Eddie Howe has urged his players to be themselves and stick to what we do best ahead of tonight’s trip to Man City – insisting we “can’t change” our style if we want to become a top team.
In a classy pre-match message during yesterday’s press conference, the boss spoke positively about our approach, saying it’s not his style to sit deep and hope for a result.
However, he’s warned his players to ‘get the balance right’, realising that we’ll be punished if we’re ‘reckless or silly’ against Pep Guardiola’s treble-winners.
After years of negative football, it’s great to see Howe backing his players and believing in his philosophy. It’ll be a tough test and our approach may be risk-reward, but his comments give fans confidence and belief heading into tonight’s 8pm kick off.
Here’s what he had to say when speaking to the media yesterday:
“We want our players to go there with all the positive emotions that our season last year and our first game of this season should bring. We have to be ourselves. We can’t change.
“We want to become a top team consistently in the Premier League and to do that we have to have a clear identity and try to implement that on other teams.
“I think it’s about being ourselves, and being competitive in the game. So we won’t be reckless or silly or we’ll try not to be.
“But we will try to find a way to get the balance right to being in the game and making sure Man City are aware of us. I don’t think we can be a team that sits deep the whole game. That’s not how I want to build a team. So we will have to get the balance right.
“They went into a tough game [in the Super Cup] and were desperate to win, you could see their reactions afterwards. This is a team that will not be complacent. They will be ready for us so we expect a really good game.”
