaching career from the very bottom.
He is well established now as the pre-eminent British manager, ahead even of David Moyes. There are only four British managers in the Premier League if one is to include Kieran McKenna, from County Fermanagh. Apart from Howe, all are in the bottom six places. Graham Potter is the only other English Premier League manager. Even the England manager is German. In the leanest era ever for managers from these shores, Howe has thrived. He has proved much more durable than his golden generation age-group peers. They may have 100-plus England caps, but Howe, with his single under-21s appearance, has outperformed them all.
Howe was considered by Liverpool in the summer of 2015 when Brendan Rodgers was hanging on and there was not yet any guarantee of Klopp taking over, as he finally did in October of that year. At the time Howe had not yet managed in the Premier League. But the admiration for his three promotions at Bournemouth – at last by that summer a Premier League club – was strong.
You must be registered for see images attach
Arne Slot and Howe both scored highly in Liverpool’s analytical model – but the Dutchman came out on top to ultimately land the job - Andrew Powell/Getty Images
When it came to appointing Klopp’s successor last year, Howe scored highly in the analysis model created by the club’s former director of research, Ian Graham – now under the auspices of his successor Will Spearman – to assign value to coaches. Which is to say the various complicated ways the model rates how a coach presides over an improvement in a player’s performance. That includes how often a player gets injured under his training and game regime. Do players improve or decline when the player and coach part company? Can a coach play different styles or is he wedded to one?
Slot scored extremely highly and over the course of the recruitment process it became clear that the Dutchman was a much more viable target. Would Howe ever have stepped away from Newcastle? It feels unlikely. But in the manoeuvring this time last year as Chelsea and Manchester United assessed their options, and the Football Association also needed a new manager, it is strange that no one tested the strength of the connection between Howe and Newcastle.
The Newcastle takeover revolution has, by virtue of financial controls, been unable to spend in the same way that Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour once did – but even so, under the burden of serious expectation, Howe has done a fine job. Ultimately he will be judged on whether he wins trophies or not. No serious manager would want it any other way. But after a decade at the top it is easy to forget that he came from nowhere.
From taking over what looked like a lost cause at Bournemouth aged 31 and somehow rescuing them from relegation out of the Football League, to the brink of a first major domestic trophy at a club that have not won one since 1955. The strange part is that those who know Howe’s career best – and admire his achievement as much as any – will also be hoping Newcastle do not beat Liverpool today.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Continue reading...
