Eddie Had A Dream: Our Special One - Paperback Available Now!

While we have a quiet period in the international break, I though it might be helpful to give you an exclusive excerpt to one of the Chapters in Eddie Had A Dream. One of the early chapters is '1. Our Special One' and it looks at what Eddie Howe has to make him successful and his relationship with the fans. Here's a glimpse of part of the chapter.

Eddie Howe is certainly a special one!

Extract from Eddie Had A Dream:
Chapter 1. Our Special One

What Eddie has achieved in such a short period of time is simply amazing. But what has helped him along the way? Has he made mistakes, and if so, has he a natural talent for not making the same mistakes again? I wanted to know how Eddie Howe has won games and to trace his early football career. To look through the history and difficulties and experiences Eddie had as a player to see how it shaped his outlook on football. While asking Eddie Howe to explain all he could about the game would be the easy way to do things, he has a much bigger job to run a Premier League club and I have no wish to be another person who deflects him from the great job he is doing. So much of the words and Eddie’s commentary have come from past newspaper reports and match programmes.

This book is more of a documentation of the Eddie Howe years than a face to face biography of his life. But I hope it throws up some discussion on why AFC Bournemouth has achieved what many football teams find so hard to do – how to win?

Advertisement

As a Bournemouth fan, I have lived through some of the highs and lows of the Cherries recent years. Harry Redknapp years as manager (1983-92) had been fantastic. To eclipse that has been incredible. There is a motto at the club which has now become enshrined in the Eddie Howe years that reads: ‘Together, anything is possible.’ It is a belief that reminds fans that there have been hard times, desperate times and even times when there seemed no hope of football having a future in Kings Park. Indeed, if Jeff Mostyn had decided to shake his head one morning in April 2008 and had not written another sizeable cheque, there would have been no football club to talk about – it came that close!

However, the worries of this perennial second and third tier professional English league football club were about to be not only saved, but transformed by one of their very own. It may seem corny to opposing fans when AFC Bournemouth fans cry - ‘Eddie, Eddie give us a wave!’ However, there is a genuine bond between the fans and the man who is undoubtedly the club’s favourite son.

Advertisement

Coastal Garden Buildings

I want to try and tell you what it is like to be an AFC Bournemouth fan. You have to understand that it is the only football league club in Dorset. It has been dwarfed by the somewhat more successful Southampton FC, some 30 odd miles up the road. Something was needed to ignite this sleepy seaside town when it came to football. But how do we measure success? Is it surviving, when the odds are stacked against a club? That would have been good enough for those supporters that queued up with buckets at the Winter Gardens to save their club in its darkest days. Yet, even then some good would come out of the situation. Friendships were made, people dug deep for a shared goal. Fans refused to give in. AFC Bournemouth was the first community run club and, having been saved several times, we wondered – was there more to football than this? When something is saved, someone has to make the most of what is left.

The £13.49 paperback version of the book is now available on Amazon/Kindle - click on this link

To order your £9.99 ebook copy of Eddie Had A Dream - click on this link