Brendan Flood looks to Howe’s winning mentality

JOINT Operational Director Brendan Flood is looking for Eddie Howe’s winning mentality to turn around Burnley’s fortunes.

Howe comes to the club after a year which started with mass upheaval, continued with relegation from the Premier League, and then saw the side struggle to match expectations in the Championship under Brian Laws.

However, Flood sees a new vision under Howe, and an end to the negative spiral that can linger after the drop: “He’s got something different, new ideas, different relationships to what we’ve had before for player recruitment and bringing in different coaching ideas.

“I think we’ve got a really exciting prospect.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“If we support him, at all levels – from board to fans – I think he’ll deliver.

“We thought it was time for a shake-up.

“Ultimately when you get promotion to the Premier League you get that special glow of a promotion season, but when you go down you get dragged down with the negative emotions of relegation and that isn’t easy to shake off I don’t think.

“And to an extent that was still with us, and it made the job of Brian Laws’ difficult.

“A manager can change everything and let’s hope that happens.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“It’s a very instinctive, emotional game, football, and unless you’re in touch with that, life can change.

“Clubs rise and fall on the back of emotion. Our winning spirit was slightly depreciating and hopefully we’ve restored it with picking a winner.”

Asked what it was about Howe that convinced the board, Flood added: “He’s a different personality to Owen (Coyle). He clearly doesn’t get wooed easy.

“He turned down four clubs as you know, wasn’t in any respect in awe of Burnley Football Club when we made contact with him, but fully respectful of us. So I think he’s got a lot of humility, he’s very intelligent about the game and very independent minded.

“You could feel the determination.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“In any good winner they hate losing, and you could see that he’d hate it.

“That’s the key recipe for a manager, they’ve got to hate losing and have good man-management skills.

“You see how the lads celebrated the goal at Bournemouth, they all went over to him and that said it all for me.

“That’s what we’d seen as being the likely engagement in the group.

They were all for one and one for all, and I think he has, in everything he says, he has a total team mentality, which I think is going to be vital for us to get success this year.”