From Bob Paisley at Liverpool and Keith Burkinshaw at Spurs comes the new kid on the block Eddie Howe

From Bob Paisley at Liverpool, Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest and Keith Burkinshaw at Spurs comes the new kid on the block Eddie Howe.

Forty years ago the old English first division counted among its ranks some of the richest managerial talents the country would ever see. There was the inimitable Brian Clough, a straight backed, hard-hitting and forcefully forthright Nottingham Forest manager who, seemingly overnight, guided a completely unfashionable and mediocre Nottingham Forest side from the middle of the old Second Division to the dizzy, showbiz heights of First Division League Champions and then followed it up for good measure with two successive European Cups against Malmo of Sweden and then afro haired Kevin Keegan's Hamburg.

Then there was the equally as direct and pragmatic Keith Burkinshaw who at Spurs sprinkled gold-dust, icing sugar and a fair dollop of honey onto a Tottenham team wrapped up with the prettiest Argentinian bows in the shape of Osvaldo Ardiles and Ricardo Villa. With a flick of the finger, Spurs became a magical fantasy world of short passing, sweeping gloriously from back to front with football that was bewitching and beguiling, all ebbing and flowing, dainty delicacy that lit up the British game.

At Liverpool of course things had never really changed since the giddy days of Bill Shankly. After Shankly died, a vast majority of the Anfield Kop were convinced that the empire had fallen, the columns had come crashing down and nothing would replace it. Then there was Bob Paisley, an Englishman with a thick slice of homegrown reality and perspective. Paisley had been under no illusions about the size of the task because none thought Liverpool would ever be the same again.

But they were wrong. Paisley maintained the status quo at Liverpool, cautiously moulding, fashioning and designing a new set of fabrics with much the same material. In came the likes of Ray Kennedy, Terry Mcdermott, Graham Souness, Kenny Dalglish and a whole squadron of troops and red cadets fully equipped with the tools necessary to play the game Paisley preached. Liverpool were gloriously simple, beautifully pleasing to the eye, an aesthete's dream, pure, unblemished, quick and incisive on the ball, neatly precise in possession.

So it is that the mind turns to the current breed of English football managers desperate to leave their indelible impression on not only their club but  the international scene. There's Eddie Howe, surely one of the most engaging, amiable and deeply thoughtful managers in club football. Howe is manager of Bournemouth, a team who, only twenty years ago, were going nowhere in particular apart from the bargain basement category of football's lowest point.

But a couple of seasons later Howe, accompanied by a clear thinking and progressive coaching staff at Bournemouth, gave the whole of this seaside town a sharp injection of hope, pride and confidence from which they have never looked back on since. From the hollow depths of the lowest of divisions Bournemouth dragged themselves forcefully up by the boot laces and soared to the summit of the Premier League like a seagull serenely floating near the Boscombe promenade.

What makes Howe's emergence so astonishing is the manner in which he seems to be conducting himself. There is none of the well intentioned bluster and infectious humour of a Clough, none of the down- to earth honesty of a Bob Paisley, nor the directness of a Keith Burkinshaw. Eddie Howe, in both the voice and manner of West Ham's Sir Trevor Brooking, has certainly got what it takes. Howe is a well educated footballing man, a man of finely articulated vowels, a positive approach to the game and splendid principles, a man doing things his way.

In that black track suit with the familiar cherry crest for all to see, Howe chews his gum, analysing and absorbing, taking everything in, noting all of the most important details and checking everything thoroughly just in case the players may have forgotten his team talk. Howe has just produced Bournemouth's first England player Callum Wilson, a striker of quick turns and darting pace, a player with a natural touch and goal- scoring pedigree.

The chances are that because the likes of Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool and Mauricio Pochettino at Spurs are monopolising the big time headlines, Howe must feel as if the rest of the footballing community are simply taking him for granted. Why on earth is he bothering to manage a football club that plays its football by the English seaside when he could be leading out a team who play their football next to an upper class country estate?

 And yet it does seem to be working for this humble and self effacing man who just gets on with his job. He keeps learning his trade as if totally unaware of the fuss and well earned adulation around him. Howe is a manager of huge intelligence, wisdom that defies his age and an exceptionally well rounded attitude towards football management that sets him well and truly apart from the rest.

At the moment Bournemouth are once again baffling the sceptics, proving themselves most commendably in a footballing bear pit where only the fittest will survive. Howe is calm, polite, unassuming, yet to be seen dropping out of a nightclub at three in the morning, clean and fresh faced. Howe, to quote the most tired cliche, takes every game as it comes and there is none of the pompous bombast of a Mourinho although Jose would undoubtedly deny such a foul accusation.

Howe is sensible, goes to bed early, quite obviously sprightly and fit, a man full of the dynamism and super charged exuberance of a manager who wants to win things and preferably now rather than later. Eddie Howe represents the cutting edge of football management technology, always receptive to new ideas and fully implementing all of the new methods and strategies.

Meanwhile there is Sean Dyche at Burnley who last season performed miracles with a newly promoted Burnley team who still seemed stuck in a LS Lowry painting. Burnley were a team of matchstick men who clocked out of the factories and mills with black soot on their faces. They were hard working, oozing efficiency and no little skill.

Last season Burnley were like a team revitalised and refreshed. Suddenly, the team in claret and blue who played their game at Turfmoor wore the most impeccable pin striped suits and well ironed City trousers with perhaps a dapper top hat for good measure. Burnley played like a team transformed, reformed, swiftly moving the ball between themselves without feeling socially awkward. The critics though thought they were mere just flash in the pan artists rather than genuine ball playing artists.

There is still a school of thought that Burnley, although well balanced and firmly built, do have design faults and architectural flaws. Sean Dyche would probably insist that Burnley are no Barcelona or Real Madrid and that this season may become much more of a painstaking struggle than perhaps he thought it would be. Still, the season has much to offer and surprise us and Dyche remains both upbeat and optimistic which has to be a good thing.

So it is that the Premier League season, after its last international break before the end of the year, returns to the fun and games that invariably surface when the temperatures drop and the businesslike nature of its money crazy mentality dictates to all. We must hope that the likes of Eddie Howe will continue to promote football in its most favourable light, passing with their carnival of passes, rotating and interchanging rather like those Hungarian Magyars who once swept away England at Wembley in 1953. Football needs men like Eddie Howe because football appreciates managers who try to do the right things at the right time. Let's hear it for the man at Bournemouth football club.