The Wisdom of Gaffers

I don't sleep a lot, because if I'm sleeping I'm not learning.

David Flitcroft, Barnsley, February 2013.

You have to look at the societal changes that have gone on. In days gone by a cup of tea was a novelty. Now we are in the computer age. That is why the crowds have gone down.

Kenny Shiels, Kilmarnock, February 2013.

Is he blaming computers or tea? Damn your ambiguity, Kenny.

It's the consistency you aim for, and I think that if you remain consistent, and if you've been successful with being consistent, then that consistency will get you through to remain being successful

Nigel Adkins, Southampton, February 2012.

There's a lot of literature out there that suggests people who get beyond themselves and think in the future forget what they're supposed to be doing now

Nigel Adkins, Southampton, March 2012.

People have said I am wrong to publicly blame players, that Paolo Di Canio's way is not the right way to manage. But Redknapp has said the same thing as I have, which proves why I think I am a top manager.

Paolo Di Canio, Swindon Town, December 2012.

Before Christmas, I also went to Stonehenge for the winter solstice. Swindon had just beaten Tranmere 5-0 and I waited until 4am before going there to see the sunrise. It was raining and I didn't see anything, so I left and went straight to training.

Paolo Di Canio, Swindon Town, January 2013.

My personal view is that the club is intelligent enough to understand that when you're in the building process, you have to build. When you're building a house - if rain comes in because the roof isn't on yet, you've got to be patient and give people time to do the job.

Graham Westley, Preston North End, February 2013.

They've got a massive advantage in terms of their endurance levels. I measure their endurance levels on the training ground and I know what athleticism they've got in their bodies.

The footballing quality they've got is there. There are some timing issues and organisational issues that are stopping them from converting their play into goals.

Graham Westley, Preston North End, December 2012.

You have to look at the societal changes that have gone on. In days gone by a cup of tea was a novelty. Now we are in the computer age. That is why the crowds have gone down.
Kenny Shiels, Kilmarnock, February 2013.

Very much enjoying this whole thread so far, but this ^^^ is really special imo

flitcroft is the find of the season, seek out his every word

You can live without water for so many days, but you can't live without hope.

B. Rodgers, Feb 2013

Could I work with a chairman like Abramovich? Why not? It is important he does not speak anything about football to me.

Of course, he could have an opinion as the owner and the first fan of the club, but he could not have an opinion on the way to manage, otherwise he should just become manager himself.

For example, some chairmen in Italy seem to have the ambition to become a manager and speak in an arrogant way, saying what they think is wrong or right in public.

I can work with any chairman.

Paolo Di Canio, Swindon Town, December 2012.

On Sunday night, I was dreaming of the Wolves team and Manchester City. I had Sylvan Ebanks-Blake linking up with Sergio Aguero. So I had a sleepless night.

David Flitcroft, Barnsley, February 2013.

Had he uttered this a week or so earlier, this thread would almost certainly have been called Sleeping with David Flitcroft.

his interviews are just priceless, even the quotes as reported don't do justice to the inspirational lancashire evangelism

Two injuries, rested a couple more, the boys who came in impressed you tonight?

(Long pause)

They impress me every day I work with them. Every single one of them. They impress me as people. Kelvin Etuhu didn't want to play tonight, and couldn't play tonight, because he felt he was going to let the boys down. I asked Jim McNulty could he play against MK Dons. He didn't want to play... because he'd let the team down. Now that is unselfish behaviour. That is behaviour that fits a king.

I need a boss with that attitude

Me too. I let the team down on a daily basis but if I fancy not bothering to go to work of a morning that's somehow a *bad* thing.

Had made a mental note to check out Flitcroft's interviews at some point in the near-future, but I think "That is behaviour that fits a king" has brought it forward in my schedule to some time this afternoon.

Also this - http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/feb/22/paolo-di-canio-swindon-raid

I'd have him at Villa tbh

We stay calm, we stay focused. And we stay positive. Because the positivity around the place at the minute is phenomenal. And it's a movement. And that movement's getting more powerful. Not by each result, by each performance.

They've come now so far. And they're strong. As a group of people they're strong. As a group of men they're strong. It's a galvanised unit, it's a unit that's not fragmented, it's a unit that is united in one effort and one belief. And it's a movement that's going to be difficult to stop.

The line about having 14 men every game was fairly fantastic. I think he genuinely feels Barnsley are on the cusp of transcending the paradigm of mere football. Guru Flitcroft Sahib

they're having a great run. i genuinely hope the cult continues.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/21398594

the battle of agincourt got nothing on barnsley 3-2 middlesbrough

what if Wolves are the sacrifice tho

(I also want it to continue - hopefully Lee Clark's graceless implosions will propel his dire team arsewards)

i've already said i'm happy for Wolves to be the sacrifice. said last season we needed to go down for lessons to learn and rebuilding to be done properly. am now convinced that won't happen under Steve Morgan so i'm grimly satisfied with total immolation until the cunt sells up.

this is what I was talking about in the other thread - immolation as cleansing, fresh perspectives and whatnot. CAFC in much healthier, happier state with club legend in charge and committed, likeable players who know their own game than during first go in Championship (or indeed last season in Premiership)

so eat it nilmarrrrrrr

How typical of Pompey to shell out on the deluxe ultradetox package

they will return pure, sainted, translucent, it will almost be like they are not there

They deserved to win today, they played better than us and they executed their performance better.

Paul Tisdale, Exeter City, February 2013.

We huffed and we puffed and we kept the ball really well

Eddie Howe, Bournemouth, February 2013.

Sometimes a kick up the backside doesn't do anyone any harm now and again.

Steve Bruce, Hull City, February 2013.

Of course we are very disappointed and of course it has an effect on confidence. And of course it is very frustrating for the supporters here who have seen these results over the past few weeks. But do we still believe we can make the play-offs? Of course we do.

Tony Mowbray, Middlesbrough, February 2013.

"People say there’s a mountain to climb but people climb mountains every day."

John Brown, Dundee, February 2013

forgot my quote tags, sorry

I expect John Brown to be good value for this thread for the next couple of weeks or so.

Not a gaffer, but this has got to go somewhere -

The goalkeeper underlined the side's unswerving belief. "Even if there is one game to go and we are 12 points behind, we'll still believe," he said. "We've got to. We've got to keep fighting, you never know. We have just got to keep going.

The manager is the manager. One month, three months, seven months - it doesn't matter

Rafael Benitez, Chelsea (Interim), February 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/21643152#asset

alan pardew, great with numbers

Today will end and tomorrow will begin

David Flitcroft, Barnsley, April 2013.

We were defragmented

David Flitcroft, Barnsley, April 2013

You could easily market a small book of Ian Holloway's pearls

“He’s six foot something, fit as a flea, good looking – he’s got to have something wrong with him. Hopefully he’s hung like a hamster – That would make us all feel better. Having said that, me missus has got a pet hamster at home, and his cock’s massive.” - On Ronaldo

btw out of 92 clubs in the football league, 56 have appointed at least one new manager since the start of the season

An equaliser from Aldershot with all their fans, I think other teams would have crumbled. Not this Wycombe, not my Wycombe.

People are probably looking at things saying 'Wycombe have nothing to play for'. How wrong they are going to be because we have everything to play for.

Gareth Ainsworth, Wycombe Wanderers, April 2013.

It's actually quite easy to try and run around when you're 1-0 down.

Kevin MacDonald, Swindon Town, April 2013.

<3 wild thing

Watching the FLS last night - parade of crop-haired managers in shirt and tie...and then, at the end, there's Deadbeat Gareth

(xp gareth ainsworth's pretty great too)

DEADBEAT GARETH HOW DARE YOU

It can be very unfair on my family. Funnily enough it was my kids’ birthday on Wednesday and it’s my wife’s birthday today so it’s been a busy week for me.

My twin boys Zach and Finn ran into my room yesterday shouting, ‘Daddy, we’re four!’ But I just pulled my covers over my head saying, ‘I don’t care if you’re four, leave me alone!’

It really affects your life and it hurts so much when you get a bad result because you put so much into it and the whole club hurts.

We hurt, the fans hurt, I’m sure the board hurts – everybody hurts.

It’s difficult when your kids come in the next morning happy to be four and you’re telling them to go away and give you peace. That’s the job you choose though. It hurts a lot when you’re not winning and we need to make sure we get back to winning ways against Hearts on Sunday.

Martin Canning, Hamilton Academicals, January 2016.

Needs to start hurting hearts on the pitch.

I sincerely hope that was a touch of hyperbole or poetic license. and he didn't actually, you know, tell his 4 year old children to go away on the morning of their birthday

yeah that's p heartwrenching if true.

The players and the crowd were getting upset with the referee and the frustration was not helping us. When they came in at half time, I told them to chill out.

That frustration leads to a tightening of the muscles and you end up tense and unnatural.

Lee Johnson, Bristol City, April 2016

We've got to respect the way we play

David Flitcroft, Mansfield Town, March 2017

I literally came here to post that I hoped David Flitcroft was still in a job.

visited parents' for mothers' day, ended up watching C5 football highlights with my dad, Flitcroft was onscreen for about 15 seconds and he still managed to say that

Best thread.

an old brendan rodgers quote which i used as my signature on a celtic forum:

"I always say a squad is like a good meal. I'm not a great cook, but a good meal takes a wee bit of time. But also, to offer a good meal you need good ingredients."

Feature on Graham Potter in the Graun

Upstairs at Brighton & Hove Albion’s striking Y-shaped training pavilion, Graham Potter is talking through how he came to lend his copy of the Dalai Lama’s Ancient Wisdom, Modern World to one of his former players at Östersund a couple of years ago. Curtis Edwards was at home watching Netflix when, around 8pm, the manager called asking whether he was busy. Kyle Macaulay, the scout who has followed Potter from Sweden to Swansea and now Brighton, drove Edwards to the Jämtkraft Arena and for the next hour and a half Potter and he spoke openly about almost everything but football.

“We were just chatting and chatting and we got on to reading,” explains Potter. “In the end, I just said: ‘Have a read of that.’ Curtis was one of those guys that whenever he made a mistake, he beat himself up a lot and it was just trying to change how he thought. I showed him games where his head was up in the air when he had made a mistake and actually he should have been reacting to what’s happening rather than worrying and beating himself up about making a mistake. The Dalai Lama is quite a clever guy, isn’t he? He puts things into perspective a little bit, and I just thought: ‘Why not?’”

We've got a live one in Motherwell's Stephen Robinson:

We lacked real men. They had more men in their team. I don't think they out-passed us or outplayed us. We played with no purpose. We passed for the sake of passing without trying to break them down.

When Declan Gallagher is playing with a high temperature and flu and he's the best player on the pitch for us, it tells you he's a proper man, proper footballer.

Players have a habit of making you look stupid, but that's the level of player we're able to recruit, and we have to educate them. That has to happen sooner rather than later or they won't play in the team.

nice

a treasure trove here from clyde's danny lennon:

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/49889805

"I would bring back national service," he says. "There you go.

"As a parent myself, we've only got ourselves to blame. I'm not saying we've brought our kids up badly, but most kids want for very, very little.

"There's no respect or discipline for people of authority now. You can even see kids, when the police stop them, actually videoing the police questioning them. It's incredible.

"With the way you handle younger players now, there are very, very little that can take constructive criticism well, it's just the soft generation we have. As long as you're honest and can back criticism up, the players have got to come round to your way of thinking and you find a solution together. It's not us and it's not them; it's we."

"Give me 20-25 kids, and I would take them away to an island for five years where nobody could get access to them and then bring them back," he says. "Discipline, total football, no outside influence, and work with them daily. I would love somebody to invest in that for three years to see where it could take you.

"In Spain, they do that to a certain degree. The infrastructure and housing clubs have for kids from all over Spain, they have them in there as footballers and give them that education. We've got technically gifted players, as good as there are in Spain. The difference is, I find foreign players are more aware before they receive the ball of what's in and around them.

"If you watch a wee sparrow on a fence, its head's on a swivel, it's always watching for predators coming. It always knows where the defender is, where team-mates are. It's that awareness we've got to improve."

less funny stuff at the bottom about him making the rapist david goodwillie captain of the side

Give me 20-25 kids, and I would take them away to an island for five years where nobody could get access to them and then bring them back,"

"Give me 20-25 kids, and I would take them away to an island for five years where nobody could get access to them and then bring them back," he says. "Discipline, total football, no outside influence, and work with them daily. I would love somebody to invest in that for three years to see where it could take you.

Looking for 3 years investment in a 5 year programme.
Then it's Lord of the Flies.

"If you watch a wee sparrow on a fence, its head's on a swivel, it's always watching for predators coming. It always knows where the defender is, where team-mates are. It's that awareness we've got to improve."

That is great though. He did win the League Cup for St. Mirren, I'll give him that.

"Terriers boss Cowley already admitted he is not "scared" of clubs showing interest in Grant.

He said: "I only worry if other clubs don't want my players because it's a bit like having a girlfriend, isn't it?"

christ, the last one we had Siewart was a steaming turd of a manager, but at least he didn't talk much.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/grimsby-sacked-boss-michael-jolley-20900760

"Every time you interview me you're antagonistic, confrontational, who do you think you are, Jeremy Paxman?"

I advise my players to have sex for short periods and with the minimum of effort and use positions where they are under their partners and preferably with their wives. Because if with others, well, that will need extra action.

– Antonio Conte

Best thread.

― Non, je ned raggette rien (onimo), Tuesday, 29 January 2019 20:55 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^

Not quite worthy of this thread but worth recording

winners have a good perfume, and when you don't win you smell so bad"

Pep Guardiola, Manchester, October 2020

“It's no good him getting 100 goals if we're letting in 50 the other end'.”

John Yems, Crawley Town, October 2020

(This interview is a minor classic of the “manager spitting feathers” genre, the context is we’d just scraped a 2-1 win over Crawley with a jammy goal; Yems used to be Asst Manager at Exeter.)

This, I mean:


https://youtu.be/PuVXi3sqIkw

what do we make of that from yerman. gonna say I'm in favour

Baxter?

dyche ffs

THE PRESS | WARNING: This isn't your average press conference! 😳😅

— Burnley FC (@BurnleyOfficial) February 2, 2021

Do people really say "lookylikey"?

Takes me back to the days of person sending round chain emails with terribly compressed jpgs of Denis Irwin/Carlos the Jackal

Cant be having with any of this foreign luki-liki nonsense, four at the back, two up front and go long when you have to

'pinteresque'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJfLHmU1eRE

new fave gaffer obv

He was our assistant mgr under Tisdale for a bit, always seemed an odd combo.

Not really in the spirit of the thread but it’ll have to do. This story was told on the Exeter fans forum today:

They used to tell a story at Plymouth Argyle, going back to the days when Peter Shilton had been placed in charge of the team, that offers a little snapshot perhaps of how sometimes even the greats of the sport can lose their sheen once they dabble in the unforgiving world of football management.

Shilton was player-manager, or rather goalkeeper-manager, at the time. Plymouth were slipping into trouble in the old Third Division, the fingers of relegation closing round their necks for the second time in three years, and Shilton was trying to encourage his players to believe they could clamber away from the bottom three and rise like a “pheasant from the flames”.

After a slightly awkward silence, someone tentatively pointed out the word he might have been looking for was “phoenix”. Shilton, standing in front of his players as a double European Cup winner and the record England appearance-maker, paused for a few moments to take it in, the realisation dawning that his motivational speech had not gone quite as planned. He needed a line to reassert his authority. “I knew it began with an F,” he said.

Ha

I notice one of this thread's favourite gaffers has been making headlines:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/apr/12/northern-ireland-england-womens-world-cup-2023-qualifier-match-report

"Anybody can be a coach or a manager and go and say ‘right, there’s a possession, there’s a game and there’s some passing’. Anybody can do it. But not everybody can do it like [Fotheringham]."

Kenny Miller, Huddersfield Town.

not strictly the gaffer but I do understand why Fotheringham has brought in someone to the club who is even dumber than himself.

ahahaha

Beautiful

I love this thread do much

so

I take it that's the Kenny Miller?

From Mark Fotheringham's Wiki page:

Mark McKay Buzz Lightyear Fotheringham (born 22 October 1983) is a Scottish football coach and former player who is currently not succeeding as coach of EFL Championship club Huddersfield Town. He became the head coach after a rather romantic evening with Leigh Bromby in Da Sandros where he was promised a lucrative 3 year deal for bending over when prompted.

he's objectively the worst htafc manager I've seen in my lifetime. I won't go too far into it because it would be a very fucking tedious and long post. Short version: extremely thick, tactically clueless - does pointless like for like subs when a game is desperately needing a change, constantly throws players under the bus publicly and more frequently the younger ones. But this is worst bit, he talks absolute garbage but aggressively adds "Listen!" too every sentence! Also even lots of people outside of the world of online HTAFC fans are starting to notice how extremely deranged + embarrassing his post-match pressers are, without fail every week it's like he's commenting from a parallel universe about a completely different match and some of the football podcasts have picked up on this and even they have noticed how bizarre it is that this inconsequential moron is managing in the 2nd tier of english football

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/EXRCDD/1990s-uk-miller-magazine-advert-EXRCDD.jpg

"I take it that's the Kenny Miller?"

unfortunately, yes

“I think the vegan food is quite nice – I enjoy it. Chips are vegan, I didn’t know that. It is a worry with the planet. It is a shame what is happening: you can see it is happening and we are all starting to be aware of it. What is going to happen to our kids and grandkids? It’s real. The club has been great, it is fantastic what they are doing. Other clubs should be taking it up. I had a wee bit of vegan curry, a wee pie and mash today. I haven’t tried the burger yet. I might try one on Saturday if we get a victory.” Duncan Ferguson

i was wondering how that was panning out :D

“So yes, I missed out on a couple of good players early on in the summer, but I’ve always been a massive believer as a manager in fate, and when a player tells me they’re going somewhere else I always say to them ‘well it’s your mistake, son, you’ve missed out there’, and that’s how I feel. I don’t dwell on it, I always just think ‘well, something will happen, they’ll get injured or something’. I just get on with what I’ve got and try not to moan about it too much.”

the sageness + serenity of Neil Warnock

Bear with me with this one but it's something I've often thought about it. Managers (and players too now) often refer to "moments" when talking about games but I'm pretty sure this wasn't a part of gaffer vocab until the advent of non-English speaking managers and players into the English/British game, and it still sounds kind of weird coming out of the mouth of, say, Sean Dyche rather than Arsene Wenger. I want to say it was Dutch players who I first noticed doing this but can't be certain.