Читать книгу Game Changers: Inside English Football: From the Boardroom to the Bootroom - Alan Curbishley, Alan Curbishley - Страница 7

Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger, Harry Redknapp, Chris Powell

When it comes to talking about football management in Britain there is probably only one place to start. If you’ve won two Champions League finals, a couple of European Cup Winners’ Cups, seventeen domestic league titles and fourteen domestic cup competitions, the chances are you know what you’ve been doing. Add to all of that a managerial career that lasted for almost forty years, twenty-seven of which were spent at Manchester United – one of the biggest clubs in the world – and you can see why Sir Alex Ferguson has rightly earned legendary status as one of the greatest managers of all time.

He took his first steps in management in 1974 with East Stirlingshire in Scotland, and then went on to have success with St Mirren, winning the Scottish First Division, before taking over at Aberdeen for eight years, during which time he won three Scottish Premier Division titles, four Scottish Cups, one League Cup and, perhaps most remarkably of all, the European Cup Winners’ Cup. During his spell at United he not only won the Champions League twice, he also guided his teams to an incredible thirteen Premier League titles in the space of twenty years. He built and rebuilt his United teams, producing an attacking brand of football that enabled the club to become consistent winners.

Throughout his time as a manager his fierce drive and determination to win stayed at the centre of what he was about, producing teams on either side of the border that were successful and entertaining. As a manager I faced Alex’s teams on several occasions, and the one thing you could always be sure of was that they were going to come after you and attack, whether it was at Old Trafford or your own ground. His teams played in a certain way and were incredibly successful as a result.

‘It was the way I was,’ he says. ‘At Aberdeen I always played with two wide players and at St Mirren I always played with two wide players, and I always had a player who’d play off the centre-forward. When I started as a player I had a wee bit of pace, but when I got towards the end of my career I used to drop in and it’s a problem for defenders. Brian McClair was the first one to do it for me at United, when I had Mark Hughes with him. Then it was Hughes and Cantona, then it was Andy Cole and Cantona. I’ve always done it.’

Something else he always did as a manager was to go for a win where others might have settled for a draw. I remember some years ago Alex telling me he didn’t do draws, and he’d often end up with five forwards on the pitch because he always wanted those three points.

‘Yes, that’s why I was prepared to take a risk in the last fifteen minutes of a game,’ he admits. ‘We just threw them all up front! Sometimes it was dictated by substitutions our opponents made. A lot of them would put a defender on, that gave me the licence to bring an extra forward on. Reducing their own attacking position meant I could risk it. I think risk is part of football. I never worried about it. I was always happy to have a gamble.’

Those gambles paid off on so many occasions for United, and they were something that ran right through his time at the club. Players came and players went, teams were built and then rebuilt, but the level of success never dropped as United consistently won trophies. Yet it wasn’t all about success for Alex during his early years at the club, and after three years with them he hit what was to be one of his worst periods in management.

‘I had a really bad period at United in 1989,’ he recalls. ‘In the whole of December I never won a game. We had a lot of injuries. But no matter who you are your job is to win games, and it was probably a lesson for me in how to handle that part of the game. At United you’re expected to win. That’s the expectation – and it was a great lesson for me. I used to pick teams with five players injured, and the games in December come one on top of the other during that Christmas and New Year period.

‘I remember we played Crystal Palace at home and lost 2–1, and we were 1–0 up. It was one of those horrible rainy days in Manchester, and when I got home I got a call to say we’d drawn Nottingham Forest away in the FA Cup, who at that time were arguably the best cup team in the country. When we got to that game we still had a lot of players injured. You’d find it impossible to think that the team won that day, but they did. We had players playing out of position, we had Ince out, Danny Wallace out, Neil Webb was out – and we won. We won 1–0 when Mark Robins scored. One of the best crossers I had at United, of all time, was not a winger. It was Mark Hughes. He was a fantastic crosser of a ball, with either foot. He got the ball on the wing and then bent it in with the outside of his foot. In actual fact, Stuart Pearce shoved Mark Robins on to the ball and he scored. We won, went through and won the cup that season.’

The FA Cup win in 1990 after a replay against Crystal Palace at Wembley was the first trophy Alex won as United manager, and it was followed the next season by victory in the European Cup Winners’ Cup. In 1993 United became the first winners of the newly formed Premier League. That year not only ushered in a golden period for United in terms of their title-winning ability as a club. It was also the dawn of a new era in English football, with television money playing a significantly more prominent role for those clubs who were part of the Premier League. It was one of the major changes to take place during the time he was in charge, although there have been others that he feels have had an impact on managers.

‘I came into management before Sky really took off. I started in 1974 when I was thirty-two years of age, so when those various changes happened and the explosion came I had the experience to handle all of that,’ he says. ‘You integrated into all the various changes, so in terms of dealing with players at that time I could see if there was a change in the player’s personality because of the success we were having. I could deal with that because I had a few years behind me. I always remember when I started at Aberdeen the vice-chairman, Chris Anderson, said to me, “We need to be at the top of the Scottish Premier Division when satellite television comes in.” I had absolutely no idea what he meant, but I didn’t want to say, “What do you mean?” It just registered in my head that I had to be successful. The way Sky have elevated the game and made all these players film stars, in terms of the way they are recognised now – that changed everything. But the one place you wanted to be was the Premier League.

‘The other thing which changed was ownership of clubs. You wonder why these owners – from America, from China, from the Middle East – why are they there? Is it because of television? I think it must be part of the reason. Can you imagine if Premier League teams were allowed to sell their own television rights? It’s never happened, but you say to yourself, “Well, it may change.” If Manchester United were to sell their television rights they’d be comfortably the biggest club in the world.

‘The other change of course was the Bosman rule. It was a massive change and it caught us all on the hop. Nobody expected it. All of a sudden you were panicking, and that created the explosion of agents – there’s no doubt about that. You had guys who were agents in the music industry who wanted to be football agents, and that was a seismic change for managers, having to deal with all that. So the manager had the training through the week, he’s got to pick the team on the Saturday, he’s got a board meeting to answer to directors and he’s got his television interviews. But on top of that you’ve got agents plugging away. They’re maybe phoning other clubs – “My player’s not happy” – we know it happens, not everyone, but some of them do, and they negotiate with you knowing they’ve got a full deck of cards under the table. “Well, we’ll think about it.” I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that – “We’ll think about your offer.”

‘If you were to write down the things a manager has to deal with, managers wouldn’t want to be managing! They have a massive task – the managers of today – massive, and the media is a big problem. They are under pressure. They need to be successful – just like managers – and get a piece in the papers, but they’re up against things like the internet and Sky television. They used to run my press conference on a Friday, or bits of it, through the whole day. That used to get me really annoyed.’

Alex has always had a great affinity with other managers, and was invariably there to wish a young manager luck when they got their first job. He knows just what a tough profession it is for everyone, whether they achieve the level of success he has had with a top club like Manchester United or simply toil away in the lower leagues. They are at either end of the managerial spectrum, and then there are all the other managers in between who do a great job week in and week out but perhaps never hit the headlines. Only a handful of managers can win trophies or get their side promoted each season, but so many others have done fantastically well throughout their careers, and it’s clear he not only values them as friends but also knows just what good work they’ve done.

‘When I was at Aberdeen the most regular calls I used to get about players in Scotland were from Lennie Lawrence, who was at Charlton, and John Rudge, who was at Port Vale. Rudgie must have been on the lowest budget in the history of the game! But he used to live with that. He would find a way of getting players on loan, and only if you’ve been in the job do you realise how difficult that is. Lennie Lawrence would be on the phone asking about players, and when I first came down to England, if you went to a reserve game these same guys were at the matches.

‘They were a great example of perseverance and staying in the game – surviving. They were good guys and I enjoyed working with them. David Pleat was another one who phoned a lot, and Mel Machin, who was at Norwich. When I came down to England I relied on one person for my information on other teams – John Lyall at West Ham. John Lyall and I met on holiday once and we got very friendly. When I came down here he was fantastic for me. He sent me all his reports on the players, the games, the teams. For the nine months until I got my feet under the table, got my scouting staff sorted out, he was very good to me.

‘There were quite a few managers I knew reasonably well, like Keith Burkinshaw, and another manager who needs recognition is Dario Gradi, who was at Crewe – and he’s still there. You look at these managers, the Lawrences and the Rudges, they’re still in the game. So they were there before I came and they were there after I’ve left! Realistically, you should have a reasonable amount of success with a club like Manchester United. With the resources, the history – you should have reasonable success. These guys have a place in the game. They’ve not won the FA Cup, or the Premier League or European cups, and they’ve had harder jobs than I’ve had. If you look at Lennie Lawrence and John Rudge, their success has been relative to their resources. As a manager it’s up to you to make the best of what you’ve got.’

You don’t stay in any job for as long as Alex did without being able to adapt and change as the game around you changes. I think his ability to do this, and at the same time retain the kind of football beliefs and attitude he always had, was a key factor for him. He embraced change and innovation but at the same time trusted his own ability and experience as a manager, maintaining a level of authority at United that saw him stamp his own personality on pretty much everything at the club. Sir Alex Ferguson was Manchester United, while the traditions and history of the club very quickly became a part of Sir Alex, something that stayed with him throughout his time at Old Trafford.

‘Accepting change is really important,’ he says. ‘You should look at change. The way I addressed it was if someone gave me a paper that convinced me it was going to make us 1 per cent better, I’ll do it, particularly the sports science. With video analysis I trusted my own eyes. I looked at it and used it for the players. We needed to in the sense that we’d break it down into what I said, and that’s all you need to give them, because it was about us. When the video analysts showed me things, I knew all that because I’d seen all these players before. I’d been in management a long time, I trusted what I knew about my players and my opponents.

‘My team talk when it came to opponents was, “Who’s their best player, who wanted the ball all the time? Pay attention to that one,” in terms of reducing the space or time he had on the ball. I never bothered about any of the rest of it. I talked about certain weaknesses. But it was all about our own team. I know more about my own team than I know about any other team. I think a lot of people rely on video analysis too much. It’s important, the details are important, and if it helps you 1 per cent, do it. But I never made it my bible.’

Many people wondered what life would be like for Alex after he decided to retire, but he’s as busy as ever with various engagements that fill up his diary months in advance. It strikes me that the work ethic that has always been such a feature of his life will never leave him. No matter what he does, that drive and enthusiasm come shining through. But there are some things that he misses about not being a manager, including the family feel he loved at the club.

‘The buzz of the big games,’ he admits. ‘And you miss people, like the staff you had there, and the players and training. You miss that part, and I had a great staff – not just my own playing staff, but the people, the groundsman, the girls in the laundry, the girls in the canteen. When I went to United the stewards were all in their sixties – they were all older guys. They were hand-me-downs, from grandfather to father to son, and they were never paid. The way they were repaid was that if we got to the final they were all invited to the game for the weekend. If we didn’t get to the final they used to have a big dinner at Old Trafford. Me and the staff all went. There’d be maybe 1,000 people there, and in a way they were the institution. They had a bigger tie to Manchester United than anyone, because they went back to their fathers and grandfathers. But then the law changed in terms of security and insurance, and they had to stop it. Today the stewards are all paid.

‘My best period at United was every time I won the league, the first one and the last one, the European cups – these are the moments we’re in it for. That’s what I miss today, the big finals. You can’t beat that, or the game where you win the league and you’re waiting to see the results of other teams. The tingle you get from that.’

For a large part of Alex’s time Arsène Wenger and the various teams he produced as Arsenal manager proved to be among United’s main rivals. Arsène took over at Arsenal twenty years ago, and his management has not only seen the north London club win Premier League titles and FA Cups, as well as consistently playing in the Champions League year after year. He has also been a major factor in building the club both on and off the field.

During his time he has produced great sides, including the ‘Invincibles’ of 2003–04, who went the whole season unbeaten as they won the Premier League title. He also oversaw the construction of a new training ground at the end of the 1990s and the club’s move from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium ten years ago. When Arsène arrived in England the Premier League landscape was very different. Apart from Ossie Ardiles and Ruud Gullit, we didn’t really have foreign managers in charge of our top clubs, and when he showed up at Highbury not too many people had heard of him.

‘There was a lot of scepticism about foreign managers when I arrived,’ he admits, ‘because you had no history of successful managers from abroad and there was a kind of belief that foreign managers couldn’t adapt here. There was a double scepticism about me because nobody knew who I was, and it was, “Arsène who?” I could see as well from the way the players looked at me that they were thinking, “What does this guy want?” One of the problems is that you always have to convince the players, but to start well you also need luck. And my luck was that I inherited a good team, players who were all basically over thirty, very experienced and very intelligent.

‘I had Seaman, Dixon, Adams and Winterburn – they were all over thirty and they were winners – and I had players like Platt, Merson, Ian Wright and Dennis Bergkamp. It was a team. They were all experienced. The other good thing was that they had not made money. When I arrived it coincided with the TV money that was coming into the league. Ian Wright was a star and he was earning £250,000 a year, and from the time I arrived until a year or two later it went from £250,000 to £1 million. So when you are over thirty and suddenly you go from £250,000 to £1 million or £1.2 million a year, if you can gain one more year you’re hungry. In fact, in British football we’ve gone from people who made their money after thirty to today, where they make their money before twenty! And that’s a massive problem.

‘So when I arrived I was able to convince the players that if they were serious, if they were dedicated, if they did my stretching and my preparation they would have a longer spell as a player. And I always gave them one more year, so the carrot was always there. They knew they had to fight for one more year. They were ready to die on the football pitch and that was my luck. They had the quality and they were hungry, and of course that helped. I believe when you come here from a foreign country you have to adapt to the local culture. You bring your own ideas, but you must not forget that you have to adapt to the culture.’

Part of the culture that confronted Arsène was something very different to what he had been used to. Back then it was still quite normal for players to enjoy themselves and go out for a drink after matches. They played hard and put the work in on the pitch, but then enjoyed themselves off it. It was still often a case of a team eating fish and chips on the coach when they were travelling back from an away game.

‘I changed that, but the fact that we were winning and the players were getting bigger contracts helped,’ he says. ‘When you multiply your wages by four as a football player, that’s not common, but they were intelligent and they were men. I did feel sometimes, “Are they going to be able to play on a Saturday?” I came from France where in training you worked hard, but on Saturday sometimes the players disappointed me. But I discovered here a generation that when the game started on a Saturday, they were competitors. I think you can play to play, you can play to compete – and you can play to win. These guys played to win. On Saturday they were ready absolutely 100 per cent to play to win.

‘I slowly changed the diet, the training, and put across my ideas. I adapted a little bit as well, I changed things slowly and I encouraged my players at the back to play more. I came here with the idea that they could not play football, and that’s when I discovered they were much better technically. It was a pleasant surprise because I encouraged them to play – and they liked it, they were capable of doing it. Bould, Adams, Winterburn – they were players, and I think we all met at the right time.

‘I came here because of David Dein – he believed in me. I was lucky enough to meet somebody who gave me the chance to come to England and I will be grateful forever for that. He came a few times to Monaco when I was manager and we had a good relationship. Before I went from Monaco to manage in Japan I met with him and Peter Hill-Wood, but in the end they decided to go for Bruce Rioch as Arsenal manager. I went to Japan for a year and in the second year they came to see me and said, “We want you to take Arsenal.” The most important thing in this job is to have good players. That’s the only thing that matters, basically. No one can make miracles. I was lucky that when I came here I had a top team.

‘What I like in England is the respect for tradition, but they are also crazy enough to innovate. It was surprising, but that’s what I think I admire about this club – they have respect for the traditional values of the game and they keep them alive. But they took a French guy, who at that moment nobody knew, and there was no history of successful foreign managers in England. When I arrived it was nearly impossible to get a chance if you were foreign. I would say that today it’s the reverse. It’s much more difficult for an English manager to get a job in the Premier League than for a foreign manager. It was down to David Dein believing in me and giving me that chance.’

I can remember reading that Arsène had signed Patrick Vieira and then Emmanuel Petit on five-year contracts, and at the time it was quite unusual for a British club to be signing players from France or any other country, really, because we were pretty insular when it came to our football. With a few exceptions managers tended only to sign British players, so it all seemed very different, and not a lot of people knew that much about either of them.

‘At that time, on the French market, I was alone,’ he says. ‘I could go and pick a good player and they were ready to come over to England with me. I knew Vieira from the French league and I had Petit as a player when he was at Monaco. I thought at the time that they both had the physical stature – as well as the ability – to play in the Premier League. I remember when we went out in the tunnel before matches you had Bould, Adams, Petit, Vieira, Bergkamp, Ian Wright. They were massive, the guys were absolutely massive, and you won half the game before you went out. So at that time I could take from the French market what I wanted, and there were good players in France. Today, if you go to the French league there are forty-three scouts and twenty-five are English – so it’s much different now.’

I was at Charlton as a manager for fifteen years, Alex and Arsène have even more years at one club, and I honestly can’t see that happening again. Managing at any level, particularly in the Premier League and the Championship, is much more short-term now for a manager. If Arsène was walking into Arsenal today he probably couldn’t afford to think beyond three or four years. That’s the reality for a manager these days, and it’s one of the big changes to have taken place during his time in England.

‘Firstly, what has changed is ownership,’ he says. ‘When I arrived it was all local. The owners had bought “their” football club. They were fans as kids, were successful in life and then bought the club they loved. It’s different today, it’s an investment – and people are scared to lose their investment. We as managers are under pressure to be successful. It’s a billionaires’ club today.

‘What you did at Charlton, and what I have done, is carry the values of the club through the generations, and you have that as a reference when a player comes in. I can say to the player, “This is the way we do things. We do this, we don’t do that, you have to behave like this and not like that,” because I’ve been here for a long time. If the manager changes every two years he’s in a weak position to say things like that. The manager is not the carrier of the values of the club any more. I think it’s very important that the values of the club are pushed through by the manager.

‘I believe a manager has an influence on three levels. The first is on the results and the style of play. The second is the individual influence you can have on a player’s career. Players can have a good career because the manager has put them in the right place, given them the right support, the right training. So you can influence people’s life or career in a positive way, and the third is the influence you have on the structure of the club. I was lucky because when I arrived we had no training ground; we had Highbury, which is the love of my life, but it only had a 38,000 capacity. We got the training ground and the new stadium, and I was part of that, so that gives you a kind of strength as well. We had to pay back the debt. We knew we had limited money and we had to at least be in the Champions League to have a chance to pay off the debt.

‘That was the most difficult period for me. For a while it was very bad, but today the club are financially safe. I personally believe the only way to be a manager is to spend the club’s money as if it were your own, because if you don’t do that you’re susceptible to too many mistakes. You make big decisions and I believe you have to act like it’s your own money. Like you’re the owner of the club and you can identify completely with the club, because if you don’t do that I think you cannot go far.’

To be at a club for as long as Arsène you of course have to cope with changes in the game and with things like the age difference that inevitably opens up when you’re a sixty-six-year-old manager dealing with young players, some of whom are teenagers. He has needed to keep himself fresh, enthusiastic and motivated, as well as retaining the authority that any manager needs. So how has he gone about it?

‘It’s linked to the fact that you want to win the next game and you want to do well,’ he insists. ‘I believe you cannot stand still, you have to move forward. Look at Alex Ferguson – he was not scared to innovate, he did not stand still. I believe that if you want to stay a long time in this job you have to adapt to evolution. Today I’m more a head of a team of assistants. I manage the players, but I manage my own team as well. You have a big medical team, you have a big video team, you have a big scouting team, you have inside fitness coaches, outside fitness coaches. You know, when I first started and coached I was alone with the team and I was thirty-three years old. I was alone with them – and that’s what I liked, that’s what I’ve always liked. I like to go out every day. I don’t like the office. I don’t like paperwork too much. I like football to be more outside than inside.

‘When it comes to the age gap with players, I try to speak about what matters to them. I cannot give them the last song of the latest rapper in the country, but what I can tell them is how they can be successful. That matters to them. With the difference in age I cannot act like I’m twenty, but what hasn’t changed is that the boys try to find a way to be successful, and if I can connect with them in that way I have a chance. I have people who are more in touch with them, who give me the problems they have and then I can intervene at the right moment. But also if you are a young boy sometimes an older guy can give you reassurance on what matters to you. I try to do that – I say I can help them because I’ve done it before, and so they trust me. I believe what is for sure is that if you stay for a long time at a club, people have to believe that you’re honest. That gets you through the generation gap, that’s what I think is most important, because players don’t expect you to be young when you’re sixty-six. But they expect that when you say something, it’s true. If they believe you are honest you have a chance.

‘With authority, I think that some people have that naturally, and secondly as managers, we have the ultimate power – to play them or not to play them! On top of that, the player knows that if he wants to extend his contract he has to go through me. He cannot go to the chairman. That is massive. The player knows there’s one boss and as long as you have that in a club, you have the strength.

‘The more people you have inside the football club the more opinions you have. You have to have a good team spirit in the club, but everyone should just do their job. Do your job, and no more. Do not do the job of your manager. And sometimes when people stay a long time at the club, they have that tendency to have an opinion on everything. Do your job, don’t intervene in what is not your responsibility and respect everybody else in his job. So we have to find a compromise between a family feeling and a respect that you don’t do what is not your responsibility.’

So in those twenty years at Arsenal what have been the biggest changes for him?

‘When I started the eye of the manager was the only data that was important, but today the manager is inundated with different types of information,’ he says. ‘He has to choose the four or five bits of information that are valid, that can help him to be successful. I believe the trend will be that the technical quality of the manager will go down and down, because he will be surrounded by so many analysts who tell him basically, “That’s the conclusion the computer came to, that’s the team you should play next Saturday.” So we might go from a real football person to more a kind of head of a technical team.

‘The power of the agent is another thing that has changed in the last twenty years. I’ve fought all my life for footballers to make money, but when you pay them before they produce it can kill the hunger. I’m scared that we now have players under seventeen, under eighteen, who make £1 million a year. When Ian Wright was earning that he’d scored goals, he’d put his body on the line. Now before they start they are millionaires – a young player who has not even played!

‘What I do think will happen is that you will have more and more players coming out of the lower leagues who have had to fight their way through. Compare that with a player who has been educated here, who has had Champions League for seventeen years, who has not known anything else. So it’s not a dream, it’s normal for him, but if you play for a team in the lower leagues and watch Real Madrid or Barcelona on Wednesday nights you think, “I’d love to play in games like that.” I’ve said to our scouts to do the lower leagues because the good players are there now. Don’t forget we have many foreign players in the Premier League, but good English players have to go down to develop.’

Arsène’s own hunger for the game and for management is very obvious when he talks about football. Like any manager he loves winning and absolutely hates to lose. The thought of retirement seemed a long way off when we talked, even though he knows it’s inevitable one day.

‘It’s been my life, and honestly, I’m quite scared of the day,’ he admits. ‘Because the longer I wait, the more difficult it will be and the more difficult it will be to lose the addiction. After Alex retired and we played them over there he sent a message to me to come up and have a drink with him. I asked, “Do you miss it?” He said, “Not at all.” I didn’t understand that. It’s an emptiness in your life, especially when you’ve lived your whole life waiting for the next game and trying to win it. Our pleasure comes from that – and our suicidal attitude as well!

‘As people, part of us loves to win and part of us hates to lose. The percentage to hate to lose in me is bigger. Managers hate to lose, and if you don’t hate to lose you don’t stay for long in this job. If a match goes really well I might go out with friends or family for dinner or a drink. If it doesn’t I’ll go straight home to watch another football game and see another manager suffer. If we lose it ruins my weekend, but I’ve learned over the years to deal with my disappointments and come back. What helps is when you come in, speak to your assistants, and then sometimes do a training session and start afresh. You could stay at home for three days without going out if you wanted to, but at some stage life must go on.

‘The next game gives you hope again.’

All managers will be able to empathise with Arsène when he talks about losing. The despair of defeat for a manager is far greater than the joy of winning a match. When you win it’s a relief and a time to briefly enjoy the victory that night, but even by the time you get in your car for the drive home your thoughts start to stray to the next match and what you have to try to do in order to win it. When you lose, that horrible feeling stays with you for a long time and it’s hard to shake off. You’ll replay the game over and over in your mind, thinking about what went wrong and what could have gone right. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in the game, what you’ve won and achieved or how much experience you have. All managers experience very similar emotions.

The most experienced English manager in terms of the Premier League is Harry Redknapp, with more than 630 matches under his belt. Harry first became a manager in 1983 at Bournemouth, and in more than thirty years in the job has been in charge at West Ham, Portsmouth, Southampton, Tottenham and Queens Park Rangers. He’s one of the best-known managers in the country, with bags of experience. He’s always had an eye for a player and has always tried to fill his sides with footballers who have flair and are not afraid to express themselves on the pitch. He also rightly earned a reputation as one of the game’s best man-managers and during his career was ready to take a gamble on some players who other clubs had given up on as they’d proved to be too much of a handful.

‘The first thing I always look for in a player is that ability,’ he insists. ‘And then you think, “Yeah, I can get the best out of him.” Those mavericks, if you can get them playing then you know you’ve got a fantastic player on your hands, and I enjoyed doing that. Di Canio at West Ham, Paul Merson at Portsmouth, Adebayor at Tottenham, young Ravel Morrison at Queens Park Rangers. You think if you can get them on side they can play, because they’re fantastic footballers. I always look for talent first and foremost, because I love people who can play. I would still take Adebayor again, I would still take Ravel Morrison because there’s something about him. I loved his ability, and if I took a club now and could get him in I’d take him tomorrow. Talk about ability – I didn’t know how good he was until I got him at QPR.

‘I always think there’s good in people, and I get on well with people. I look at them and think, “Come on, you’re wasting your talent.” I think that challenge of trying to get the best out of them is something I enjoy doing. I’ve always done it. Even at Bournemouth I had lads who could be a bit of a handful and at times it was hard work, but they did great for me when it came to playing and I loved that. You certainly have to handle players differently these days; managers can’t shout and scream at players like some did years ago. Players don’t respond to it and they can’t accept it.’

Harry’s ability to coax the best out of players and to put together entertaining teams has always been a trademark of his. His early days in management at Bournemouth in 1983 may have been very different to his time at QPR in more recent years, but he always applied certain principles to the way his teams played.

‘When I started you went out and signed the lads on, there was no money and it was a struggle. Even something as basic as pre-season training was difficult. When I was at Bournemouth we never had a training ground. You’d go in the park and train. For one pre-season we found a field in the middle of nowhere that belonged to a little cricket club and they let us use it to train on. But we didn’t have any facilities for food, so I used to go to a local supermarket in the morning to get some French sticks and my missus would make ham and cheese rolls for the players. When I was there it was you, maybe a coach, the physio and the kit man when you played away games, four of you, and everything was put into two baskets – shirts, shorts, the lot. Now when a team in the Premier League play an away game it’s like you’re going away for a year, with trucks full up with gear. I didn’t know who all the people were when I was at Tottenham. There were people there on a Saturday and I didn’t even know what they were doing there! We had so many masseurs, physios, analysts – so many people.

‘I think it’s completely changed for managers now. In the old days you’d do everything. You’d go and watch players, sign them, train them. You ran everything. That doesn’t happen now. Agents don’t deal with managers, they deal with chairmen and chief executives. They know managers are only passing through. I found at Tottenham that a player would very rarely come and see me about football. When a player had a problem they would talk to their agent, who would ring up the chairman and complain about me not picking them or something. The agent would be straight on the blower to Daniel Levy.

‘I think the way managers have to operate now is very different. Like most managers, I used to go out and watch a lot of games looking at players. You’d go to a game and there’d be five or six other managers sitting in the directors’ box as well, because we were getting all of our players from this country. Now they don’t go to watch players. How can you when clubs are signing them from places like Argentina or Uruguay? Scouting systems are different now. You used to have a chief scout – he was the one who would bring players to you. Now so much of it is done by videos or whatever, because that is the way you get to look at players. If you get to go and see a player now it’s a miracle.

‘I think there was also a lot more contact between managers in the past than there is today. You would phone them and speak to each other more, and there was a camaraderie. When I was at West Ham we needed a striker. I remember going to watch a game in Scotland because I wanted to have a look at a particular player. When I got there the manager of this player saw me and actually warned me. He told me not to touch the player with a bargepole because he was a nightmare! There aren’t many people who would do that nowadays, and it’s very different for young managers.

‘When I started I had some sort of grounding. It was a great experience, because you basically learned the ropes. Now, if you’ve played in the Premier League, to go and take a job in the lower leagues is very difficult, because you don’t know the league and you don’t know the players. I went to Oxford City with Bobby Moore years ago before I became a manager, and we never had a clue about any of the players at that level. It was different at Bournemouth for me. I’d played for them, I knew the level and when I got the job as manager I knew that division.’

So will players from the Premier League who want to go into management be prepared to learn their trade and cut their teeth at a lower level as Harry did before getting a crack at the top division, rather than expecting to get a job with a big club straight away?

‘The problem is if a player has been earning £150,000 a week in the Premier League, is he going to take a job in one of the lower leagues for a grand a week?’ asks Harry. ‘He’s earned more money in a week than he will in a year as a manager down there, and he’s going to be thinking, “Now I’ve got to work all year for what I was earning in a week. And instead of getting home at two in the afternoon and having the day to myself, I’ve got to be out grafting!” It’s difficult.’

Like all managers, Harry’s had his ups and downs in the game. He did brilliantly at Portsmouth, getting the club promoted to the Premier League and then keeping them up against the odds, as well as leading them to victory in the FA Cup Final in 2008 against Cardiff. Another major highlight for Harry was leading Tottenham to a Champions League place in 2010 and taking them to the quarter-finals of the competition. The team he had then at Spurs, with the likes of Bale, Modric and Van der Vaart, was a really exciting one, and perhaps with another player or two they could have gone close to actually winning the title during the time Harry was manager at White Hart Lane.

‘It was a great time for me and going into training was a pleasure,’ he recalls. ‘They’d be zipping the ball about, Bale, Modric, Van der Vaart, world-class players. It was a team. They’d have been up in the top four every year that group, but then they sold Modric and then after I left they sold Bale, but that was a good team. When I went in there in 2008 we changed some things around, pushed Bale forward and shoved Modric from wide left and put him in the middle of the park and his career took off then. Bale hadn’t played on a winning Tottenham team for ages, but you always knew he was a fantastic talent.’

Harry lost his job at Spurs in 2012 but then went on to manage QPR, guiding them back to the Premier League after relegation, before deciding to resign in 2015. He’s very much a football man who still loves the game, despite all the changes there have been, and through it all Harry’s eye for a player and his natural ability to get them on side have never changed.

‘I think players respond more to a pat on the back than someone shouting and screaming at them,’ he adds. ‘Bobby Moore once said to me that our manager at West Ham when we were players, Ron Greenwood, had never once said “Well done” to him. Bobby said we all need that in life, someone coming up to you and saying, “You were great today.” People respond to things like that. Players do as well, and I think that’s important.’

While Harry is a vastly experienced manager, Chris Powell is at the other end of the scale. Chris played for me at Charlton and did a fantastic job. It didn’t surprise me when he eventually went on to coach and then turned his hand to management. Ironically, his first full-time managerial appointment was at Charlton, where within the space of little more than three years he experienced both the success of getting the club promoted and the disappointment of losing his job when a new owner took over. Six months later he was back as a manager with Huddersfield, but his time there lasted just fourteen months before he lost his job. It’s been a pretty steep learning curve for Chris, but despite the disappointment of losing his job twice, and knowing the pressures and stresses that go with the career, at the age of forty-six managing is still something he’s determined to carry on doing.

‘I think managers do the job because they love the game,’ he insists. ‘We all love the game. That’s why I do it and it’s why I want to continue doing it. When you go into it you have to be prepared for all the positives and all the negatives that the job will bring. We all have an expectation of how things will go when we take over a club, and you hope that things will go well. But you have to be prepared for the setbacks, and at the same time you have to have a go and put yourself out there. As a manager you’re ultimately on your own – you make the calls and decisions, that’s the manager’s lot. Not everyone is going to be happy with the decisions you make, whether it’s the players, supporters, the media, but you still have to have that inner belief that what you’re doing is right.

‘I think I always had it in my mind that I wanted to be a manager. I got the opportunity to coach when I was at Leicester, and that was invaluable because it was a great education to be involved every day and to see how the manager and coaches prepared, but there’s not a thing in the world that can prepare you for being the number one. When you’re a coach you think, “I can do that, I can be a manager.” But it’s when you actually become a manager and walk into the office on your first day with everyone there and looking at you, that’s when you realise they’re all thinking, “Right, what are you going to do?”

‘When I was at Leicester I got a call to go for an interview at Charlton for the manager’s job. Within twenty-four hours I was their manager, which felt great, but that’s when everything else starts to kick in and you begin to appreciate how much the job involves. There’s so much that you have to organise, and you soon realise that no matter what department in the club, it all comes to you. I think that was the biggest change for me. When I went to Charlton as manager they were in League One. As a coach you organise and do everything you need to for the day, and then you go home. As the manager that doesn’t happen. You speak to the owner, you speak to the chief executive, you speak to the head of recruitment, you speak to agents – it never seems to stop. What you do have to do is try to organise some sort of time for yourself, but that in itself is hard to do because you want to do the job right, you want to do it well and you have to get involved in everything.

‘One of the big things that hit me when I first got the job was when I walked out at the Valley for my first game there. I walked to the technical area, the whistle blew and I thought, “I’m leading this team now!” I’ll never forget it. I turned round and looked at the dugout and the main stand during the game and thought, “This is it. You always said you wanted to manage. Now this is it.” You stand there and you’re really on your own.

‘Winning as a manager surpasses winning as a player because it’s the culmination of your work through the week, and to see it come together on a Saturday with a win, especially if the performance is to the levels you expect, it just surpasses everything. But if you lose it’s terrible. There’s no middle ground. It’s so up and down, but as a manager you know that’s in front of you when you take the job. You don’t switch off, you’re forever thinking about it. Managers are quite good actors – they’ll say they’re going out for a meal with their family to relax and enjoy themselves after a match, but all through that meal they’re just thinking about the game they’ve just played and the next one that’s coming up.

‘I think the first six months I had at Charlton were invaluable. I had time to think about the next season and the restructuring I wanted to do with the team to try to get us promotion. We had a great start to that second season and didn’t lose for twelve games. We got promotion and that was my first full season as a manager, so it was a big moment for me. The next season we were in the Championship, and you have to reassess and be realistic about what you can achieve as a newly promoted team – but we managed to finish ninth and were only three points off the play-offs. The season after I knew there were rumblings in the background about the club getting a new owner, and whenever there’s a change of ownership it’s very rare that you keep your job. It has happened, but it didn’t happen with me.’

I suppose I was fortunate, because although I managed for seventeen years I was never actually sacked. But for most managers the reality is that the sack is really just around the corner, and for managers in the Championship their average tenure is about eight months, which is staggering. Managing in the Premier League is one thing and it brings its own set of problems, but managing outside of it can be very different. There isn’t the money for clubs in the Championship or lower that there is in the Premier League, but everyone in the Championship would love to make that leap up to play with the elite and enjoy all the riches that come with it. As a consequence there’s enormous pressure on a lot of Championship managers to achieve that goal and win promotion.

‘The reality is that twenty-one teams in the Championship are going to fail every season,’ Chris points out. ‘Only three teams go up, and I think with lots of clubs short-termism comes into play. They want to get that success quickly, and maybe are not prepared to plan longer-term and build. I think as a manager you have a responsibility to try to bring young players through, to try to make that happen, but you also know that you’re not always going to get time. That’s the reality, and losing your job is something that every manager has to come to terms with. As a manager I think you should have a period of two or three months out of it when you lose your job. It gives you time to live your life a little bit, and mentally and physically get yourself back to where you should be because it’s a stressful job. The stresses of running a club and dealing with different personalities is very tough on an individual. I think you need that break before you go back in. You always want to do things better next time and hope the people you work for are in line with you.’

Being a manager is tough for anyone, and what you do in your job is always under the microscope. You operate in an extremely public arena and your work is judged on a very regular basis. Chris is one of the few black managers we have in this country and as such I wondered if that brought any added pressures to what is already a very difficult job.

‘To be honest I think the added pressure will always be there because it’s such a big topic,’ he says. ‘It’s an area where people have always wondered, “Why hasn’t it happened more?” So I understand the position I’m in, and a few people who have been before me and who are in positions now. I understand how it is with regard to how I carry myself. I understand that people are looking up to me to see how I handle it, and that it may encourage others to become managers. Being a manager is a huge job regardless, but I’ve got a second job. I understand that to make a difference I have to do my job well. It may not always end up the way you want it to at a club, but as long as you’ve made a difference when you’ve been a manager at your particular club then that’s good. I know people talk about the “Rooney Rule”. That works – or has been working – in America. Maybe they’ve just got a bit more history in other sports like basketball; it’s kind of been ingrained in the mindset of people for a long time there. We have to start somewhere and that somewhere is now. I think there are more black players thinking about coaching and managing, but I think maybe in the past there weren’t too many people to look up to.’

Whenever I get asked about the job by a young manager and about how they should approach it, I always say that the first thing to do is get the expectation level right, from the chairman and from the board. What do they think would be a successful year on the budget they are going to give the manager? I think managing in the Premier League is totally different to managing in the Championship. The chances that come along for a young manager are few and far between. If you don’t give it everything you’ll regret it forever. You have to be totally consumed by it. As a footballer Chris played in all the divisions as well as for England. He had the drive, ability and dedication he needed when he was playing, and hopefully those same qualities will see him have a long and successful career as a manager.