AFC Bournemouth
Vindication and approval were the furthest things from Adam Murry’s mind when he appointed Eddie Howe as permanent AFC Bournemouth manager ten years ago this weekend.
Preserving the club’s Football League status and staving off the threat of extinction were uppermost in his thoughts as the Cherries battled to stay afloat.
A popular figure during his playing days, Howe, who was 31 at the time, had next to no managerial experience, having cut his teeth as reserve team boss under Kevin Bond.
In his capacity as caretaker, he had just presided over back-to-back defeats, leaving the Cherries ten points adrift of safety in the basement division with 21 games remaining.
Immersed in debt, the club’s plight had not been helped by a 17-point deduction, imposed after it had been unable to satisfy the league’s insolvency policy for exiting administration at the start of 2008/09.
Against a backdrop of mounting uncertainty, Murry, who was in the throes of putting together a consortium to try to rescue the club, was not prepared for what greeted him the morning after news of Howe’s appointment had been made public.
In an interview with afcbTV to mark Howe’s 10th anniversary, Murry said: “I woke up to find someone had sprayed a message on my wall. It read ‘you STILL don’t know what you’re doing’.
“After Eddie had been appointed as caretaker a fortnight earlier, someone had come to my house and sprayed ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’.
“At the time and having put my own money into the club to try to save it, it was really upsetting. I was attacked so many times by the keyboard warriors.
“What scared me most was it affected me in other areas of my business. I didn’t like it and it was embarrassing to wake up and see that sprayed on your wall. But that’s football for you.”
Just weeks after Howe had plotted the Cherries’ Greatest Escape, Murry’s consortium completed their takeover before promotion to League One was secured the following season.
Murry will always been remembered as the man whose masterstroke sparked the Howe fairytale and his legacy will forever remain.
Murry, who is still in regular contact with Howe and his assistant Jason Tindall, said: “When Eddie was in charge on a caretaker basis, I spent time in the changing room and could see the lads were waiting for another person to come through the door.
"Even though they had immense respect for him, they weren’t playing for him at that point. But as soon as he was appointed permanently, that changed. The squad became united.
"I knew the lads would look up to him and have never seen such dedication to a manager. They related to him and he was wholeheartedly a part of the team. That’s why he has been so successful.
“On my drive home from the Rotherham game, I stopped to ring him while he was on the team coach. We had a conversation and I told him I believed he was the man for the job. You could see he had the qualities and organisational skills to become a top team leader.
“We both knew it could finish us to a certain degree if it had gone wrong, especially when it came to people trusting our decisions. We decided to go for it.
“Not everybody was happy with the decision but I felt it was the right thing to do at the time. If we had left it any longer, I think the impact wouldn’t have been the same.
“There were other people waiting in the wings. We had sacked Jimmy Quinn on New Year’s Eve and then appointed Eddie on a caretaker basis. There were a few people who wanted to be offered the job but I thought Eddie was ready for it.
“If we were going to take the club forward, we needed fresh and enthusiastic energy. I liked the idea of the challenge and think he did as well.
“The club was in financial turmoil but that definitely wasn’t the reason Eddie was put in charge. I really believed in him and believed he could achieve anything he wanted. I could see that in him.
“He’s a top-quality person who hasn’t changed or let anything go to his head. That speaks volumes of him as a human being. He has maintained that humility all the way through.
“He instilled a no retreat, no surrender mentality in the changing room and the squad became fully bonded. We were so far behind on points that something had to be done and quickly. We couldn’t afford to fall any further behind and the consequences of relegation were unthinkable.
“When he took over, maybe we weren’t the fittest or the best either tactically or physically. But the fighting spirit and siege mentality under Eddie helped get us back on track.
“It was a great feeling once we started climbing the table and the squad were so tightly knit. The supporters could see the transformation and the whole experience was a memorable and defining chapter in the club’s history.”
