Complicated by idiots

By Steve Graves

Ok, let’s accept there are some reasons not to like Alan Pardew.

He did this.

He said this.

Nevertheless, I’ve always been something of a fan. There’s something about the cut of his jib, the urbane eagerness, the passing resemblance to a sharper-suited Billy Bragg that appeals.

As much as anything, there’s clearly a thoughtfulness there, the kind of contemplative approach English football has sought to drive from our game like a medieval plague.

At first glance it wouldn’t make him an ideal fit at Newcastle, home of wide-eyed exuberance, of gods and monsters, messiahs and saviours.

When Pardew arrived at St James’ Park there was no Jim White-hosted welcome ceremony and very few Deirdre Barlow impersonators wearing poorly-screenprinted t-shirts bearing his features.

Amid the general tut-tutting over Mike Ashley’s sacking of Chris Hughton, Pardew effectively sidled in, almost hoping nobody noticed. It’s hard to imagine Kevin Keegan doing the same.

Crucially though, Sam Allardyce accepting anything other than a big entrance is equally difficult to countenance.

And with Allardyce, Newcastle fans were burned. Badly.

It’s hard to avoid comparisons with Roy Hodgson at Anfield, especially if you’re not trying to avoid them at all.

Allardyce was the media’s pick for the job, seen as having earned the chance of a bigger club after some mid-table success (so far, so familiar). The story was that his self-belief and ebullience would be just what Newcastle needed, while his brand of direct football would appeal to a Tyneside sensibility which could trace its lineage back to Jackie Milburn and Hughie Gallacher.

What a fundamental misreading of the club the latter point proved to be.

Football clubs, particularly major, storied ones, have a soul and a style which defines them in the eyes of the public and their fans.

It may not be strictly true that Spurs are the guardians of push-and-run, or that pass-and-move has always been the Liverpool groove, but these myths and legends are important.

At Newcastle a penchant for number nines (emphatically not false ones) and flying wingers is not a sign of limited horizons.

Whereas for an Allardyce or Hodgson a direct style is a means of negating opponents, of levelling the playing field against superior opposition, at Newcastle it’s the route to excitement, to goals, to a packed house acclaiming a plundering hero.

The poverty of ambition of Allardyce’s football, and the disconnect between it and his bombastic style off the pitch, showed the importance of connecting with the fanbase and understanding what they really want.

This is Pardew’s great strength at Newcastle. Early in the piece he sought not to impose his own style, but to capture the essence of what has thrilled St James’ down the years.

The acquisition of Demba Ba has given the side and the fans their rampaging focal point, while in midfield Cheik Tiote and Yohan Cabaye are streetwise enough to hold their own but also assert their talents on the ball effectively and at high speed.

On a limited budget and with the benefit of excellent scouting from Graham Carr, Pardew has created just about the best Newcastle side he possibly could. And it is recognisably a Newcastle side - Ba, Best and Jonas may not match Shearer, Ferdinand and Ginola for ability but some of the football they produce can be just as thrilling.

The football the current side plays is not always technically refined, not always smoothly continental, but on nights when they stick three past a shellshocked Manchester United it is breathlessly exciting, vigorously enjoyable and not lacking in moments of skill and composure.

That Pardew has achieved this at Newcastle so quickly is a testament to his abilities as a listener and willingness to learn, two much-underrated management skills in many walks of life.

The next challenge for the former West Ham boss will be to move Newcastle up a level, perhaps even to claim a longed-for trophy. Much of that will depend on finances and the availability of the likes of Ba, but by giving the fans a team they can recognise and identify with, Pardew could buy himself the time and patience he needs.

By Steve Graves

Aston Villa fans might be forgiven for wishing the whole idea of football transfers could be scrapped. Occupants of the Holte End must want to see the window smashed or boarded up permanently after what feels like decades of market misfortune.

In the Premier League era every club has of course made its share of mistakes. Even Arsenal and Manchester United have offered a home to the likes of Kaba Diawara and Eric Djemba-Djemba down the years, suggesting no manager is infallible when it comes to taking a punt on new talent.

Few clubs, though, have managed to rack up as many disappointments as Villa. A succession of managers have seen some highly-rated players arrive for inflated fees and fail to perform. It almost feels like a curse - players who have performed well elsewhere, and in many cases gone on to success with future clubs, seem to have been unable to meet expectations at Villa Park.

Quite why this should be the case could form the basis for an entire series of articles, but one name is more likely to prompt wry nods from Villa fans than any other: that of Bosko Balaban.

Balaban is in many ways the classic Villa flop (see also Peter Crouch and the ‘stars’ of this superbly-subtitled YouTube film): a player of promise and some pedigree, whose early career had piqued the interest of a raft of big clubs. Balaban was hailed by many, including Davor Suker, as a star in the making.

And then it all fell apart. Balaban was never given the chance to start a league game, in a squad admittedly front-loaded with strikers (Juan Pablo Angel, Dion Dublin, Darius Vassell and Peter Crouch provided stern and varied competition).

With manager John Gregory having departed, Balaban was loaned back to Dinamo Zagreb during his second season in England. He was quickly shipped out to Club Brugge and would have been a largely forgotten footnote in English football history, had the FA not launched an investigation into his transfer, alongside those of Angel and Turkish defender Alpay.

Amid the claim and counter-claim surrounding the Balaban deal, one detail prompted much discussion in the press. It emerged Gregory had not seen the Croat play competitively before completing his move to Villa, relying instead on scouting reports, closed training sessions and videos provided by the player’s agent.

It was this final point which seemed to provoke the most consternation. Observers were aghast that a manager could sign a player based on such seemingly cursory evidence.

The reactions was rooted in a slightly naive view, which persists today, that a club’s manager is the author and final arbiter of all incoming player moves. In reality, of course each transfer, each club and each manager is different. Since time immemorial managers have relied on scouting reports, tip-offs and contacts within the game.

In Jack and Bobby, Leo McKinstry documents the route by which the 14-year-old Bobby Charlton came to the attention of Manchester United. His headteacher was friends with Joe Armstrong, a key member of Matt Busby’s formidable scouting team. Based on one outing for East Northumberland Schoolboys on a frozen pitch, in a game in which Armstrong admitted Charlton ‘didn’t do so much’, he was offered the opportunity to move to Old Trafford.

Transfers, to varying degrees, have always been this way. Managers do not have the time to watch the hundreds of matches which take place every week across Europe in person. Clubs have always employed scouts, and under many continental setups player recruitment is essentially the business of the club’s ownership and key executives rather than the man charged with getting the best out of the players they are given.

The all-powerful English manager myth

English football is more wedded than most to the idea of the manager as all-powerful master of all aspects of the club (this was amusingly reflected in the Amiga/PC management game Ultimate Soccer Manager, which absurdly imagined managers set ticket prices and made procurement decisions for matchday catering kiosks).

Fans in England are suspicious of any structure which seems to call this long-cherished view into question, even if the premise is at its foundations false. This may explain the scepticism surrounding figures such as Damien Comolli or Frank Arnesen, employed by clubs in a long-term capacity to oversee recruitment without the kind of immediate incentive to save their own career through panic buying which may be posed by a poor run of recent results.

The question should be not whether managers need help in building a competitive squad, but what form that help should take. The traditional scouting team, working under a chief scout who reports to the manager, still has its place. That’s not to say, however, that different systems cannot be made to work in England as they have elsewhere. Similarly, new technology can help the process.

Technology and scouting

From Ben Foster’s iPod to Prozone, managers and coaches have been using technological tools to improve and evaluate performance. Gregory’s mistake was held to be relying too heavily on videos, but perhaps the real flaw in the process was the source rather than the medium itself.

By using films provided by a player’s agent to assess his worth, the then-Villa boss was allowing his decision to be influenced by a third party with and obvious vested interest.

Anyone who reads reviews of films or music will be familiar with the criticisms of those who maintain the opinion of someone else should have no bearing on their own purchasing decisions. In an ideal world where we all had time to watch everything that came out, that might make sense. But without an expert opinion from a reviewer whose role is to be on our side as would-be consumers, on what do we make our judgements? The trailer, or effusive interviews with cast members?

Villa, in effect, made their costly mistake when they trusted a biased version of events, rather than when they trusted technology to inform their decision-making process.

By Steve Graves

This blog is meant to be about studied reflection of trends in football management, but the fact hardly a post goes by without a mention of Benitez, Shankly or Paisley probably gives away my allegiance to Liverpool FC.

I try not to let it get in the way of objectivity, and last month’s post lauding Alex Ferguson to the skies must represent a sizeable deposit in the impartiality bank.

Nevertheless, we should all be allowed the occasional wallow in the kind of obsessive fandom with which most of us started to follow the game, and which so many of the loudest and angriest voices on twitter and elsewhere don’t seem to have moved beyond.

The 2010/11 season and the months immediately preceding it was an interesting time, in the Chinese curse sense, to be a Liverpool fan. It also represented the first full season for myself (@steve_graves) and many others on Twitter. For the first time I have a diary, of sorts, of my personal season.

Looking back, I was surprised which matches and off-field incidents got me tweeting furiously, and which seem to have barely registered. Like a diary, a Twitter feed is as much a record of the writer’s interest in particular moments as it is a complete record of events.

It seems unlikely that I didn’t tweet at all during or after the early-season meeting with Manchester United at Old Trafford, but there it is. Perhaps I sensed that game was less than the pivotal clash it might have been in more successful seasons. By the same token, a 1-1 draw with Wigan Athletic in November might not have merited much of a mention had it not been such a clear indicator of Roy Hodgson’s lack of a sustainable plan for the future. Coming on the back of a series of encouraging results which suggested at least some coherence developing within the team, the meek surrender of an early lead and dire play-for-a-draw approach of the last 20 minutes at the DW spoke volumes about the unsuitability of the manager for the job.

Along the way I made plenty of bold predictions which sound pretty ridiculous with hindsight (Joe Cole ‘a bright spot?’). I went through anger, brief stabs at positivity and eventually, by the turn of the year, a kind of weary resignation and the sickening feeling that I didn’t really enjoy watching my team play any more. That by the end of the season I was as excited as my seven-year-old self when Liverpool did this is testament to the turnaround effected by Kenny Dalglish, Steve Clarke, the club’s new owners and a wriggly little Uruguayan.

This is of course a football management blog, and few clubs’ seasons can have been defined by the man who was (or wasn’t) in the dugout as was Liverpool’s 2010/11. Here, then, is part one of my season - after Rafa, (just) before Kenny. Incomplete, biased, lacking perspective and interrupted by a holiday in Morocco (end of November) and occasional bouts of just not caring enough to tweet. A bit like A Journal of the Plague Year but more gruesome.

June 2010

Liverpool begin the hunt for a replacement for Rafa Benitez

@steve_graves, Jun 7 2010 

Staring at a depressing list of names. Trying to make a case for any of them being better than Rafa Benitez. None of them are. Might apply

@steve_graves, Jun 9 2010 

good luck rafa, you’re seriously best off out of this mess

The Premier League fixture list is released

@steve_graves, Jun 17 2010 

Looking forward to next season even less now, if that were possible. Arsenal and City. Bollocks.

July 2010

Holland progress towards the World Cup final

@steve_graves, Jul 02 2010

Hugely pleased for Dirk kuyt, perhaps the most under-rated player in world football #worldcup

Spain win the thing

@steve_graves, Jul 02 2010

Spain the best side, Holland had great tournament. Six benitez signings in the squads. Now we’re chasing Paul scharner. Depressing.

Liverpool sign Joe Cole

@steve_graves, Jul 19 2010

Joe Cole potentially a bright spot in summer of gloom…not sure where he fits into any conceivable system featuring Gerrard/Torres.

August 2010

The season begins – Liverpool 1 Arsenal 1

@steve_graves, Aug 15 2010

For a man with a supposedly dodgy transfer record, Rafa Benitez left Hodgson a bloody good bunch of players. #LFC

@steve_graves, Aug 15 2010

But hey, moving on, etc - Roy, a good man and a good manager. Will have a hell of a media honeymoon if he gets good early results. #LFC

Premier League – Manchester City 3 Liverpool 0

@steve_graves, Aug 23 2010

Ah it’s good to see two up front, gerrard in the middle and man to man marking working out so fucking well.

I can’t work out why we lost. We did everything Andy gray said we should. It’s almost like he knows absolutely fuck all #LFC

Premier League – Liverpool 1 West Bromwich Albion 0

@steve_graves, Aug 29 2010

Taken apart for long periods by West Brom, who thoroughly deserved at least a point. In total disarray at corners.

September 2010

Europa League – Liverpool 4 Steaua Bucharest 1

@steve_graves, Sep 16 2010

Ok, so maybe that counts as a beginning. More Fun with Spot than a Tale of Two Cities, but a beginning all the same

League Cup – Liverpool 2 Northampton Town 2 (2-4 on penalties)

@steve_graves, Sep 22 2010

God I really hope we sneak this undeserved win against League Two opposition

Last night’s most worrying stat wasn’t the scoreline but the 22,577 attendance

@steve_graves, Sep 23 2010

Staring at @XabiAlonso on here is not going to make things better again, is it? Even if I rub the screen….

October 2010

Premier League – Liverpool 1 Blackpool 2

@steve_graves, Oct 03 2010

Thank god we’ve stopped getting those 0-0 draws against lesser sides at home.

Not that there are any lesser sides at the moment…

@steve_graves, Oct 04 2010

Inter down to second in Serie A…do they fancy reappointing former boss Hodgson - swap deal maybe

Hicks and Gillett dig in

@steve_graves, Oct 14 2010

Hicks and Gillett’s legal team could well be led by Maurice Levy from the Wire. He got the briefcase.

Premier League – Everton 2 Liverpool 0

@steve_graves, Oct 17 2010

Hodgson doesn’t ‘accept we were outplayed or in any way inferior.’ That’s just mental.

Aquilani scores in Juve win, Inter go top of Serie A, Alonso running show for top-of-the table Real. In parallel universe, all is well. 

@steve_graves, Oct 20 2010

Hodgson departure looking likelier after Purslow goes and Rijkaard leaves Gala…I believe and hope he’ll do decent thing and step down…

…that said, it will be a shame. Good coach, wrong job, wrong time. Rijkaard a major name fallen on hard times. Like us.

Premier League – Liverpool 2 Blackburn Rovers 1

@steve_graves, Oct 24 2010

Much, much, much better #LFC performance but still 0-0. Wonder who can step up to save Roy… (the answer: Fernando Torres)

@steve_graves, Oct 26 2010

No reason to get carried away but a good performance. Roy needs 3-4 more in a row. 

@steve_graves, Oct 28 2010

Roy: ‘hands off Reina’. That’s more like it! Hodgson’s best week so far, but he must be wishing it wasn’t Bolton away next…

Premier League – Bolton Wanderers 0 Liverpool 1

@steve_graves, Oct 31 2010

#lfc start positive, feels like team working from same plan for once.

November 2010

Europa League – Liverpool 3 Napoli 1

@steve_graves, Nov 5 2010

Not sure anti-Hodgson sentiment today is justified. Europa League has to be secondary consideration and shadow team did ok considering

Concerns about total lack of long-term #LFC direction under Roy totally justified - but 3 wins in a row is a platform at least

Premier League – Liverpool 2 Chelsea 0

@steve_graves, Nov 7 2010

What a performance from @LucasLeiva87 - can’t think which esteemed football writer said he’s not good enough for #LFC recently @henrywinter

Premier League – Wigan Athletic 1 Liverpool 1

@steve_graves, Nov 10 2010

@kennethdalglish joining twitter is worthy of an open-top bus parade in itself

May still pull a win out of this but #LFC total lack of gameplan appalling. Sitting deep seems to be Hodgson’s sole idea.

whistle goes… I hope Roy Hodgson doesn’t understand hashtags. Twitter reaction would make him choke on his werther’s

Premier League – Stoke City 2 Liverpool 0

@steve_graves, Nov 13 2010

Stoke game on radio. YouTube clips of proper Liverpool teams on the tv. Works well.

Last tweet sounded like criticism of #lfc team. Most good players, following orders.

Sometimes even sausage, mash and beer are no comfort.

@steve_graves, Nov 17 2010

Shameful part of me thinking gerrard injury may speed up decision #lfc must take now.

Premier League – Liverpool 3 West Ham United 0

@steve_graves, Nov 20 2010

The league’s two least competent teams clash. Exciting.

Torres foot on gas, steams past gabbidon. Good sign. 

December 2010

@steve_graves, Dec 13 2010

Ryan Babel is infuriating me. Twitter imitating life. 

Sky Sports headline: ‘Roy draws up shopping list.’ Let me guess: Werthers Original, cocoa, Swedish season review 1976/77 DVD #LFC

Betamax recorder, Ford Capri Ghia, a big lad who’ll do a job up front #what’sonroy’slist #LFC

@steve_graves, Dec 14 2010

Roy: ‘the only teams with better results than us over last 5-6 games are Arsenal/Man Utd’. Reality: there are 8 others, inc Blackpool/WBA

@steve_graves, Dec 17 2010

I agree with Paul Konchesky’s mum. I too wish he’d never left Fulham. #LFC

@steve_graves, Dec 20 2010

Rafa leaving Inter, coming back to Merseyside home…this will quickly turn into a Revie/Clough scenario. Fascinating times ahead at #LFC

@steve_graves, Dec 26 2010

#LFC game off today. Barely merited a shrug of indifference.

Premier League – Liverpool 0 Wolverhampton Wanderers 1

@steve_graves, Dec 29 2010

Fully deserved goal for wolves. The worst 56 minutes I’ve seen from #lfc ever.

January 2011

Premier League – Blackburn Rovers 3 Liverpool 1

@steve_graves, Jan 05 2011

Poor Roy. His number one transfer target’s out for the rest of the season. Shame, Marveaux actually looks a good player #LFC

Struggling for words..

Will we be on MOTD early on? Need sleep but masochistic part of me wants to see that again #LFC

@steve_graves, Jan 06 2011

Kevin Keegan thinks 2 champions league finals in three years represents a period of decline. Kevin Keegan might be best not speaking.

There’s lots of debate at the moment around the number of Glaswegian managers in the Premier League.

It’s certainly striking that six current bosses hail from in and around Scotland’s biggest city. The promotion of Paul Lambert’s Norwich City is leading many to posit that there will be seven come the beginning of next season, but whether Steve Kean, and indeed Blackburn, remain at the top table remains to be seen.

It’s been fun listening to the discussions, the latest taking place on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning. The BBC’s excellent Five Live Sport special, The Glasgow School, was well-researched and a rare Five Live treat for those of us interested in getting under the skin of the sport rather than listening to Andy from Telford’s views on Avram Grant.

There’s been plenty of conjecture about the cause of the trend, mainly centred around the Glaswegian character and the relatively tough upbringing of some of the current crop of managers. There may well be something in this theory - we’re all products of environment, and disciplines hard-learned at an early age can often translate in to success in later life, particularly in demanding and stressful environments.

Of course Glasgow also has an illustrious football history, and the kind of economic and social challenges which can often act as hothouses for those determined to make something of themselves. Denied the wider opportunities offered to those from more affluent areas, Glaswegians have seen football as an outlet for talents and ambitions which might otherwise have withered on the vine. A similar effect can be seen in the way Philadelphia acted as an incredibly fertile breeding ground for boxers, with a

In so far as it goes, the Glasgow-centric reading of this trend can account for the success of the six/seven managers in football more generally. Getting in to the game as players, as young men hungry for success, no doubt their background played a role. But the same can be said of countless poorer cities, particularly across the north of England. Newcastle and Liverpool, for example, have been virtual production lines of talent, with the former city giving English football some of its most influential on-field characters over the past three decades. Yet neither Geordie nor Scouse lilts are much heard at the top level of management at the moment.

Comparing the backgrounds of a Chris Waddle or an Alex Ferguson or a Robbie Fowler there are plenty of striking similarities. They could explain the drive to succeed through various levels of football to reach the top as players, but it’s hard to see how that translates necessarily into creating managers of substance and quality.

The genesis of the Glasgow trend

What the BBC and others have identified is a trend, and as such it must have its roots not just in individual backgrounds but in the game itself, in related patterns of hiring, firing and success.

This morning Pat Nevin identified Jock Stein as playing a key role in defining the Glasgow style, and the Celtic legend is as good a place as any to start. It’s no coincidence that Stein played such a key role in Ferguson’s early career, up to the moment Stein died and was temporarily replaced by the then-Aberdeen manager.

Since then, Ferguson has gone on to establish a period of domestic domination unheard of under a single manager in the English game. In surpassing Busby, Shankly, Paisley, Nicholson and Clough, Ferguson has redefined the template of the ‘successful’ Premier League manager.

A gruff, hard exterior, a fierce loyalty to his players allied to an innate ability to know when they need to be moved on and a clear-eyed vision of his central importance to the running of the club have been the hallmark of Ferguson’s remarkable success down the years. Should we be surprised that boards are so frequently tempted to tap in to that aura?

For a Birmingham City or an Everton, appointing Alex McLeish or David Moyes must have felt at least in part like a safer option than giving the reins to someone who didn’t ‘feel’ like a successful Premier League manager.

Because Ferguson has so dominated the managerial landscape for decades, clubs have come to identify his personality and style with success. Because that style is so rooted in his identity as a Glaswegian, embodying many of that city’s recognised characteristics, boards have looked for similar figures who just might bring similar rewards.

The upturn in Glaswegian managers is a result of boardroom decisions as much as it is of individual talents. Had similar numbers of Liverpudlian or Mancunian managers been offered opportunities in the top flight, we might be able to make a fair comparison and clearly point to Glasgow as some kind of finishing school for aspiring coaches. The debate, however, like so much in English football, cannot escape the shadow of Ferguson. By building on Stein’s template and establishing a new model for other clubs to envy, he has done a great service to countless other managers.

During his career as an amateur Ferguson was a trade union shop steward at the shipyards in Govan. Through the example he’s set in English football he might have done as much for Glaswegian employment prospects as if he’d stayed on the banks of the Clyde.

By Steve Graves

“Whenever you play against Barca, whenever you touch them they are on the floor crying like a baby….I have played three games against Barcelona and each time we have had to play with 10 men.”

The words of Emmanuel Adebayor, star of this incident. The man whose sole contribution of note to Wednesday’s el clasico was the most red card-worthy incident of the match.

Unfortunately Adebayor did not elaborate on his suggestion this straight red or this second yellow were anything other than perfectly justified. He stated he thought Pepe’s sending-off on the night was wrong. Some would agree, many would disagree. That’s football.

A hypocrite? Absolutely. The game is full of them. Fans of course are the worst. Trawl through twitter after any big game and the allegations of bias and cheating are rife. It’s all so much background noise, excused by many as a way for fans to let off steam rather than focusing on what’s really gone wrong for their side.

Players and managers have long been aware of the power of such smokescreens. It is understandably easier for Real to invent conspiracy theories than to question why a team costing 500 million euros, boasting the world’s most expensive player, can only manage 23 per cent of the possession at home.

At the centre of it all, as ever, is Jose Mourinho. Provocateur supreme, carnival barker and undoubtedly talented manager, Mourinho has plenty of form in this area. His accusations of bias date back years, and include the outrageous destruction of the career of Anders Frisk in 2005.

Many managers would seek to calm players like Adebayor, seemingly intent on bringing a disrepute charge upon themselves. It’s always worth an excuse to enjoy this clip of Christian Dailly’s ‘fucking cheats’ outburst in 2003, but the schoomasterly response of then-Scotland manager Bertie Vogts is the point worth considering here. One is tempted to wonder how Mourinho would react in similar circumstances, and to conclude he may well have joined in.

In terms of management style, it is clear Mourinho seeks to identify himself, his staff and players as a single unit. Rather than restraining some of his stars’ rhetorical excesses, he provokes them, leading the way himself with ever-more outlandish statements. Mourinho is in many ways closer to the tennis role of the non-playing captain, in charge but identified as part of the team rather than as a more traditionally autocratic figure.

He’ll always make for good copy, and will generally succeed in deflecting attention from the increasingly apparent deficiencies in his approach. Taking teams on, spending vast fortunes, winning instant trophies and leaving behind a legacy of waste, ageing squads and no foundations for long-term success cannot be a sustainable approach.

Uefa’s excellent, impending financial fair play rules will put a premium on managers who can build success organically over several seasons. Mourinho has never shown any inclination in this direction. It will be fascinating to see how he adapts to the changes.

Spanish journalist Fernando Carreno wrote this week: “To be forever complaining, and especially with complaints of this nature, doesn’t seem to be a credible or acceptable posture.

“Real Madrid, in my opinion, is a great club that deserves something better. If your approach is results-based and you don’t get the result, what’s left?”

In Mourinho, Adebayor and Real Madrid’s case, what’s left is the conspiracy theory.

By Steve Graves

Tuesday’s Champions League quarter-final second leg between Manchester United and Chelsea has been picked over endlessly in the press and online. The match, while far from the dullest meeting these sides have produced, could hardly be considered a classic. Yet it bore all the hallmarks of a defining encounter for so many of those involved, at least on the blue half of the equation.

Countless ‘five things we learned’ features have been rattled off on websites in the subsequent 48 hours or so, with the opinions coalescing around a few well-worn points:

1 Carlo Ancelotti’s days at Stamford Bridge are numbered.

2 Fernando Torres is not the player he was at Liverpool.

3 Didier Drogba can still play a bit

4 Chelsea need to overhaul their ageing side and bring in fresh, young faces

5 Chelsea should not have allowed Michael Ballack to leave in the summer

Aside from the obvious contradiction between points four and five, there is a case to be made for all of the above. Watching the game, however, there loomed one overarching problem with the Chelsea squad, the product of more than just ageing limbs and managerial misdirection.

Chelsea’s collection of players is as good as any in the league. They may no longer have the vast squad depth enjoyed in the Mourinho years, but there remains a core of experienced, effective performers, most of whom would find a home in almost any dressing room in England.

What was striking about Wednesday’s capitulation, and the first-leg defeat which sounded the real death knell for their European ambitions, was how little Chelsea love the ball.

For decades the prevailing philosophy in English football training was that players should be denied the ball during the week, to heighten their desire for possession on a Saturday. The end result was an unintended one - most players, unused to ballwork and without the muscle memory created by practising relentlessly the basic elements of technique, surrendered possession far too cheaply in general play. This could be said to have contributed, along with other key factors, to the faster-paced variety of football which survives in England to this day.

While such thinking was swept aside long ago at most clubs, observers from the 1950s would have been forgiven for thinking the side in blue had been coached by Major Frank Buckley or Stan Cullis on Tuesday night.

Put simply, Chelsea do not love the ball. They are not its friends. At times, particularly against higher-quality opposition, they treat it with the kind of suspicion you might normally reserve for a man on a train casually fondling a switchblade.

That’s not to say Chelsea are a negative or unattractive team to watch, at least not by design. They have outstanding talent across the pitch and are capable of producing moments, such as Didier Drogba’s superbly-constructed goal on Tuesday, which can electrify.

What Chelsea lack more than anything else is at least one player who looks after the ball above all else. Not a Frank Lampard, capable of fast-paced improvisation and late bursts into the box. Not a John Obi Mikel, a ball-winner with limited ability in possession. Not even a Ramires, unfairly maligned this season but clearly a powerful box-to-box presence.

No, Chelsea need a Xavi. A Xabi Alonso. Even a Michael Carrick would do. (Incidentally, another overlooked point from Tuesday is the evidence it provides for Alex Ferguson’s persistence with a midfielder who tries the patience of many fans). They need a player prepared to play a hundred passes before attempting a single killer ball, an anti-Lampard, a custodian of the football whose pass completion ratio will mean as much to him as any run of goals or assists.

Since Roman Abramovich bought the club, Chelsea have barely made a nod in the direction of signing a player who might knit together the disparate strands of their various costly squads. Success has come and gone intermittently over that period, achieved with a mix of pragmatism and battering-ram flair, but long-term dominance of either the domestic or European sphere has eluded them.

Throughout that period of huge outlays on players who never did it for the club, as well as many who did, Chelsea have never sought to address the fundamental problem literally at the centre of their failings. This lack of foresight and long-term planning is at least in part due to the short-term nature of so many managerial appointments - what’s the point in investing in a solid foundation if you’re to be judged on the gabling of the roof?

For those eight years Abramovich has been the constant factor at the top of the club. The billionaire has overseen transfer dealings with varying degrees of hands-on involvement, depending on the relative strength of his manager at the time and seemingly the fluctuations in his own level of interest in the club.

The key problem at Chelsea, which has led to failed attempt after failed attempt to capture the biggest prize on the biggest stage, has been Abramovich. Directly and indirectly he is responsible for the club failing to recruit players capable of dictating play and distributing the ball with the kind of efficiency and economy displayed by Bastian Schweinsteiger at the heart of the German midfield during last summer’s World Cup.

Managers have come and gone, but Abramovich would do well to learn from Harry Truman’s observation about where the buck stops. He could chain-hire his way through many more managers before getting what he wants if he does not.

By Steve Graves

“The difference between players is not always the quality but their mentality” - Rafael Benítez

“I just told him to tell Pavlyuchenko to fucking run around a bit” - Harry Redknapp

WHEN Internazionale took on Tottenham in Champions League encounters either side of Halloween 2010, the casual fan was treated to more than the kind of routine group-stage encounters which might have been expected.

In the beginning there was Inter, with a 45-minute display of precision, verve and power matched by few teams this season to date. Four goals up after little more than half an hour, Inter’s blend of extreme experience (Javier Zanetti) and youthful promise (Philippe Coutinho), pivoting around the lethal technician Samuel Eto’o, reached for footballing perfection. Zanetti’s opening goal felt like a slap in the face to Tottenham’s pretensions to performing at this level.

That first game at the San Siro had the feel of a public execution, a drawn-out torture sequence for anyone loyal to Spurs. Then came Gareth Bale, seizing the final three quarters of the 180 minutes, crashing in a hat-trick in Milan and electrifying the return leg at White Hart Lane with his direct running and crisp, angular grace.

Bale has rarely reached such heights since, and only in the fevered minds of Sky Sports analysts is Bale (seven league goals and one assist this season) comparable to Lionel Messi (25 league goals, 15 assists). But the Welshman’s performance in Milan to help Spurs defy footballing gravity was a stunning example of a player given licence to play, freed from tactical considerations and capitalising on exceptional circumstances to devastating effect.

If the first half was won by a well-drilled unit and dominated by the more cerebral collection of footballers, the second was very nearly salvaged by a nascent talent given free rein to express itself.

The best football matches often result from a clash of styles, and in this regard the figures in the respective dugouts could hardly be more different.

Benítez - mentality, mentality, mentality

Then-Nerazzuri manager Benítez has throughout his career placed an emphasis on tactical nous and on acquiring players with the professional mentality and wherewithal to function within his systems.

At Valencia Benítez quickly identified Mista and Rufete, two unglamorous but diligent and adaptable players, as key additions to a squad which had come close to greatness but fallen short. Alongside the canny remodelling of the side’s defensive approach, the new players were key to creating the ‘crushing machine’ which won two La Liga titles and a UEFA Cup in three seasons.

Mista had worked under Benítez at Tenerife, as had Luis Garcia, who became one of the first players to join him on taking over at Liverpool in 2004. Garcia was signed alongside Xabi Alonso, perhaps the archetypal Benítez player. Urbane and self-effacing, a fan of the Coen Brothers and The Wire, Alonso’s thoughtful and enquiring personality was matched by intelligent midfield play and an ability to read the game which made him one of the Premier League’s pre-eminent performers.

Throughout his career Benítez has nurtured Mistas and Alonsos, finding in the likes of Jose Reina or Fernando Torres players whose primary focus is to be successful footballers rather than to enjoy the fleeting appeal of the trappings of that success.

At Anfield, when sticking with those principles Benítez enjoyed success in the transfer market. Identifying players with the mentality to help Liverpool succeed was never a problem, but giving the side an air of mystique and unpredictability proved to be an insurmountable hurdle for the Spaniard.

Media critics of Benítez like to cite the likes of Jermaine Pennant or Ryan Babel as evidence of his supposed lack of transfer market nous. It is clear that Benítez appears to have struggled to harness difficult personalities such as Pennant, whose chaotic private life could well have influenced his journey from teenage prodigy to journeyman winger.

After his departure from Inter Samuel Eto’o, whose form under Benítez had been astonishing, said elements of the dressing room had turned against the manager. Eto’o was keen to stress he was not among them, and it is evident he and Benítez enjoyed a positive working relationship.

In his modern classic Inverting the Pyramid, the incomparable Jonathan Wilson recounts a meeting with Samuel Eto’o. The great striker, on waiting to be interviewed, was watching a low-profile game from a far-flung corner of the world. He explained to Wilson he liked to see ‘the patterns’ in the game, seeking to develop his understanding of football’s rythms, ebbs and flows in a way many players would barely comprehed.

Often journalists who are close to modern players, particularly in the Premier League, note that the likes of Jamie Carragher who will hungrily devour games at any level are rare. Many will watch significantly less football than the average armchair fan with a Sky subscription.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t follow football’

A stark reminder of this fact came when recently William Gallas admitted not following football. It’s no coincidence that Gallas, one of the most impressive yet occasionally unreliable defenders of the past decade, should be playing for Redknapp at Spurs.

Gallas spent a turbulent spell at Arsenal under Arsène Wenger, whose philosophy on temperament is much closer to that of Benítez. Many felt his attitude problems at the Emirates had made it unlikely he would be given a shot by a top Premier League team. Redknapp saw beyond those difficulties, focusing instead on the player’s innate ability and proven track record.

Under Redknapp Gallas has played some of his best football, belying his advancing years. Would Redknapp be concerned about a player who admitted to not following the game, or indeed to playing solely for money?

It appears he would not, and looking at the current Spurs squad there are is clear evidence that Redknapp has chosen to look beyond drawbacks in players which would see the likes of Benítez or Wenger run a mile.

The squad at White Hart Lane is almost entirely made up of players who’ve had personal problems, injury difficulties or major losses of form during their careers to date. Bale himself, seemingly a model professional, managed to play 24 league matches for Spurs before being on the winning side.

In assembling a squad of misfits and players who’d been condemned as also-rans, Redknapp’s approach is actually close to the Moneyball philosophy pioneered in baseball by Billy Bean.

It is difficult to imagine Benítez getting the kinds of results from these players which Redknapp has consistently achieved. Yet while the Spaniard’s teams have sometimes sacrificed spontaneity in the name of collective industry, there is a nagging suspicion that the Redknapp approach leaves his teams with a glass jaw.

While Spurs can play festival football at times, they remain prone to jarring setbacks such as the recent defeat at Blackpool which undermine their prospects of long-term success. Some will point to their most recent result at the San Siro as evidence this particular worm could be turning, but the reality could be that squads built around certain character types, at either end of the spectrum, might never quite have enough to enjoy long-term success.

Ferguson - individuality within the collective

One of football’s great ‘what if?s’ surrounds the efforts of Alex Ferguson to lure Paul Gascoigne from Newcastle United to Old Trafford in the summer of 1988. The deal had at one stage appeared certain to go through, yet the midfielder ended up joining Spurs.

The accepted logic runs that had Ferguson been successful, he might have been firm enough to harness the young Gascoigne’s prodigious talent and subdue his extra-curricular appetites. It’s tantalising to imagine what might have been, but an analysis along these lines could well be flawed.

Had Gascoigne signed for United and seen out his career at Old Trafford, it is admittedly hard to imagine he would have been appearing at the scene of a police stakeout to offer a fugitive killer beer and chicken. However, to see the 1988 decision as necessarily pivotal is to misjudge Ferguson’s approach to man-management.

Throughout his career as a manager Ferguson has proved adept at identifying players with the character to perform consistently. The like of Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes appear as grounded as it’s possible to be while earning fabulous riches and enjoying the adulation of millions. Scholes in particular is so painfully averse to publicity it is hard to imagine he inhabits the same professional world as Jermaine Pennant.

Yet Ferguson has always found a place in his best sides for the mercurial, the unpredictable and the egotistical. From Cantona to Cristiano Ronaldo, it’s clear that if the talent is there, the Scotsman can work around the personality - at least for a time.

It is telling that many of the players who’ve burned brightest for Ferguson at Old Trafford have done so for a comparatively short amount of time. Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ince, Beckham have come and gone, all outlasted by Giggs and Scholes. At the first sign of a player losing some element of their competitive edge, Ferguson has never been afraid to let them go.

While Ronaldo and Beckham went on to rediscover their hunger for the game at Real Madrid, Ince was never quite the same player as he had been at Old Trafford. Those who were shocked when Ferguson sold the Londoner to Inter Milan were left in no doubt over the manager’s ruthlessness.

Ferguson has throughout his career found a way to manage both the dependable and the flighty, blending in the latter to add spice to his stock mixture of the former.

In the case of Gascoigne we may have seen more great moments and his decline may have been slowed somewhat. But it’s hard to imagine Ferguson persevering too long with a man so seemingly unable to exercise willpower or cut ties to figures in his personal life who facilitated his self-destructive tendencies.

Had Gascoigne joined United, things might have been different. But one look at the career of Lee Sharpe illustrates the point that Ferguson’s patience wears thin pretty quickly when a player’s personal life has an impact on their performance.

The challenge for Benítez, at whichever club next employs a manager with such rich gifts, will be to take on the challenge of channelling a Gascoigne or a Bale, of unearthing a rough diamond who can bring the long-term success he so narrowly missed out on at Anfield.

Redknapp may conclude that at the age of 63 he is beyond radical changes to his management style. But he must also sense that Spurs offers him the opportunity of a lifetime, the chance to be remembered as something more than ‘Arry, a canny transfer market operative with plenty of friends in the press.

To secure a tangible legacy Redknapp may need to seek out more players in the vein of Luka Modric, whose adaptability on the pitch and professionalism in recovering so well from serious injury have been a revelation. If he is able to recruit and marshal more players of his standard and temperament, Redknapp could yet secure his legacy.

Brian Clough and Peter Taylor, immortalised outside Derby County’s Pride Park

By Steve Graves

Assistant managers, what are they good for? Absolutely some things, we reckon.

First we need to define our terms. Assistants come in all shapes and sizes, and often with job titles which can lead to confusion as to their actual place within a management structure.

The term assistant manager is an all-embracing one, covering anything from a largely peripheral figure at a club to de facto manager and driving force behind football strategy - and everything in between.

Then there are jobs such as first-team coach or head coach, which can muddy the waters still further.

Steve Clarke, one of the highest-profile assistants of recent years in the English game, was recently appointed first-team coach by Liverpool. Credited with much of the tactical groundwork on which Kenny Dalglish has built a seemingly reinvigorated side, Clarke fulfilled a similar role (with more modest returns) at West Ham with Gianfranco Zola.

His previous work at Chelsea showed that even under a seeming autocrat like Jose Mourinho, there was a place for an assistant to offer light and shade as required.

It is clear that while Sammy Lee is technically assistant to Dalglish, Clarke has at least an equal standing within the club’s management structure.

In English football it is difficult to think of a manager who’s operated successfully without assistance not just with coaching but with decision making. In fact the real divide seems to be between those who favour a group or committee of assistants, devolving more power and encouraging a plurality of ideas, and those who maintain a duopoly above a group of essentially subservient coaches.

Clough at Leeds - structural defects?

Brian Clough was firmly in the latter camp, and for some the major failure of his career, at Leeds United, was down to the absence of long-term assistant Peter Taylor. It is undeniable that Taylor should be considered one of the great assistant managers and Clough was always likely to feel his loss. That said, perhaps part of the problem was not down to the absence of Taylor himself but to the entirely different structure into which Clough was parachuted.

Antipathy between manager and players, negative response from the fans, poor results and the looming shadow of his predecessor Don Revie are among the many factors at the heart of Clough’s failure at Elland Road. But he may have enjoyed more success, or at least stayed in the job longer, had Clough not been forced in to a totally alien system - Revie’s ‘family’.

To the outside world Revie is considered in much the same way as Richard Nixon - a man of accomplishments undone by his essentially unsavoury character. Those who were around his Leeds United paint a different picture. Revie’s emphasis on treating everyone involved with the club, including catering staff and players’ wives, as part of his project ensured the loyalty and devotion of many.

This was reflected in the coaching staff, with Revie’s assistant manager essentially the first among equals in a formidable team including Syd Owen (head coach) and Les Cocker (trainer). The collegiate atmosphere reflected the Boot Room created by Revie’s friend Bill Shankly, but was anathema to Clough and Taylor’s style.

Clough brought Derby trainer Jimmy Gordon with him to Leeds, dispensing with Cocker’s services, but fostering the atmosphere Owen and Lindley had been used to under Revie was not in Clough’s nature.

Perhaps Clough took something from his ill-fated spell at Leeds, as Gordon was by many accounts to become a far more important figure during the former’s time at Nottingham Forest than he had been previously.

Measuring success

It would be unfair to claim that assistants and other backroom staff have failed to enjoy success as managers in their own right. During the heady days of English football’s heady European golden age around the turn of the 1980s, on four occasions the trophy was won by managers who’d stepped up on the resignation of erstwhile bosses (Liverpool’s Bob Paisley three times and Aston Villa’s Tony Barton in 1981-82).

It is clear, though, that some high-profile assistants have floundered when given the top job. Brian Kidd, so integral to Alex Ferguson’s development of Manchester United and now assisting Roberto Mancini’s cash-rich City, was unable to save a Blackburn Rovers side heading for relegation under Roy Hodgson in 1998.

The jury remains intriguingly out on Kidd’s successor Steve Mclaren’s managerial career, but the fact that his replacement Carlos Queiroz is reportedly in talks over a job managing Iran might suggest that the Portuguese boss, at 57, has had his last big opportunity in club football.

Queiroz was one of the most influential assistants of the last decade in English football, enjoying a portfolio granting him the kind of power many would have thought impossible under a leader as strong-minded as Ferguson.

For persuading Ferguson to adopt a 4-5-1 formation which did not bring immediate results, Queiroz became a divisive figure among United fans during his two spells at Old Trafford. His influence over tactics and club affairs reportedly angered Roy Keane, while he came to be blamed for United’s over-cautious approach to European games in particular.

Doomed periods in charge of Real Madrid and the Portuguese national team have led to the suspicion that Queiroz does not have what it takes to be a manager in his own right at the highest level. That should not detract from his achievements, particularly during his first spell under Ferguson, who some believe still harbours hopes Queiroz will succeed him at Old Trafford.

Assistant manager/head coach/first team coach roles require specialist skills which may or may not be transferable to the manager’s job. It is equally the case that measuring the success of such staff in isolation is virtually impossible. Lee, for example, was found wanting as a manager at Bolton Wanderers, but has been a trusted ally to Sven-Göran Eriksson, Rafa Benítez, Sam Allardyce and Gerard Houllier. Lee even survived the nuclear winter that was Hodgson’s spell at Anfield, emerging blinking into the sunlight alongside Dalglish and Clarke.

Lee must get something right as an assistant, but even dedicated Liverpool fans would be hard pushed to say what beyond a generalised ‘feel’ for the club he served as a player and an obvious enthusiasm for the job.

Pat Rice - the unsung assistant

Few assistants can embody this sense of indefinable efficiency, of success built on undoubted yet seemingly intangible qualities, than Pat Rice.

Rice, a fine right-back over a 20-year career as a player with Arsenal and Watford, has spent the years since 1984 working in various capacities at Highbury and now the Emirates.

Since 1996 and the appointment of Arsène Wenger, the Frenchman has had Rice at his side as assistant.

Rice’s Wikipedia entry describes him as playing a ‘key role’ in Arsenal’s unbeaten 2003-04 season and twin Doubles under Wenger. A cynic might question such an assertion, given that Arsenal’s brand of football and coaching philosophy is very much the product of Wenger’s vision of the game. Given that Rice was youth-team coach under George Graham’s pragmatic regime, it’s hard to imagine he contributed much to developing that vision, at least initially.

Rather than the driving force Queiroz was allowed to be, with questionable results, or the quiet but influential likes of Clarke, Rice is the ultimate team man, implementing his manager’s instructions without ever claiming glory for himself.

Wenger has gone some way to explaining Rice’s success as assistant, attributing it to his winning mentality and affinity with the club. Even to his boss Rice’s qualities err on the side of the un-pindownable. Lee may well see Rice as a model for his own career, and would be wise to do so.

While Pat Rice may not be poached by Real Madrid, as Queiroz was in 2003, or ever attain the semi-mythical status of a Peter Taylor, he can retire (perhaps at the end of this season) having been at the heart of a remarkable project to transform a football club from top to bottom. Arsenal fans should treasure him while they can.

By Steve Graves

FROM a distance of a quarter of a century, the appointment of Kenny Dalglish by the Liverpool board in 1985 seems by turns perverse and supremely logical.

Since Bill Shankly’s reign and the creation of the ‘Boot Room’, as much a philosophy and management system as a physical entity, the club had appointed from within. When Shankly retired he was replaced by one of his right-hand men, Bob Paisley. On Paisley’s retirement Joe Fagan stepped in, the club placing an emphasis on continuity and lineage rather than experience of the top job.

While Manchester United had floundered in the wake of Sir Matt Busby’s departure in 1969, Liverpool built on and largely retained the methods of Shankly. The Anfield job was only ever an internal vacancy.

With that in mind, Dalglish made sense. Since replacing Kevin Keegan in 1977 he had become part of the fabric of the club, lionised by the fans and showing an affinity with the club few matched.

But in another sense, the Scotsman represented a radical departure. Paisley, 55 when making the step up and Fagan, 62, were both experienced coaches. Dalglish was 34 and coming off the back of a season in which he had played 51 times in all competitions.

Priorities

Given that his energy had for so many years been devoted to playing the game with such distinction, there had to be an element of risk in offering him the keys to English football’s most jealously-guarded kingdom. Yet Dalglish’s comparative youth was only part of what makes his appointment so striking today.

For Dalglish, appointed for the beginning of 1985/86, was to remain a key part of the Liverpool squad he now managed until mid-1987.

Not only was the new man expected to step up to the job without prior experience, he was also to juggle the demands of maintaining his own physical condition and playing focus alongside the day-to-day decision-making and long-term strategic thinking required in the manager’s role.

Looking back at the circumstances of Dalglish’s eventual departure it might be tempting to conclude the pressure of combining the roles told, but of course the tragic and entirely unexpected events at Hillsborough in April 1989 would make any such conclusion unsound.

For Liverpool FC, opting for a player-manager was a step change in their hiring policy. But in the wider world of English football, the decision marked the continuation of a long tradition.

Player-management in context

In The Unforgiven, their account of Don Revie’s Leeds United Rob Bagchi and Paul Rogerson document the 32-year-old Revie’s appointment at Elland Road. The authors put his appeal to the club’s board down to a combination of availability, knowledge of the club and advantageous (ie low-paid) contractual terms.

The fact Revie was significantly cheaper than his predecessor reflected a trend among boards in the decades immediately following the Second World War to cut costs - a parsimonious tendency which was to infuriate Brian Clough, who in many ways forged the template for the modern image of the football manager at Derby County in the 1970s.

The desire to trim expenditure was perhaps not a consideration for the Liverpool board, but Dalglish was an inheritor of this post-war trend and represented its last stand at top-flight level until Chelsea appointed successive player-managers in Ruud Gullit and Gianluca Vialli.

Just as few might have expected a player to be given such a high-profile job, so it might seem illogical that an experiment which was to prove so successful would in fact mark the end, rather than the beginning of a trend.

The evolution of the manager

In 2011 it is inconceivable that a major English club would appoint a player-manager in anything but the most extraordinary of circumstances.

That the picture has changed so comprehensively in the 25 years is down to a range of factors.

The football world has undoubtedly become smaller, with the influx of foreign players in to Premier League squads being followed by an openness to managers from abroad on the part of fans and boards up and down the country. Since the Premier League’s inception in 1992, no English manager has led a team to the trophy.

Clubs are no longer limited to a few well-known names likely already to be at other clubs on lucrative contracts in the English game. Whereas once, in the closed loop of the old Football League, there were barely more than a handful of bosses available with experience of winning trophies, now directors can look to the European leagues and beyond to find leaders with enviable track records and a willingness to move to England.

Chelsea’s experiments with Gullit and Vialli were more about star power and the influence of the continental game than about the true origins of the player-manager. Their appointments, on handsome salaries and with great fanfare, could not contrast more with that of Revie in 1962.

Those who favour a person-centred reading of events could point to a series of influential managers whose successes in the English game helped bury the concept of the player-manager.

Earlier we touched on Brian Clough’s impact on the game, defining the image of the manager as an omnipotent leader of men, at once gregarious and unknowable. Clough strove to banish for ever the world of selection committees and board involvement in football decisions, a closed shop which had often made the appointment of a pliable player-manager attractive.

Alex Ferguson’s appointment at Manchester United in 1986, followed 10 years later by Arsene Wenger’s arrival at Highbury, further chipped away at the idea of the player-boss. While Ferguson got his first managerial job at the age of 32 he, like Clough, had already retired from the game through injury and was ready to devote his entire energies to off-field planning.

Wenger, having had only a modest career as a player, became the touchstone for the manager-as-professor school of thought. He further emphasised the precise and time-consuming work now accepted as being at the heart of getting results on the pitch. Wenger’s success at Arsenal, and Jose Mourinho’s at Chelsea, made the days when Dalglish faced the weekly decision of whether to pick himself seem a long time ago.

Arsenal fans may not recognise it, but Wenger in some ways carried on the work of his predecessor, Dalglish’s great late-1980s rival George Graham. While Graham had been a fine player, he was very much in the mould of managers like Clough, setting out a clear (if unentertaining) vision of how he wanted his team to play and employing a dictator’s hand when required.

Dalglish and Graham were conflicting characters whose teams pursued different paths to success. That Graham came closer to embodying the blueprint for future managers is telling.

Now Dalglish is back, though only in the wildest of Liverpool fans’ dreams will he be pulling on the red shirt again. His comeback may see the return of ideas and structures which would have been familiar to football fans in the mid-1980s, but one thing is certain: as a player-manager he was a throwback rather than a trailblazer, even 25 years ago.

NB: Thanks to the excellent Tottenham Think Tank for pointing out my glaring omission of Glenn Hoddle - player-manager both for Swindon Town and Chelsea. The latter club’s mania for continuing the trend when everyone else was abandoning it would be worth an investigation on its own.

THE biggest story in English football management in 2011 so far is the reappointment (resurrection?) of Kenny Dalglish as Liverpool manager. The decision itself has been debated endlessly, though at the time of writing the club’s reversion to a flexible 4-2-3-1/4-4-1-1, reintroduction of pressing and the promising imminent arrival of Luis Suarez from Ajax is being overshadowed by the seeming determination of Fernando Torres to leave Anfield before the January transfer window is closed.

Rather than focus on these decisions and challenges, whose ultimate outcomes remain unknowable, we’ll look at some of the wider questions brought to the fore by an appointment which seemed at once inevitable and yet somehow otherworldly.

An oft-repeated criticism of the club’s move was that English football had changed so significantly in the decade or so since Dalglish last managed at this level, he could not bring his ideas to bear. Many went as far as to say Dalglish would inevitably hark back not to the late 1990s, but to the period ten years earlier when he and Liverpool bestrode the English game, with the Scotsman leading what we would only later come to realise was the last great team of Liverpool’s golden age.

In a series of posts this week, we’ll look at management trends specifically over the period since February 1991, when Kenny Dalglish first resigned the manager’s job he’d coveted since arriving at Anfield as a player in 1977.

By Steve Graves

HELLO and welcome to Complicated by Idiots. This is our first post since a rambling opening looking at Blackburn’s decision to sack Sam Allardyce (below). It’s too early to say whether Venky’s can be said to have been vindicated but Steve Kean’s stewardship so far has certainly seen Blackburn adopt a more progressive style, and at the time of writing they sit in a more than creditable ninth place in the Premier League table.

From now on the blog proper will be up and running - think of the Allardyce piece as a kind of prequel, a pre-season friendly to get us warmed up and bed in a few ideas for the challenge ahead

Complicated by Idiots, then, will look at trends in football management. We’ll try not to focus purely on the news story du jour, although we’ll keep an eye on the topical for indications of where management may be moving in the future.

The blog’s about developments in the way the world’s football teams are managed, and we aim to look at international and club football of today and throughout the game’s history, in the hope of charting how ideas evolve, go out of and come in to fashion, and spread across league structures and national boundaries.

This process will inevitably involve analysis of players and matches, but always with an eye on the broader picture and what it might mean for football in the short, medium and long term.

I hope you’ll enjoy the journey. At this stage I’re not sure where it’s heading but I’ve got plenty of ideas for articles and aim to publish as often as possible. I’d also love to hear from contributors who’d like to share their own views, either on the articles published here or on other management related subjects.

Cheers for having a look, hope you stick with us,

Steve

It’s difficult to clear a path through my own prejudices on this one to form a view on the merits of the decision. But I think the arguments for Sam Allardyce’s sacking by Blackburn Rovers being unfair are similar to those made in defence of Gary Megson at Bolton - Allardyce was doing well with limited resources and with a limited series of objectives. It’s undeniably true that his record on paper with Blackburn was a decent one. But so was Megson’s at Bolton.

Blackburn have this season completed fewer passes than any team in the Premier League. That statistic reflects a direct approach to the game which can sometimes bring results, but rarely leads to sustained success at the top level. Being forever in mid/lower mid-table and playing uninspiring football not just out of necessity but as a deliberate philosophy does make fans unhappy and give clubs an air of stagnation. It also leads to reduced gate receipts and a vicious circle of being locked in to a style of play which does what’s required each season but provides for no prospect of future development.

At Bolton, under Allardyce, then Sammy Lee and then Megson, it had almost become ingrained in the club’s soul that grinding out results was an end in itself, rather than a means to achieving more ambitious goals in future thanks to the initial stability they brought.

I think it’s fair enough for the owners to have ambitions for the club to improve - whether that’s heading up the table or just providing a bit more entertainment and enjoyment for fans.

Perhaps, like Megson’s sacking and even to a lesser extent that of Chris Hughton at Newcastle, it’s not a matter of whether it’s fair or unfair, but of whether the club has a long-term plan to evolve either in terms of trophies or playing style. Bolton appear to have been vindicated, with Owen Coyle’s side playing some of the most attractive football in the league, and as a bonus winning plenty of games as well.

We’ll only really know the answer to the question with hindsight, based on the health of Blackburn Rovers as a club in the future. At this stage I’m not sure we can say the owners are right, as they have yet to identify a new man and it’s not yet clear which direction the club might take. But at the same time there is simply no evidence on which to condemn them, beyond the knee-jerk reaction that someone doing a competent job should be allowed to continue doing so for ever. That’s an understandable sentiment, but one that would have led to many of the best managers in the game never being appointed in the first place.