Managers News Archives

Looking through the Soccerlens postbag this week we found a letter from a man much in the news at the moment. He has written for our help as he feels he is simply misunderstood:

Dear Soccerlens,

I have been reading your website for some time in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the game of football. I must say I find the writing of Graham Fisher to be particularly enlightening.

I need your help with a very difficult problem. I have made a sound decision based on my extensive knowledge of the game but it appears that most other people think I am wrong. I am disappointed to discover that in England people are allowed to disagree with me. In the past I would have had them….never mind, they’ve proved nothing!

People say my knowledge of football is lacking but I can assure you that I have followed Manchester for many years. I was surprised when I saw us play for the first time and we were wearing blue shirts and not the famous red ones, and I also found that we no longer played at Old Stratford, which was disappointing.

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Being the Los Angeles Galaxy manager isn’t easy, or rather, it’s much harder than Ruud Gullit had anticipated. The former Chelsea coach and 1987 European Football of the Year is getting a closer grip on reality day after day, and isn’t hiding his malcontent (event though the team is currently ranked 2nd in the Western Conference, behind FC Dallas).

“I’m sure that when people think of LA Galaxy, the picture that comes to mind is not of our staff making phone calls to friends on Friday to see if they can play in a reserve game on Sunday, but, strange as it may seem, this is the reality” declared the Dutch manager in an interview to English newspaper Sunday Times. “I can’t play sexy football with this team at the moment because we are not ready for this”.
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On Wednesday, 9 April, Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson reached his fifth Champions League semifinal after his club progressed at the expense of AS Roma.

Only Carlo Ancelotti has reached so many semifinals as head coach in this competition. What’s interesting to note here is both Jose Mourinho and Rafael Benitez have made it to 3 semi-finals each, and at their (relatively) young age it’s quite likely that they will get to a few more semi-finals, assuming that they go in the upward trajectory that their career paths have suggested till now.

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Don’t call me Hugo any more. I’m English, don’t you know? So you have to change my name. At school, P.E. teachers insisted on branding me “Steckel”, although I suppose I should just be grateful I escaped that awful nom de plume that is the quintessentially British “Macca”.

It’s 10:30pm, and a day both frustrating and unproductive has truckled obeisantly past. I’ve seen the interview with “La Radio” yabbering on about “Berba/The Assassin” and “Keano”. “Curbs” is frustrated – who wouldn’t be? “Stevie G” and “El niño” just won’t stop scoring, and “the Pope” feels a little more secure on his Anfield throne. They once had a cocaine-snorting “God” in Liverpool, you know? They say anything’s possible up north.

As you will have made out from my opening paragraph, this post is going to be about NICKNAMES, and I must extend a note of thanks to my father, who was responsible for informing me about Fitz Hall’s ingenious moniker “One size”, and to Hall himself for inspiring this article. A shout out also to former Everton player Neil “Dissa” Pointin and QPR’s on-loan Chelsea midfielder Michael “Haunted” Mancienne.

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England boss Fabio Capello has warned his players that those who make themselves unavailable for games without a genuine reason will be putting their international careers at risk.

This message has been sent prior to the forthcoming friendlies against the United States at Wembley on 28 May and the visit to Trinidad and Tobago on 1 June.

Capello said: “If someone doesn’t want to come and play for England, it means they don’t love the shirt enough and obviously they must prefer to go on holiday.”

Capello added: “By the time of the two games, some of the players will have been on holiday for a week already. Do I want to see commitment to England? If a player doesn’t love to play for England, then perhaps he should stay at home. Players must love the England shirt and wearing the England shirt. That is all there is to it.”

I don’t know about any other English fans out there but at first this sort of talk is absolute music to my ears. OK, the two performances we have seen from England since Don Fabio took over may not have been obviously full of passion and ‘love of the shirt’ but this is a message that I was so pleased to have heard.

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I received a letter this morning from former England manager Steve McClaren. (If you believe that, you’ll believe anything!) Anyway, I thought I would share it with you because it contains some wonderful insights into some of the decisions he made over his England career.

Dear Graham,

Firstly, let me say that I think you are probably the best football writer in the world. I admire your work and think you should be paid a lot more than you are. Have a word with those Soccer News and Soccerlens people and see if they could pay you something like £500 per article. You are certainly worth it.

I wanted to contact you because you have made some unfair criticisms about me in the past. You are not the only football writer who has done so but I thought I’d start at the very top.

I want to take this opportunity to put the record straight.

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As we approach the end of the season and that awful time called ‘the cricket season’ in England, I thought I would take a look at what constitutes a successful year.

The Summer is a truly dreadful period when us footy fans be come morose and irritable. We suffer from SAD, Seasonal Adjustment Disorder, it’s just that we get in in the Summer.

Apparently there is some minor International European tournament on this year, but it isn’t one of sufficient quality for England to want to take part. I might give it a look, but I think it will only have minor teams in it like Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Portugal. I think England should have sent a team, I reckon we could have won it and built up our confidence ahead of more serious challenges.

Anyway, I digress. What is success?

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One of the many privileges of being a football writer is that occasionally you can be totally self indulgent and write something just to get it off your chest. Today I am going to abuse my position and do just that.

Hello everyone, my name is Graham and I’m a Watford supporter.

I’m thinking of setting up a support group for people just like me. WSA. Watford Supporters Anonymous. I might actually call it Hornets oblivious of Football. HOOF. That’s more appropriate.

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It always amuses me how football managers can have selective eye sight when decisions either go for or against their respective teams during big games.

There is no doubting that Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger is one of the world’s best coaches and has done wonders since being unveiled by the north Londoners on October 1 1996. However he really needs to sort out the problem which seems to affect his eyesight during the course of a football game!

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All English football fans know all about Crystal Palace manager Neil Warnock. He is a manager who you either absolutely love or absolutely hate. For those fans not in England you might not know too much about him.

He is a loud, opinionated and vaguely unpleasant man during games and is constantly in trouble with the FA for comments made, usually involving referees, before, during and after games. Off the field, Warnock seems like a very pleasant family man who is just very passionate about the game of football. He also happens to be a damn good manager.

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There has been an awful lot written this season about the ‘respect agenda’, the malicious tackles creeping into the game and the hounding of referees. Most of what has been written has been along the lines of suggesting that the players at the very top of the game have a duty to act as role models to lesser and younger players around the country.

There have been articles about the lack of discipline shown by these ‘overpaid, playboy prima donnas’ in the Premier League and their terrible lifestyles and poor example setting on the pitch.

I would like to write something that tries to put some of these matters into perspective and stop some of the hypocritical, ‘holier than thou’ reporting we have seen every week throughout the season. (Yes, I agree, some of that has been written by yours truly. I have now seen the light!)

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OK, before I start I need to make a couple of things clear. I’m not a Manchester United fan, nor do I support Arsenal or Chelsea or Liverpool. The fact is that I still curse my mum and dad on a daily basis for living in Watford. Why couldn’t they have moved to Manchester or Liverpool or London?

Anyway, the point I’m making is that I have no axe to grind. I don’t have strong feelings either way about any of the top four clubs. I admire their football and hate their arrogance. In fact, I do everything that most football fans do.

It is on this basis that I want to find out from Arsenal fans why a small but significant and increasing number of you seem to be turning against Arsene Wenger.

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What does being a manager mean? For teams in the Blue Square Premier and the lower reaches of League Two it means a much different thing to being the manager of a top Premiership side.

For those down there in the depths being a manager might mean sweeping out the dressing rooms, ringing players up to make sure they’re available and painting the lines on the pitch. All of that of course is as well as the main job of trying to mould eleven players into a fearsome and formidable unit.

I don’t suppose Messrs Ferguson, Grant, Wenger and Benitez sweep the dressing rooms too often. They can concentrate almost entirely on the job of moulding the team. There are top people employed to do all the periphery jobs that fall to lower league managers.

It is entirely possible that in the lower leagues there are coaches and managers who would be every bit as successful as the top four if they worked in similar circumstances. The difficulty in this age of instant success being demanded is in getting the opportunity to prove that you have the skills before you’re on the dole.

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Benfica are so serious about prising Carlos Queiroz away from Old Trafford to become their next permanent coach that they are reportedly willing to make him their highest paid boss with the most control of the club ever.

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In the midst of all that is serious in football; in between arguing who your team should sign and who is the biggest threat to England’s qualification for the World Cup, we should all take a little time and enjoy ourselves. For this purpose I came up with a little game to take your mind to a place with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

The goal of the game is quite easy: identify the managers or, if you cannot, pick one to manage your hypothetical team. In this batch of six there are four average managers, one idiot and one genius. My goal is to deceive you and make you pick the either idiot or an average guy if you cannot identify them so I will use every tool possible except lies. Everything here is true but a lot of information is withheld:

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“See I was supposed to be a footballer
but they kept pickin’ the other kid
who was a foot taller
I got lazy and less enthusiastic
I stopped trainin’ and turning up to matches
started sabotaging the manager’s tactics
but when I did play I used to score hat-tricks
then I gave up
now I’m in the music biz
and I wont ever let my laziness ruin this” (Kano – 9 to 5)

“I appreciate football because without football I wouldn’t have anything else” (Ince, interview with The Independent, 1998)

“I love tackling, love it. It’s better than sex”
(Ince in an interview from England’s World Cup training camp in France 1998)

In my article on Tony Mowbray, I noted that certain images of the West Brom manager during his ‘Boro days have crystallized in time to encapsulate a certain experience of the triumph of a working class club when sailing through rocky economic seas. Paul Ince is another such figure: more than a player, Ince is an icon. And it is indeed this iconic status that can be found both at the source of Ince’s considerable success and the root of the series of outlandish faux-pas that have plagued his career.

Ince’s story, like that of a number of footballers, presents an alternating amalgam of free-fall and tragic resistance in the face of significant social and economical adversity; his plot is that of the Hollywood protagonist teeter-tottering between good and evil and ending up going in for both.
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I’m sure many of you would never have given Millwall manager Kenny Jackett a second thought. His team currently sit in 18th place in English League One. He has never held down a really high profile job and to my knowledge has never been linked with any top jobs when they have become vacant or been mentioned when discussing the fine young managers and coaches in England.

I know Kenny Jackett because is a bit of a legend at my beloved Watford. He was part of the team in the glory days for Watford under Graham Taylor back in the eighties. I’ve always followed his career, but a closer look at what he has achieved reveals a remarkable record.

Prior to taking on the Millwall managers position Jackett had been working as a coach under Sven Goran Eriksson at Manchester City. Somebody mentioned to me the other day that I should investigate the possibility that City’s slump in form had coincided with him leaving the club. I was doubtful, but the facts and figures are amazing.

Jackett left Manchester City to take up his new post on November 6th last year. Prior to his departure City had won eleven of fifteen games played. Since his departure they have won just five of twenty-one.

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Tuesday night at the Camp Nou. FC Barcelona have just beaten Celtic and 75,000 fans donning Barca colours erupt with ecstasy. And why shouldn’t they? After all, the premier institution of Barcelona, the symbol and representation of all that is Catalan (and more importantly all that is anti-Madrid) is now in the last 8 of the UEFA Champions League.

Yet there was one man who seemed distant from the celebrations. The customary smile, a clench of the fists, a few seconds of applause, the hurried handshakes and then the swiftly and quietly given post-match press conference and that was all. End of game, end of story. His controlled self-expression doesn’t imply that he doesn’t care - in fact, he cares deeply and perhaps more than anyone else - but it is simply that he remains outwardly passive.

It is Frank Rijkaard’s nature not to demonstrate any sign of excitement either in times of merriment or in periods of doldrums. Yet no one can deny that the 45 year old Dutchman with the quiet demeanor of a priest about to say his Sunday prayers has been at the very heart of the rehabilitation that Barca have undergone since 2003. It has been Rijkaard who has breathed in a new life into the sapless Barcelona life-tree that was once even threatening to die.

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Back with the fourth installment of his series on exciting young English managers in the Football League, Hugo Steckelmacher looks at Scunthorpe United’s Nigel Adkins, a man hard to pigeon-hole. Come back next week for Paul Ince!

Who needs Mourinho, we’ve got our physio – Scunthorpe fans’ regular chant, home and away.

Nigel Adkins (born 11th March 1965, age 42) is different from other football managers. For one, he was a goalkeeper, and precious few ‘keepers make it into management at the top level. What’s more, his playing career was nothing to write home about, especially compared to his young English managerial colleagues, such as Tony Mowbray and Paul Ince. And finally, he has worked for several years with a Sunday league team, has managed in Ireland, and is a qualified physiotherapist. Confused? Welcome to the hybrid world that is home to Scunthorpe United’s highly-rated manager Nigel Adkins.

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This is my first post in a while so I thought I would talk about the less than serious points of the beautiful game. I have one very simple question to answer in this article; what would a footballer do if football didn’t exist?

To put it kindly, footballers would have bugger-all in terms of usage to the modern world if they weren’t professional athletes. So how stupid is the average footballer? Well this article is going to show you just how daft they sometimes can be if we never had football, and the footballers are going to explain why themselves in some rather funny sound-bites.

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Former Liverpool boss Gerard Houllier says English footballers are pushed into top management jobs too quickly. He has told the BBC Inside Sport programme that he believes Bryan Robson, Stuart Pearce and Gareth Southgate all took on senior positions far too soon.

“In France, you cannot become a manager when you step out of your career as a player,” he said.

“Would a manager of a big company put somebody without experience into a key position in his company? No, he would not, but they do in football.”

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The monotony was finally ended on Sunday as Tottenham became the first club outside the top four to win a trophy in England since Middlesbrough in 2004. It was a deserved victory by Ramos’ men as they come from back from a goal down to beat Chelsea. But as one manager is receiving praises for winning a trophy just four months into his tenure in England, another is being victimized for not having won it.

As unlikely as it seems, Chelsea boss, Avram Grant, is being heavily criticized for one reason or another. The Sun and others like it joyfully explain how Grant did a horrible job in preparing for the cup final and how this would never have happened under the Special One. The worst part: the shameless propaganda has gotten to Chelsea fans, most of which by now are dissatisfied with the job that Grant is doing at their club.

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In Hugo Steckelmacher’s third of his profiles on great English managing prospects in the Football League, he looks at the playing and managerial career of ex-Newcastle and Portsmouth faithful Mark Stimson, now manager of Gillingham F.C.

Although in many ways unspectacular, much can be learnt about the character of Mark Stimson from his much-travelled playing career. Hailing from Plaistow, East London (strangely a place that holds a fair few memories for this writer), Stimson linked up with Tottenham as a trainee, and signed professional terms at White Hart Lane at the age of seventeen.

However, Stimson’s time at Spurs thereafter was short-lived, and he made just two appearances for the Lilywhites. When leaving White Hart Lane, Stimson was faced with a situation with which the vast majority of Premiership trainees are confronted – how to rebuild one’s career after rejection at the top level?

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Image courtesy of the FAI.

Giovanni Trapattoni, who will be 69 years of age in March, was named on 13 February 2008 as the new manager of the Republic of Ireland National Team by the FAI selection committee in a press conference in Dublin. Mr. Trapattoni signed a two year deal, and will begin his term on 01 May 2008 after he completes his contractual obligations with Red Bull Salzburg. His first game in charge will be the home friendly against Serbia on 24 May.

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In Hugo Steckelmacher’s second of his profiles on great English managing prospects in the Football League, he looks at the playing and managerial career of Middlesbrough great Tony Mowbray.

When I sat down to think about how to write about Tony Mowbray, I realized that I couldn’t have picked a better week for the conception of such an article. During the next seven days, the past, the present and the possible future of Middlesbrough FC will mingle in a type of round robin. On Tuesday, former ‘Boro incumbent Bryan Robson’s Sheffield United travel to Mowbray’s high-flying West Bromwich Albion, and this fixture is followed by Saturday’s fixture between Middlesbrough and Sheffield United at the Riverside stadium.

“If you were on a rocket ship flying to the moon, the man you would want sitting next to you would be Tony Mowbray.” – Bruce Rioch

They say that a team reflects the playing and thinking style of its manager. I’m not too sure of the reliability of such claims, but if this is the case – Roy Keane’s battling Sunderland, Johan Cryuff’s spectacular Barça could be cases in points – Tony Mowbray (né Anthony Mark Mowbray, 22/11/1963 – age 44) is the exception that proves the rule. Then again, Mowbray is not one to conform to stereotypes: this is an Englishman who bucked the trend by taking a first managerial appointment over the border in Scotland, when the flow of managers in recent times has been absolutely in the opposite direction.

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In the first of his series on young English managers in the Football League, Hugo Steckelmacher seeks to demonstrate that Dave Penney is indeed worth top dollar.

“One of my co-workers said that cricket lovers were naturally anally retentive. I told him to shut up and to never use my tea mug for coffee again.” (Dave Penney)

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In numerous other articles published on this site, I have sought to debunk the myth that English football is not producing enough young talent.

Previously, I have primarily focused on playing talent – with the notable exception of my study on Chris Coleman (who is Welsh and not English, anyway) – for which reason I have decided to lend my pen to the cause of young English gaffers, a foundation I feel is particularly relevant in order to demonstrate the value of the English manager in face of the foreign influx, including the decision to appoint Fabio Capello national team manager (a decision I have no desire to debate here, and one on which those who are regulars at Soccerlens will know my opinion, and those who aren’t – visit Soccerlens more frequently!).

Over the coming weeks, I shall be profiling the men I believe to be the 5 most exciting up-and-coming English managers in the land.

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Fulham managed to win their first game in three months yesterday when they beat Aston Villa 2-1 at Craven Cottage. This was the team’s first victory under Roy Hodgson who joined them on 30th December last year.

Roy Hodgson is one of the most experienced coaches in World football, but can he keep Fulham in the premier league, or has he taken on an impossible job?

The sixty year old manager had an underwhelming playing career with Crystal Palace, Tonbridge, Gravesend and Northfleet and Maidstone United. There was nothing in his career as a player that suggested he would go on to manage at a high level, although he did fullfil the role of player/coach at Maidstone.

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Written by Nigel Winterburn for 4sportsake.com - original article here.

The new England set-up is there for all to see now, and I for one am very pleased that Fabio Capello has brought in Stuart Pearce as his coach.

I go way back with Stuart, having competed against him many times as rival left backs, and also having played in the same West Ham squad as him during the latter stages of our respective careers too. And because I know him well, I know for a fact that Stuart Pearce is a natural born winner.

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Congratulations to Matthew Upson and David Bentley on their deserved call-ups to Fabio Capello’s England squad. It cannot have been easy to rebuild their confidence after having their dreams of making it at Arsenal crushed by a perceived anti-English bias from the manager.

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