IF Gareth Southgate does leave the England job, I’d love the FA to try and get Eddie Howe.
I know how good Eddie is from my time at Bournemouth but people wondered whether he could make that step up to a bigger club.
Well, now he has shown at Newcastle how skilled he is at developing players and he’s turning them into title challengers.
The problem for the FA would be persuading him to swap his club for his country — and I’m not sure they’ll be able to do that.
He might feel it’s too early for him and that he wants more time to build success in the North East.
If he delivered silverware for Newcastle he’d be a god.
But the England job is the pinnacle for any English coach and it might be hard to turn down if there is a proper offer on the table.
Eddie is so thorough in everything he does — from the way he organises the season, to his well-thought-out training sessions, to the one-to-one attention he gives players.
He’s a top man-manager. I’d only had Arsene Wenger as a club boss before I went to Bournemouth and he was a great man-manager, too — but in a different way to Eddie.
Arsene would give you a lot of trust and confidence and left you to get on with it. Eddie was more detailed, probably because the level of player he had was not as good as Arsenal’s.
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Eddie had to coach more. Arsene didn’t really have to tell Samir Nasri or Tomas Rosicky how to play between the lines. Eddie would tell you how to do it and give you feedback — not always positive — but the way he did it made you really want to play for him.
I couldn’t recommend him highly enough.
I don’t believe we must have an English boss but he needs to understand the English game.
Arsene was the best manager in my career and, though brought his own style, he picked up a lot of our qualities, too.
While ex-England boss Fabio Capello got a lot of stick, I found him unbelievable.
He gave me my debut when I was only 18, just after the 2010 World Cup and gave me the confidence to play in that environment.
It’s well known his English wasn’t the best so we didn’t have long conversations but he put me in the team and backed me at a young age and I’ll be forever grateful for that.
I know he wasn’t the most popular of managers with the country and some of the squad, but I wasn’t aware of that at first because I was just so nervous and wanted to get on with things and to do my best.
But there were rules about not leaving the table until everyone’s finished, no butter, things like that, which some of the older players didn’t like.
A manager doesn’t have to be liked to be a success but they have to be respected.
Once you’ve got that respect then you’re OK. We’re living in a naive world if we think everyone is going to like the coach.
Even at my Under-18 coaching level at Arsenal, I feel it when I’m picking the team. You want your players to fight for you but they’re not going to be happy if you leave them out of the side.
I’m not surprised Gareth is considering his future but he’s earned the right to have a think about it and decide what he wants to do. He’s a very honest guy which is one thing the country loves about him. When he does his interviews you can tell he’s authentic, which is one of his strong points.
He’s an intelligent man who will analyse everything and work out what to do for the best — for the country, for the team and for him.
If he carries on, he knows the next two years will be really important and hopefully we can win the Euros — but I’d also understand if he steps away.
He has put the team in an incredible place. He’s almost guaranteed we will be competitive for the next ten years.
People say it’s easy to be an England manager with the talent we have but he’s been diligent with the way he’s brought through new players and, of course, this squad is still so young.
At some point we need to turn that into wins but it’s a great place to be.
Like the rest of the country, I’m still frustrated we lost to France in the quarters. It was a massive opportunity missed.
The build-up and the way we played was good. But we didn’t have that vital edge.
You can study the stats and see that we played better than them, we had more possession and more shots — but we lost.
It’s about those clinical moments in both boxes.
France will be worthy world champions if they lift the trophy but it will hurt England fans even more knowing they were there for the taking and it really could have been us.
