Chris Sutton gave Eddie Howe a warm welcome as the former Bournemouth boss gets ready to replace Neil Lennon as the manager of Celtic. However the former Celtic striker, speaking on BT Sport last night outlined one or two areas of concern that he has that will however have been considered and should be mitigated by the creation of a new, modern football structure at Celtic that is fit for purpose.
“I’m no body language expert but I’m looking at McCoist right now and I can see fear, I can smell fear!” Sutton began, pointing out the Silence of the Bams that is needed after their first noisy wee spell in a decade.
“On a serious note, what surprised me is that Eddie Howe’s been out of a job since the end of last season and he wasn’t put in position before now. It’s absolutely baffling,” Sutton said. However to may well be the case that Howe wanted to pick things up with his own signings in place and perhaps when the support was back rather than have to try to pick up the pieces after a summer transfer spending spree went horribly wrong and half the team it seemed didn’t have much interest in playing for the jersey this season in empty stadiums.
Neil Lennon was on a hiding to nothing really and you can see why Howe, if he was going to take the Celtic Job, was going to do it ‘at the end of a storm’.
“In terms of an appointment, I think Eddie Howe would be a good appointment,” Sutton admitted. “He’s young, he’s hungry, he’s organised – I think we’ve seen with his temperament over the years, he can handle himself.
“Having said all that, Bournemouth is a totally different kettle of fish to Celtic and he will be under intense pressure.
“What’s slightly concerning for me is the fact that John Kennedy’s still going to be there and Gavin Strachan is going to be there. I just wonder whether it would have been better to have a clean sweep in that respect. Maybe Eddie Howe will bring his own team in but I think that keeping that old guard in, maybe it would have been better to have a fresh start.
“It looks like Richard Hughes is going to come in as a director of football. I think Richard Hughes had a few caps for Scotland, didn’t he? He was a former Bournemouth and Portsmouth player, Eddie Howe knows him well.
“I think that the job that Eddie Howe did at Bournemouth – dragging them up from the bottom tier and getting them up into the Premier League and the job he done in the Premier League was exceptional,” Sutton added.
“I think the brand of football will not be a problem. He likes to play front foot football and get after teams and Bournemouth were a breath of fresh air under Eddie Howe up until the last season.
“The one worry I have is I don’t think his recruitment has been excellent over the years at Bournemouth. Recruitment is a huge, huge issue for Celtic. We’ve seen Nicky Hammond, I suspect he would have been given a nudge out of the door.
“It looks like Christie, Edouard and Ajer will be away. Eddie Howe will be thinking, can I maybe persuade some of these guys to stay? I am not so sure that is going to happen with a year left on the contracts. The loans are going to go.
“This is one hell of an overhaul and I just wonder as part of the talks, Eddie Howe surely must have said to Dermot Desmond ‘what are you going to give me in terms of a war chest?’
“The pressure will be on the start of next season. Champions League qualifiers, go out of that and a poor start to the season and he will wonder what hit him.”
