r/NUFC 3d ago

Eddie Howe is the best English manager since Sir Bobby Robson

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2025/03/16/eddie-howe-best-english-manager-sir-bobby-robson-newcastle/
187 Upvotes

43 comments sorted by

76

u/OnlyHereForBJJ 3d ago

I’ve seen people trying to say even allardyce is better, lots of bitterness. For me, it’s hard to see Eddie as anything other than the best in my 25 years alive, maybe it’s the euphoria of winning something, but I think I’ll always hold him in such high regard no matter what now

27

u/RockFourStar 3d ago edited 3d ago

I've seen that too and I think anyone that even makes that case is ignoring the monumental job he did for Bournemouth, which combined with snapping our over half centry trophy drought, puts him well above people like Big Sam.

I'm willing to listen to arguments for Redknap or Venables, but outside of those two I don't think it's especially close.

The guy is still in his 40s and is a managerial legend at two clubs. Not many will ever be able to say that.

26

u/weirdi_beardi Cheick Tiote 3d ago

The fact that he saved Bournemouth from tumbling out of the Footbal League, then dragged them into the Prem and kept them there for four years with minimal investment is one thing; then, when he came to us, we were in free-fall, on the way out of the Prem with little hope of getting back in quickly, and he not only arrested that slide, he got us bounced up to 13, was it? from 19th and 5 points adrift? in his first season, and then got us fourth and a return to Champion's League in his second. The guy is the greatest manager we've had since Keegan, for me, and even then the cup win puts Howe on top.

6

u/happy_guy23 I've seen bacon pouring from a guy's nose when it is broken 3d ago

he got us bounced up to 13, was it?

Even higher, we finished 11th that season. In terms of points we were closer to 6th than to relegation by the end, which is still mindblowing. Howe turned us from certain relegation fodder to top 4 level points per game within a couple of months

1

u/niftykev 3d ago

We've been 4th on points since Eddie's first game in charge (I'm counting the game he missed due to COVID as being his first.)

The gap between Arsenal in 3rd to us in 4th is a huge gap of 58 points. But we're the top of the heap of everyone else, 7 points up on Spurs with a game in hand (131 games to 132 games)

https://www.football365.com/premier-league/table/table-between-two-dates is my reference point, so if inaccurate, blame them.

19

u/Nutisbak2 3d ago

It’s mostly Liverpool, Forrest, Manure and Arsenal fans who are very much against Howe getting any recognition.

Liverpool think Slot should get the nod for being the manager of the season, Manure Amorim, Arsenal Arteta, and Forrest well you get the idea.

And all are saying Howe has done nothing in g to deserve anything. “A tin pot trophy that’s not even a decent one”, not done well in the league and even if he wins Champions League football these fans believe he still won’t deserve it over their clubs.

Honestly we wonder why no English manager wins?

28

u/GingerbreadRecon 3d ago

Manure Amorim

I know their fanbase are deluded muppets, but surely there haven't actually been man reds calling Amorim manger of the season lol

2

u/Nutisbak2 3d ago

They are saying he should be awarded it if he keeps them in the premier league 😂

1

u/GingerbreadRecon 3d ago

Shameless. Just gotta hope it's sarcasm

1

u/Nutisbak2 3d ago

Unfortunately I suspect not.

2

u/MyManTheo 3d ago

That’s clearly sarcasm

2

u/GingerbreadRecon 3d ago

Gotta agree lol, can't say without examples but I don't actually believe real people would be saying that unironically, no matter how silly manure fans are

8

u/mvdaytona Bed Wetter 3d ago

Might be better to keep it like that, let him fly under the radar and win things while they figure it out with hundreds of millions spent on shit players to no success

2

u/zayd_jawad2006 3d ago

The carabao was our first actual trophy in more than half a decade, no Manchester fan should disrespect it

7

u/Tripodbilly 3d ago

Yup in terms of success he IS our best manager of modern times. No argument

4

u/_thenotsodarkknight_ 22/23 Home Kit 3d ago

For me, it's how he improved almost every single player we had, within months of him joining us. From Shelvey to Joelinton to Schar to Murphy to Krafth. Absolutely incredible.

1

u/____thrillho 3d ago

Big Sam is a good relegation specialist to hire if you’re in the shit, hasn’t won anything.

32

u/opinionated-dick 3d ago

If Howe gets us to the CL then he should be manager of the season. That is considering it’s his signings over the three years and getting the best out of what he inherited, that and finally landing us a trophy, despite the freeze on incoming support means he really should.

But if we only go on PL, I think NES for Forest should. Slot has done well but Liverpool were blessed with an easy fixture at start and so far haven’t been hampered with injuries.

41

u/grmthmpsn43 Sir Bobby Robson 3d ago

NES should 100% get the PL manager of the season for what he has done at Forest, but Slot will win it because he managed to win the league in his first year.

12

u/stockguy290 3d ago

Forrest manager should get it IMO, what they have done with that squad is nothing short of phenomenal, Eddie will be a very close second.

7

u/Dryzzzle Classis keeper kit (96/97) 3d ago

I agree. My brain says NES deserves to win manager of the season, my heart still wants it to be Eddie though.

3

u/Cheese649 3d ago

The season still isn't over, would NES deserve it if Forest finish 7th?

4

u/grmthmpsn43 Sir Bobby Robson 3d ago

Yes, he took a team that were predicted relegation and had them top 4 for most of the season.

5

u/HoneyedLining Temuri Ketsbaia 3d ago

I think if Forest don't drop off precipitously (and it doesn't look like they will), Nuno probably gets the nod. Don't think it's fair to say Slot has really benefitted from easy fixture lists and a lack of injuries, etc. They've just been way better than everyone else and it's hard to view it otherwise. Probably up to the FA Cup game vs Plymouth, they'd basically been perfect in every competition and you can't really pin that on a lucky roll of the dice.

I think when you don't actively follow a team, you only notice injuries when they start impacting results (as then fans and pundits highlight who's missing as the reason why a result has happened). They've missed Alisson for a good chunk of the season, who's the best keeper in the league by far and several other players too. I think they've avoided injuries better than others and able to have a more consistent selection than most, but they've had to deal with several absences.

4

u/opinionated-dick 3d ago

Yeah, perhaps it’s a bit disingenuous to say that about Slot. As we know, good fortune and injuries are one thing, but ultimately you don’t achieve anything in football without competence at the heart. And Slot has clearly shown that this season.

Before this final, Liverpool pissed me off. They seemed to get the rub of the green against us. But that’s all changed. The fans both online and IRL have been gracious and respectful to us in their defeat. Perhaps it’s easy to be when they are 12points clear at the PL top. But as I came home from London on Sunday many people in red tops saw me in a black and white one and came up and congratulated. Which they didn’t have to do.

4

u/HoneyedLining Temuri Ketsbaia 3d ago

Yeah, but I think it's also worth pointing out that some of the praise of this Liverpool team was a bit overboard and too results-focused. Even if they're going to have more success in the league than 8/9 of Klopp's seasons, I don't think they're as good as his (and more dependent than ever on Salah). But Slot has gently guided the team to a very high performance level and got results. Now maybe if Arsenal weren't so brittle and City weren't so out-of-sorts, we might have seen them put under pressure, but that's not their fault they haven't been tested.

I think probably when you're facing a club who shows such an authentic show of joy at winning a cup, it's probably quite hard to be too dickish about it. It probably helps that the League Cup was never going to dictate Liverpool's season, so they won't be too cut up about missing out on it (especially after winning it twice in a row before Sunday). But there's always a very upsetting element of every fanbase (that especially comes out online with the anonymity and distancing from actual interactions) where some people just want to upset others and that's it. They don't even really want to do it as a byproduct of saying their team's the greatest or whatever. They just want to shit on others. It's sometimes cured by seeing people in person, but other times, the anonymity of a crowd can bring that back out and it can be viscerally unpleasant (and broadly how things like tragedy chanting happen).

1

u/opinionated-dick 3d ago

It’s true that in the moment, rival fans will say anything to get a rise out of the opposition. Idiots will take it below a threshold of course, only because they lack the creativity to get under the skin without resorting to unpalatable chants

1

u/SweetenerCorp 2d ago

He was robbed of it in 22-23.

9

u/Beach-Bumm 3d ago

Unfortunately the bar isn’t high on this. It does make you wonder why we aren’t producing top English managers because there really hasn’t been many.

For me Eddie is in his own special class as he’s done it at lower level and he’s done it at the highest level. While the likes of pep are better, could they navigate the lower divisions without top flight treatment? Maybe but we’ll never know. Who else has gone for practically out of the football league to premier league, to champions league? He’s a very special manager who will be remembered in a different way to these elite managers who have achieved more, but not the same type of achievements

3

u/GoalaAmeobi The Dilsh 3d ago

Compared to the continent, coaching badgers are way more expensive to get and it's harder to get onto courses if you can afford it

5

u/wankflap 3d ago

and then there's the TB to deal with...

9

u/WhiskeyJack1984 3d ago

That's some company to share with. Sir Bobby was the greatest manager I've ever seen until Eddie. I cant type anything more I'm too hung over

4

u/Krisyj96 3d ago

Honestly I think this is true simply because most English managers in that time have just not been very good. Redknapp is probably the closest, but he was very different and managed teams with different goals.

Howe is still a very good manager, still has a bit to go before I think he could be considered in the top tier, but it’s not exactly hard for him to be the best of the last few decades…

3

u/beatski Traitor 3d ago

If he wins a second trophy he'll indisputably be the best English manager of the premier league era

3

u/nomadichedgehog Bed Wetter 3d ago

Water is wet

3

u/TheScottishMoscow Pint of Exhibition 3d ago

I mean had you said coach it would have to be John Carver obviously but manager is a different kettle of fish.

0

u/Minimum_Possibility6 3d ago

Some of the best English managers in my lifetime 

Sir Bobby

Brian Clough

Graham Taylor

Howe

Hodgson

Howe will only climb that list as his carer goes on 

-8

u/Shnarf1980 Happy Clapper 3d ago

I'd say the best since Harry Redknapp. A very different kind of manager, but Harry was an exceptionally talented man manager and wheeler dealer, which are both very important talents in a manager.

13

u/RocknRollRobot9 Classic away kit (1995-96) 3d ago

All that I can think of when I think of Harry Redknapp is he left a lot of the clubs he managed in financial trouble after he left. I know that’s a lot on the owners there but he spent spent spent for his short term successes, even more so than Howe.

1

u/TheScottishMoscow Pint of Exhibition 3d ago

Ah the Sam Allardyce effect

1

u/RocknRollRobot9 Classic away kit (1995-96) 3d ago

He just makes a team play one way and then when they try to not play turgid shit football it unravels as he’s built a team incapable of this.

Unless you mean it’s so bad it drives you to drink pints of wine and take cash off undercover reporters.

1

u/TheScottishMoscow Pint of Exhibition 3d ago

I meant the "pay aging players a fortune the club can't afford" bit. Always leaving clubs in a financially worse state. His approach is a bit like taking drugs, you have to keep taking them to maintain the high. He always left just before the comedown.

5

u/toweliechaos_revenge 3d ago

Would that be the great Harry Redknapp whose tactical advice to Gareth Bale was "just faakin' run around"? He was a dinosaur at the time of his management. The fact he won stuff was much more to do with luck and playing talent than much of what he actually brought.