“I think these are historic days for this football club and we want to treasure them and make the most of them and try to continue them for as long as possible.”

Those were Eddie Howe’s words after Cherries earned the point against Stoke which secured their Premier League status for another season.

Some of Howe’s Premier League counterparts can’t resist lauding themselves to the skies in moments of triumph. Which is fair enough; it is a gruelling, unforgiving and downright difficult job, after all.

But in one, measured, sentence the Cherries boss delivered perhaps the most important message anybody from the club will send out this year.

It sounds like Howe remains in this for the long haul. By extension, he must believe there is scope for Cherries to push the envelope further, still.

He will, of course, be desperately hoping his club can fend off the vultures sure to circle above Vitality Stadium this summer, in order to aid his cause.

Joshua King, Steve Cook and Adam Smith are all said to be attracting covetous glances from elsewhere.

Howe, clearly, will want to keep the lot of them. Lose one or two, though, and you would harbour no fears about either manager or club’s ability to roll with the blow.

What the club couldn’t countenance, right now, is having to do without Howe.

Cherries are at a pivotal point in their existence. Moving to a new stadium in the near future will be a game changer, regardless. But pitch up to a state-of-the-art home with their top-flight place intact and the club could be considered a bona fide, card-carrying Premier League member.

And there is one man working at Dean Court who you would hang your hat on making sure that happens.

Howe will not settle for treading water in the meantime, though. A self-confessed ‘bad-loser’ the 39-year-old probably spends more Saturday nights quietly seething than he would care to admit.

Unfortunately, that is the lot of any manager outside the exclusive band of teams vying for top honours – but this one has a proud record to protect.

He has unfailingly improved Cherries’ season-on-season league position, a feat he is poised to repeat this term.

Plainly, the higher the team climbs, the less room for manoeuvre exists to sustain that run – especially with the Premier League’s top seven clubs operating in spheres far removed from the division’s hoi polloi.

That Howe is contemplating what lies ahead for Cherries, though, that he is talking of wanting to see how younger players will “impact on the team in the coming years”, is especially significant.

It says plenty in favour of the people working above the manager, too, that he feels both sufficiently contented and empowered to discuss his future in such assured terms.

Sir Alex Ferguson always counselled former players moving into management to choose a chairman, not a club.

In the wrong hands, a manager winning one out of 11 Premier League matches – a run Howe endured earlier this year – could easily fall victim to some grossly misguided thinking; a chairman blustering about ‘next levels’ and recruiting a trendy gun for hire at the first hint of trouble

If that sounds far-fetched, remember this: the past three managers to win the Premier League title have all since been told to sling their hook by the clubs they led to glory.

The closeness of Howe's relationship with his bosses, then, probably explains why his feet haven't started to itch.

As Stoke's former Manchester City boss Mark Hughes told this paper last week, working for one of England’s giant clubs – or their European equivalents, for that matter – can turn out to be altogether different from “what it says on the tin”.

Indeed, Hughes had plenty to say about his Cherries equivalent. Arguably, most fascinating of all was the backhanded compliment the normally taciturn Welshman paid Howe.

Cherries, according to Hughes, employed a degree of cynicism to get the job done when they won at Stoke last November. “They know what it takes to win games,” he said.

It’s a pretty useful knack to have... and Howe has it.

"Okay," was how he self-effacingly rated his performance in the job, thus far. He doesn’t have any time for beating his own drum, though – either literally or figuratively.

Eddie Howe is occupied with masterminding this Cherries revolution

“Treasure and make the most of these days,” Howe said. He could have been talking about himself, couldn’t he?