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Betting odds are funny things, and they tend to have at least some insight as to what is going on in transfers and managerial searches. Names like Luis Enrique and Arsene Wenger sit at long odds (and aren’t going to happen) but occasionally significant movement takes place in the betting.
Currently, Eddie Howe has moved from 40/1 to, at the time of this writing, 6/1 behind only Marco Silva in likelihood on skybet.com. He is slightly ahead of Andre Villas-Boas and Mikel Arteta in the betting:
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Now, let’s be extremely clear, 6/1 odds compared to the 1/4 odds that Marco Silva is seeing are still very long. It’s going to be Marco Silva unless something very, very unexpected happens, but for the sake of intellectual exercise we can take a brief look at Howe.
Compared to AVB and Arteta, he’s a wonderful idea (actually, you are a wonderful idea compared to AVB— no, I don’t know who you are, it doesn’t matter.) Arteta has zero managerial experience whatsoever and AVB’s career trajectory is currently Spurs—Zenit—China—out of work.
Eddie Howe is only 40 but he’s been a senior manager for a decade, almost all of it at Bournemouth who he also played for. He’s got a good thing going there, though I don’t doubt he could be monetarily persuaded to jump ship. He’s historically preferred a 4-4-2, which we could probably run, and his teams have always been well organized and mostly defensive.
Whether he’d attack more at a bigger club is uncertain, because he’s never been at a club the size of Everton, but his Bournemouth side scored one more goal than Everton did this season so who am I to stick my nose up at his attacking prowess?
Basically, this would be an okay hire, not anything to really get excited about until we know more, but it would be the chance for a young guy who has had some success to show what he could do on a bigger stage. I don’t hate it, but part of that may be that Marco Silva is so close to being a done deal that I just wouldn’t have strong feelings either way.