Southampton New Manager: 6 Candidates To Replace Mauricio Pochettino
6. Eddie Howe
AFC Bournemouth have always had a friendly link to the bigger club just up the south coast and have often functioned as a de facto feeder club for Southampton, with the Cherries' better young players ending up transferring over to Saints, while Saints Academy players who never quite made it (Leon Best, Drew Surman) go the other way. Most notably, the current (for the time being anyway) Saints idol Adam Lallana left the Bournemouth Centre of Excellence to join the Saints Academy as a 12 year old and returned to the club as a promising 19 year old in 2007. At the same time Bournemouth's hugely popular but injury prone Eddie Howe was made a player coach by manager and former Saints defender Kevin Bond. By 2008 Howe became Bournemouth's manager, pulling a team whose league status was at threat out of the relegation zone in League 2. The following season Howe's Bournemouth were promoted. After a brief spell at Burnley, Howe returned to Bournemouth in 2012 to guide the team to promotion to the Championship, only the second time in the club's history that they found themselves in the second tier. Having consolidated Bournemouth's Championship status with an impressive 10th place finish last year, Howe is in demand with a number of bigger clubs and Southampton's good relationship with the Cherries should see the young manager (still just 36 even after 6 years of management) clear to a big move that would not be too disruptive to someone who is such a Bournemouth icon that he played 271 games of his 273 match playing career for his hometown club and has spent most of his managerial career there. Indeed, the only time he has even moved away from a small area of the south of England was just over a year as manager of Burnley in which he did not impress. In a sense, then, Southampton offer Howe the only plausible big move while still staying close to his roots. However, the Premier League club may worry about Howe's ability to step up much in the same way that former Saints manager Paul Sturrock failed to adjust to the top level. Howe's commitment to playing stylish, fluid and attacking football would be a perfect fit for the way that Southampton have played under Pochettino and he has an undoubted ambition and interest in building for the future.
