Bournemouth is a club that will always be in Eddie Howe's heart. However, the Newcastle United head coach will only have one thought in his mind when he faces his former side for the first time - and that is to win Saturday's game at St James' Park.
Howe's allegiances lie elsewhere now and, put simply, the 44-year-old is not the same manager he was on the South Coast. Few are better placed to comment on that than Charlie Daniels, the former Bournemouth defender, who had a particularly close bond with Howe and just so happens to be a lifelong fan of the Magpies.
"The way Eddie has galvanised the team and galvanised the city is very similar," Daniels told ChronicleLive. "But the way Eddie and his team have approached it and worked alongside JT, Purchy, Graeme Jones, Tinners and everyone there has been different.
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"I had the pleasure of going up there before the Arsenal game last season and went to the training ground and watched them work, which was really good. They do stuff that's similar to what he did at Bournemouth, but he's needed to adapt and change the way he's had to project and how he's trying to come across. The players that they have there have responded really well to it.
"It actually made me laugh because I've seen it and been through it, and some of the stuff they do is meant to get you a bit angry, especially if you're on the losing side. It just put a smile on my face taking me back to when that used to be me. It was great to watch them train and see the new things he's doing and how he's involving that team."
That evolution should, perhaps, not come as a huge surprise. During his time out of the game, Howe spent hours in his office at home watching every recorded training session back from Bournemouth's stint in the Premier League in an effort to see what he could have done better. Those drills, which were sketched out on dozens of notebooks, were also digitised and transferred onto his laptop to streamline his way of working.
When travel was permitted, at the height of the pandemic, Howe went to Spain to observe life at Atletico Madrid and Rayo Vallecano; watched Chelsea and the England national football team being put through their paces; and took in a training session and sat in on a couple of coaching meetings at rugby union side Saracens.
The aim was to come back a better manager and Howe's staff - Jason Tindall, Stephen Purches, Simon Weatherstone and Dan Hodges - had to be with him wherever he went. In fact, that was a non-negotiable.
Howe trusts his coaches implicitly because they know his way of working and will carry out his instructions exactly the way he wants them to when they break off and work in small groups with the players. That, in turn, has helped get Howe's message across quicker, build a culture and unify the group further at Newcastle.
One of the few outsiders who have previously been welcomed into this inner circle is Hugo Faria, who was an assistant coach at Bournemouth, and the Portuguese felt Howe and his staff only grew 'stronger' after the Cherries went down two years ago.
"They have been together for so long that they were working like a family," Faria told ChronicleLive. "It's based on trust, honesty and hard work.
"They make a very strong team together. The belief in the idea is there so everyone pushes in the same direction. Nowadays, to be a manager, you have too many things to deal with so if you have your good ones around you, it will make things easier."
You can see, then, why Howe found it so difficult to adjust to life without that daily contact with his staff following his departure from Bournemouth. To this day, Howe refers to that relegation as his 'first big failure' and it was 'very painful' given the Dorset native's connection to the club as both a player and manager.
It was a campaign disrupted by COVID and Bournemouth lost their spark as injuries to key players took their toll and confidence levels dropped. Hawk-Eye's inability to penalise relegation rivals Aston Villa against Sheffield United did not help, either, of course, after goalkeeper Orjan Nyland caught a free-kick and stepped back over the line with the ball in his hands yet a goal was not awarded.
However, regardless, Bournemouth's fate ultimately came down to the final day of the season. Howe's men had to beat Everton and the Cherries needed West Ham to defeat Aston Villa in the capital. Bournemouth did their bit, winning 3-1 at Goodison Park, but a 1-1 draw at the London Stadium ultimately sent Howe's side down by just a point.
The silence in the dressing room that day has understandably stuck with Steve Hard, who was Bournemouth's head of physiotherapy at the time.
"When the game finished, we literally just stayed seated in the dugout because we were keeping an eye on the West Ham and Villa game," Hard told ChronicleLive. "Then when it got confirmed it was 1-1, we knew when we were walking into the dressing room.
"When we got in, it was completely silent. Everyone was sitting there not saying anything for a while and then Eddie got up and spoke."
It proved Howe's final team talk at Bournemouth and, just a week later, the head coach left the club by mutual consent. It was a move that even came as a little bit of a surprise to confidant Jason Tindall, who was Howe's number two and went on to succeed his friend at the Vitality Stadium.
The pair had spoken in the week leading up to the bombshell, but Howe did not want to compromise Tindall by immediately informing him of his final decision once he had made it after speaking to his family. It was only on the eve of Bournemouth releasing a statement that Howe was able to tell Tindall.
There was to be no formal send-off. Yes, some players managed to catch up with Howe away from the club, but there are others who have not physically seen the 44-year-old since that afternoon at Goodison Park.
So did Howe's departure come as a shock even after Bournemouth went down? Well, Andrew Surman, who played alongside Howe before later spending seven seasons working with the head coach, 'could see the strain in his face' and how much that season had 'taken out of him'.
"I was actually in Cornwall at the time and it just came up on Sky Sports News," Surman told ChronicleLive. "You sensed perhaps that something was in the pipeline and something didn't quite feel right, but I found out and spoke to him almost straight after.
"I don't want to say it wasn't surprising; you sort of felt something might happen. Obviously, it was still really hard to swallow for the players that had been there a long time and had been on that journey with him as well. It was just tough for all parties, really."
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