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Eddie Howe is feeling the pressure. Michael Steele/NMC Pool/PA Wire
Slump

'Conversations in the dressing room should stay in the dressing room'

Four defeats in a row, 16 losses in 21 league games, games against United, City, Spurs and Leicester to come – Bournemouth are in big trouble.

DRESSING ROOM LOCK-INS, a run of defeats, a player telling tales the manager does not like and a run of games which suggests more trouble to come – it is little wonder Eddie Howe is feeling the heat.

But he says it doesn’t bother him. “Fearing the sack is not helpful and productive in any way,” Howe said this morning. “What am I going to do, sit at home and worry about my future? No, I am going to try to make the team play better and focus my energy on what we deliver on the training ground, how I speak to the players.”

You would like to be a fly on the wall when he speaks to Steve Cook, the Bournemouth defender who revealed there was a 30-minute lock-in after Newcastle beat the Cherries 4-1 on Wednesday. They have now lost 16 of their last 21 league games.

“The conversations in the dressing room should stay in the dressing room,” Howe said. “Talking is great but talking does not win football matches. We need to go out and show the right mentality and put the ability together with the mentality and let all our talking show that.

“When you don’t perform well, everything needs to be internal. I don’t think it is healthy to view ourselves or read ourselves in that way.”

Howe added: “I am a realist. I know football is about results. No matter how long you have been at a club, you need to win games, but I can only affect what I am doing now. The recent record is not good enough and I will take it on the chin myself — I believe we are better. One point in seven games is nowhere near what we need but the beautiful thing about that is that it is the past.”

The past has been kind to Bournemouth – given how they have beaten relegation before and the experience, Howe says, can help them.

“Relegation is hanging over us and to ignore it would be foolish,” he said. “Have we overused it? No, I don’t think so. That can have negative connotations. A lot of outsiders, a huge percentage of people, will say we are done, we are finished. We have been written off and we have managed to overcome that mindset and against the odds we have come through and achieved great things.”

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