Post by QPR Report on Dec 23, 2008 8:07:37 GMT
The Guardian/Richard Williams
There are plenty of options but no rules when it comes to football management Tony Adams' style has not been successful in the past so perhaps it is time he looked for another
There are many ways to manage a football club effectively, and Tony Adams should try one. With two wins in 10 Premier League matches since he was promoted to succeed Harry Redknapp at Portsmouth, Adams responded to the weekend's defeat at Bolton by placing the blame on his players.
"We weren't up for the fight, we didn't turn up," he said at the Reebok Stadium, where his players were two goals down inside three minutes and ended up losing 2–1. "I had a go at them at half-time and lost my voice. I asked them at what point did they not understand when I was talking before the game about winning their one‑on‑one battles."
Adams made a habit of this sort of thing during his first experience of management with Wycombe Wanderers, where his year in charge included relegation to what used to be the fourth division. Since then he has spent time as a trainee coach with Feyenoord and Utrecht in Holland, but the attempt to broaden his horizons seems to have had little impact on his approach to the mental side of the game.
Maybe the years he spent in therapy, freeing himself from various addictions, encouraged him to place too high a value on honesty. Adams's own painfully acquired ability to face the truth does him credit, but there is a time and a place for everything, and honesty is probably not one of the most effective weapons at a manager's disposal.
Losing your voice berating a bunch of footballers staring defeat in the face may even be counter-productive, whether justified by the facts or not. But isn't that what Sir Alex Ferguson, the most successful manager in the history of English league football, does with his famous "hairdryer treatment"? In a sense, yes. But the objective truth is unlikely to be high on Ferguson's agenda at such moments. He is telling his players whatever he thinks will induce them to get him a result.
As we are seeing in the present turbulence, there are no absolute rules governing successful football management, making it hard for the directors of clubs to know which criteria to apply when seeking a new man to replace the one they just sacked. Analyse the available evidence and all you get is a set of conflicting signals.
Paul Ince started out in the approved fashion, completing his coaching badges while still a player with Swindon, managing Macclesfield and MK Dons in the lower leagues with distinction, then coming a cropper at Blackburn in the top flight.
Roy Keane went in close to the top with a big club, did well for a while and then imploded, a more condensed version of the ill-fated managerial trajectory of Bryan Robson, another former Manchester United captain who started with the advantage of a marvellous reputation as a player.
There is an argument that these men, and others with a similar story to tell, would have done better to serve apprenticeships as assistants to more experienced figures. That's what Everton's David Moyes did at Preston in Gary Peters' time, as did Hull's Phil Brown under Sam Allardyce at Bolton. But examine the fates of Sammy Lee and Brian Kidd, who followed the same path and failed.
Even then, the greatest of partnerships — Bertie Mee and Don Howe, or Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison — don't always produce a junior partner capable of maturing into a wholly satisfactory manager in his own right.
But would Glenn Hoddle still be applying his excellent football brain to the daily business of managing a club if, instead of jumping straight in as Swindon's player-manager 18 years ago, he had started with a mentor capable of smoothing out the kinks of his personality?
On this topic there is no monopoly on wisdom, nor is this solely an English (or British) disease. Managers who flourish in one environment can wither in another.
In Europe, too, managers are called coaches and that is what they do, making it easier to identify their strengths and weaknesses in the areas of tactics and motivation when transfers and other commercial business are not part of their remit.
It would help if the preparation of coaches were taken more seriously in England — as the French did getting on for 20 years ago, and look where it got them. If the proposed national football centre at Burton-on-Trent had no other purpose, that alone would be enough
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/dec/22/richard-williams-blogpost
There are plenty of options but no rules when it comes to football management Tony Adams' style has not been successful in the past so perhaps it is time he looked for another
There are many ways to manage a football club effectively, and Tony Adams should try one. With two wins in 10 Premier League matches since he was promoted to succeed Harry Redknapp at Portsmouth, Adams responded to the weekend's defeat at Bolton by placing the blame on his players.
"We weren't up for the fight, we didn't turn up," he said at the Reebok Stadium, where his players were two goals down inside three minutes and ended up losing 2–1. "I had a go at them at half-time and lost my voice. I asked them at what point did they not understand when I was talking before the game about winning their one‑on‑one battles."
Adams made a habit of this sort of thing during his first experience of management with Wycombe Wanderers, where his year in charge included relegation to what used to be the fourth division. Since then he has spent time as a trainee coach with Feyenoord and Utrecht in Holland, but the attempt to broaden his horizons seems to have had little impact on his approach to the mental side of the game.
Maybe the years he spent in therapy, freeing himself from various addictions, encouraged him to place too high a value on honesty. Adams's own painfully acquired ability to face the truth does him credit, but there is a time and a place for everything, and honesty is probably not one of the most effective weapons at a manager's disposal.
Losing your voice berating a bunch of footballers staring defeat in the face may even be counter-productive, whether justified by the facts or not. But isn't that what Sir Alex Ferguson, the most successful manager in the history of English league football, does with his famous "hairdryer treatment"? In a sense, yes. But the objective truth is unlikely to be high on Ferguson's agenda at such moments. He is telling his players whatever he thinks will induce them to get him a result.
As we are seeing in the present turbulence, there are no absolute rules governing successful football management, making it hard for the directors of clubs to know which criteria to apply when seeking a new man to replace the one they just sacked. Analyse the available evidence and all you get is a set of conflicting signals.
Paul Ince started out in the approved fashion, completing his coaching badges while still a player with Swindon, managing Macclesfield and MK Dons in the lower leagues with distinction, then coming a cropper at Blackburn in the top flight.
Roy Keane went in close to the top with a big club, did well for a while and then imploded, a more condensed version of the ill-fated managerial trajectory of Bryan Robson, another former Manchester United captain who started with the advantage of a marvellous reputation as a player.
There is an argument that these men, and others with a similar story to tell, would have done better to serve apprenticeships as assistants to more experienced figures. That's what Everton's David Moyes did at Preston in Gary Peters' time, as did Hull's Phil Brown under Sam Allardyce at Bolton. But examine the fates of Sammy Lee and Brian Kidd, who followed the same path and failed.
Even then, the greatest of partnerships — Bertie Mee and Don Howe, or Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison — don't always produce a junior partner capable of maturing into a wholly satisfactory manager in his own right.
But would Glenn Hoddle still be applying his excellent football brain to the daily business of managing a club if, instead of jumping straight in as Swindon's player-manager 18 years ago, he had started with a mentor capable of smoothing out the kinks of his personality?
On this topic there is no monopoly on wisdom, nor is this solely an English (or British) disease. Managers who flourish in one environment can wither in another.
In Europe, too, managers are called coaches and that is what they do, making it easier to identify their strengths and weaknesses in the areas of tactics and motivation when transfers and other commercial business are not part of their remit.
It would help if the preparation of coaches were taken more seriously in England — as the French did getting on for 20 years ago, and look where it got them. If the proposed national football centre at Burton-on-Trent had no other purpose, that alone would be enough
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/dec/22/richard-williams-blogpost