The Wisdom of Gaffers

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.