This may be a long blog, but bear with me – and if you can’t do that, I’ve divided it into sections so you can pick and choose what you want to read.
Keane and Clough
Last week, I touched on the short-term thinking that seems to envelop professional football, and I felt that it was epitomised in the aftermath of several Premier League fixtures last weekend.
I find it incredibly sad that Roy Keane has departed the Stadium of Light after a brief run of poor form. Roy always struck me as one of the most confident and assured men, yet he reached the stage where he seemed to be even questioning his own ability to manage.
Keane took on the team when they were rock-bottom of The Championship and did an astonishing job in lifting them into first place and back to The Premier League.
He was new to management at that stage and I think such a feat should tell us that Roy has some talent for leading men.
He had a steady year at Sunderland last season and expectation on Wearside is always high, but he was blessed with a fabulous chairman in Niall Quinn and the two of them appeared to have a very good working relationship.
Quinn, like Steve Gibson down the road, allowed his manager to get on with the football side of things, and to see him leave saddens me as he will be an enormous loss to football.
He was the best midfield player that I have seen play in The Premier League and was nurtured under the very best in Brian Clough. I do, though, wish that Roy had worked with Cloughie when he was at his very, very best.
I hear so much rubbish talked about how players never saw Clough in the week, how he never took training, turned up ten minutes before the games and all the rest. This was in part true in the latter part of Brian's career, but I always split his career in management into two parts: Hartlepool to the two European Cup wins and the period after Taylor's departure.
During the former, Brian was a workaholic, as John McGovern – who played for four of the five sides that Brian managed – explained to me when I worked with him this summer on a Brazilian Soccer Schools course.
This idea was backed up by Simon Clough, Brian's eldest son and a friend of mine, and Brian had only two things in his life which were his family and football, and he was utterly devoted to both.
In the early days, Brian was never away from the training pitch. Taylor went off and found the talent and Clough did the rest and all the necessary when it arrived. In fact, Brian once described himself as the worst judge of a player in the world, so much so that he left all of that to Taylor.
As an aside, to see Brian and the work ethic that led to the unrivalled successes at Derby and Forest, watch the black-and-white ITV film narrated by Ian Woolridge from the late 60s as it’s one of the best football documentaries you will ever see.
Brian had a dog called Del Boy that he walked at the training pitch in the twilight years at Forest, and I believe Keane's own dog is called Triggs as a nod to Brian.
If I was Roy, I would have got his coaches out of the way for a bit, got out onto the pitch as often as possible and assert the supreme authority that he used as Manchester United's magnificent captain of the late 90s.
Money troubles
Football and finance continue to be a most talked-about factor at the moment, particularly at the top end of the game. Institutions like West Ham find themselves in difficulty at the moment, while Chelsea have taken a sensible step in saying enough is enough and that they must make the club self-sufficient.
These issues affect all levels of the game, but at my own little club, Garforth Town, we adopt a very prudent approach. Our wage bill in the Unibond League is only £700 a week. We cut our cloth according to that which we can afford, and will not go beyond this.
The club’s 40-odd years old and I’m determined this club will be here for another 40 years and beyond, and I certainly wouldn’t let anything get in the way of that. I’m also not prepared to allow any of my other businesses to support or subsidise the club. It has to be and should be self-sufficient and this should apply at every level of the sport.
We have some rivals in the Unibond League paying ludicrous weekly wage bills of up to £6,000 per week, and I had a conversation with a rival manager a number of weeks ago regarding what he thought was a poor start to our season.
At certain parts of the season, we were fielding nine teenagers and to me youth development is the only way to correctly grow a club. The same manager has recently signed a striker for the sum of £350 a week – I find such an amount astonishing at this club given their gates and given that it’s half our club's entire wage bill.
At present, his club are beneath us, we lie eleventh – I'm certain the chairman or club's backers will be looking for a rapid rise as it's not the first time the club has had to dig deep into the pockets to get away from the mire.
I told this manager that I thought his team would be doing a little bit better due to their outlay, and he replied with the immortal line, “I'll show ya me medals”.
I checked, and he had only ever won one and that was not in a top league. Such remarks embody the culture at all levels of the game and, until that archaic mentality changes in the coaching and managing structure, we will not move forward as quickly as we could and should.
The country is full to the brim of bright intelligent young coaches who are denied opportunity upon opportunity, not due to their intellect, knowledge or a capacity to communicate and to lead, but too often because they are not ‘connected’, because they 'did not play'.
Laughably, I saw an interview with the manager I mentioned, from a couple of years ago, bemoaning the fact that he had never got a top job as they only give them to those that have played at the highest level – but, unfortunately, you can't have it both ways, son!
In the Blue Square Premier, Histon – who are second with a couple of games in hand and who knocked Leeds United out of the FA Cup – still have a part-time squad, and I imagine the club has got wise and sensible people behind it.
Many other clubs in the Conference are full-time, with wage bills up to £30,000 a week and some with debts that run into the millions. This approach is unsustainable and ultimately it’s the supporters that will suffer. Businessmen come and go, chase a dream, things don’t work out as quickly as they imagine, then – bang – they want out and the cycle starts again.
I have as much admiration for Histon and their structure off-the-field, which is far more sustainable than many of those around them, as I do for their fantastic achievements on it presently. When I took on Garforth Town, the first two years at the club cost me £190,000 in subsidising it. Seeing that the team was going nowhere, I got rid of the manager, slashed the wage bill and took the team on myself, and I have managed the side for two full seasons and had two promotions in that time. Last year, the club also broke even for the first time in its recent history, due in part to the magnificent work done by our general manager, George Williams.
Our start to the season was poor, which was my fault and my responsibility. However, we’ve now won four in a row, all away from home, without conceding, are unbeaten in five, and I expect us to rise up through the league if we can maintain our current level of performance.
Many of the teams around us have players who have come straight from the Football Leagues and who command far larger salaries, but the way we’ve countered this is by hard-work and getting things right on the training pitch.
In terms of the youngsters, if they are not good enough this year, they will be next season, because they will work extremely hard. They have the correct mindset to want to improve and we will keep giving them games.
This week, we signed a young man of 18 years of age who has turned down professional full-time terms at York City, even though we were unable to match the £100-a-week he was offered as a full-time pro.
However, the fact that this was York's offer to a full-time professional footballer illustrates that in time everyone will feel the need to get real in terms of players and their salaries. York are a very well run club both on and off the pitch.
Our toddlers could teach some pros a thing or two in training
At Garforth, we train four times a week, which is almost unheard of at semi-professional level and at many professional clubs I’ve visited. Even in the Premier League, I have observed teams training no more than three times a week, much of this five-a-sides with a tactical session the day before the game.
The Brazilian Soccer Schools and SOCATOTS are my biggest and most important parts of my working life thus far. At Garforth, I do not have to devote too much time at the club as it is led by George Williams, assisted by a coaching team, reserve team managers and scouts. I am able to oversee the ongoing success at the club without running it full-time although, if we are to fulfil our eventual aim of getting the side into the upper reaches of English football, this will be required.
Whilst working at a professional football club a few years ago, I planned a two-hour training session that centred upon players striking a ball with their weaker foot from a ten-metre square to a partner 20 metres away in another square.
The object of the exercise, which was the first part of the session, was for the player to send the ball into the opposite square with the weaker foot and for the receiving player to control the ball with his weaker foot and for the ball to stay in the area marked out.
I was aghast at the fact that only did the receiving players fail to control the ball and keep it within the perimeter, but that in almost 50 percent of cases, the player sending the pass couldn’t hit the ball with his weaker foot with sufficient accuracy to find their partner. I was told at the time I was embarrassing the players and this was something you should do with the younger members of the squad.
However, I found this to be totally deplorable as such fundamentals of the game need to be addressed before you can move onto tactics, game-play and everything else. The session – with senior professionals I hasten to add – was to last two hours, and I was then going to move on to several areas of the weaker part of the foot, with the square eventually reduced to two metres. This was impossible as, even when allowing them to use the favourite part of their weaker foot in the ten-metre square, none of the pairs were able to complete the task.
I then went onto some physical training using the ball. The entire session had to be ceased after 40 minutes because the players were no longer able to continue due to tiredness.
If I’d really wanted to embarrass them I’d have taken them to the level that I thought they were at, which would have been SOCATOTS training, because every player who leaves at the age of five from our programme can kick and manipulate the ball with every part of both feet.
Coaches aren’t always to blame, however. Many players have fabulously low golf handicaps and lazy afternoons shopping with the missus, yet are only able to pass, shoot and control the ball with one foot – and that's not always done that well! I do think that football may go down the route of many other sports, which would see players take on as much responsibility for their own development as their managers and coaches.
They may even look to assemble a team around them, as boxers and athletes do, that includes technical advisors, psychologists, nutritionists, strength, conditioning and fitness coaches and so forth. This, I am certain, is the future. Most of them have a few quid spare in their back pockets to bring in such people if they really do want to progress.
Sir Clive can be a success in football
It’s good to see the reserve team coach from Chelsea, Brendan Rodgers, given his first crack at management.
He’s worked his way up through the ranks at football after leaving the playing side of the game at 20. He progressed through the academy ranks at Reading to become academy director, then went on to work with the players at Chelsea, where Jose Mourinho saw enough in Brendan to appoint him as reserve team manager.
Although he’ll be working on limited resources at Watford, I think he’ll do a very good job, as he has the intelligence and know-how to convert his skills into management. When Sir Clive Woodward and I arrived at Southampton, Brendan wrote us both a nice letter wishing us all the best, and I wish him the same in what will be a tough, but perhaps very rewarding, job at Watford.
Clive was speaking recently at the Soccerex world football business convention in Johannesburg about life after his tenure as performance director for the 2012 Olympics comes to a close, hinting that he may look to take up a role again in football at a lower level. I really hope that he stays true to his word and does this, particularly as many involved within football questioned his switch from rugby. A lot of people I have spoken to since found Sir Clive conceited to even attempt the switch, but he has the experience to succeed.
Clive, with chairman Rupert Lowe, announced me to the staff at Southampton a month before my arrival as the best football coach in the world, which was probably not the best way to lay the groundwork for good working relations with my future colleagues. However, Clive normally knows what he is doing and I would love to see him prove a few people wrong.
I only have to look at Peter Coe, father and coach of Seb, to see parallels with what Clive was hoping to achieve. Peter was, in my eyes, the greatest athletics coach this country has ever produced.
He was criticised in his time for being over pushy, too unconventional, but he, like Clive, was a winner. Peter had no time for the prevailing dogma in the events that he focused upon – the stale, dated coaching methods employed for the past 30 years. If no-one else would change it, Peter decided that he would.
Seb initially had little talent, yet Peter – using his logician’s mind – combined his experience as a former cyclist translating East German and Russian physiology and biomechanics books to set training schedules for Seb that were scoffed at and ridiculed as impossible by the athletics establishment.
Sadly, Peter passed away recently, and I often wonder how he would have approached football. Would he have survived as an outsider?
The fruits of his labours were world records at 800m, 1000m, 1500m and the mile for Seb, who also became the only man in history to retain the Olympic 1500m title in 1980 and 1984. Seb's 800m and 1000m records stood almost untouched for 20 years.
He and Seb did not just raise the bar – they put it completely out of site. Today, our middle distance runners, almost 30 years on, don’t even get within even two, three, or even four seconds of the times set by Coe.
Peter turned the sport in which he was concerned upside down and inside out. A friend of mine from The Independent newspaper, Alan Hubbard, once overheard him having a furious row with a British Athletics official. Afterwards, Alan said to him, “You don't scare easily”.
Peter had been taken prisoner by the Germans during the Second World War (and had escaped twice), and he replied: “I don't scare at all. The past 45 years have been a f****** bonus.”
Retired racehorses don’t make good jockeys
Cycling to athletics, individual events, rugby to football – team sports. Many of the fundamentals in team sports are the same. The time will come when we get a true outsider doing a 'Coe' and coming in completely from the cold and ripping the preparation and the tactical sides of the game apart.
In part, people like Arsene Wenger and Mourinho played in no more than what we would call non-league level in their respective countries, but it still seems that you have to have had some recognised playing career to get into management, and the higher the level the easier it is for you, which is not necessarily a good thing. As Arrigo Sacchi said: “If you want to be a jockey, being a retired racehorse is not necessarily an advantage.” I can think of no other industry as insular as football.
The football establishment seems keen to make sure that outsiders don’t get opportunities, and ex-professionals – many whom are not the brightest, and in fact most footballers aren’t that bright – are fast-tracked through daft, meaningless courses.
I believe, however, that management, leadership, discipline and coaching are far more about the intellectual side rather than the talent you have or did have with your feet. Watching games from an early age, you can often see far more than being in the thick of it. Having not played, you are not bound by the dogma of outdated and nonsensical training regimes, and to have not played at a high level is in fact a positive advantage, as you are able to be truly a free thinker.
To have not played at a high level is in fact a positive advantage as you are able to be truly a free thinker, to have your mind outside the box, and to have no bars and no limits. I played a season at semi-professional level, also gaining a first-class degree in sports science, and I then carried on my studies.
My footballing experiences brought me nothing but a desire and determination to effect change; my academic work informed me as to how I would set about that goal.
The establishment will likely fight to the death to see that outsiders don’t take their place at the trough. That's how it will be for a while anyway. That same majority are far older than me, but they’ll probably remember a song from a time before I was born, by Bob Dylan in 1964, called ‘The Times They Are a-Changing’. I actually think they are.
Brazilian Soccer Schools (www.icfds.com) is the world’s largest football coaching organisation, working with over one million children on a weekly basis in locations such as the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong.
SOCATOTS is the fastest growing pre-school programme for youngsters aged from six months to five years. The syllabus uses football as its medium, enhancing each child's motor, literacy and numeracy skills among others, with each graduate able to use all parts of both feet to manipulate the ball. The sister organisation to BSS has 700 centres worldwide, in locations such as Dubai, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong and Holland.