Being: Brendan – modern managers and our perceptions

IT is one of the greatest fallacies of sport that managers are not affected by form. Honestly, have you ever asked yourself the following question: ‘Do managers go through good and bad patches?’

Most of you will find you have not asked yourself this question. I hadn’t, up until I started writing about football a couple of years ago. I examined the factors that go into deciding the outcome of a football match and my research indicated the following:

First; without injuries taken into context, midfielders are most prone to a risk/glory of a dip/upsurge in form because their roles are largely ‘active’, in that they are responsible for creating complex geometric patterns on the field while taking into account equally complex trigonometry formed by other fellow attackers and opposition defenders.

This may answer why wingers (and by that logic wing-backs too) are perhaps the most hot- to-not properties in the modern game, followed by players-in-the-hole. Less so are box-to- box midfielders, whose briefs generally tend to be occupying larger, but narrower zones on the pitch. As we head into more defensive positions (defensive midfielders and centre-halves) mobility demands become less complex and it’s more about thwarting opposition by keeping strong defensive lines that colleagues can predict.

The second, more surprising discovery was that managers, referees and even linesman (oh that quaint old term!) have dips in form too, because ultimately, it boils down to one thing: the mind.

The mind: that’s where professional sport resides. From how focused your mind is on achieving peak levels of physical fitness (which will allow you to time that tackle instead of mistiming it) to how you deal with scoring goals (are you hungry enough to spend another season staying back after practice doing more one-on-one drills when you’ve just finished this one scoring 23?) to how you deal with positional play (so you were the fool who played their no. 9 onside. Now do you close your eyes through the post-game hairdryer and the match analysis, or do you take it on the chin and come back stronger the next day?)

The truth is somewhere in between.

When it comes to analysing managers’ performances, it seems fans see them either as controllers of a more sophisticated Football Manager-type software (or Fantasy EPL, or FIFA) or as someone who rules entirely through his human wisdom.

Take for example Harry Redknapp. Just because he is prone to the odd owl-like twitch and everyone says he is a ‘great man-manager’ doesn’t mean that he is tactically inept. As someone who would have overseen the growth of some of English football’s finest talent at Upton Park and resuscitated a sleeping North London giant, maybe it is time we understood that analytical nous deserved credit too. In that same vein, just because Arsene Wenger and Rafael Benitez may seem like those obsessing over hours and hours of tapes from the Romanian 3rd tier, does not mean they lack the human touch.

Be careful of appearance-based assumptions.
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Being: Judged

And that’s why, for most ‘part-time obsessive’s’, it is ultimately about perception, and unfortunately, from the moment he walked in the door, that damned Being: Liverpool ‘documentary’ has tainted Brendan Rodgers’ public image.

Brendan Rodgers is a modern manager just like any other. He isn’t naïve and understands that if he fails at Liverpool he probably won’t get a crack at another big club for a while. Like you, like me, he has his own methods of working.

Let me assure you he is not a messiah either, a Valeriy Lobanovskyi, a true warrior and statesman of his turf’s football.

As John Ritchie pointed out in his excellent column, Rodgers Learning Lessons, But Still Far From Rosy, from every angle but for goals conceded, this has been a better season than the last, and though 4th place will require a minor miracle, if 5th was achieved, would us fans be eating our hats? Would it ensure Champions League qualification the season after?

We don’t know. That is the hard truth.

If Rodgers shut up and didn’t say a word, fans would call him disconnected and someone who doesn’t care enough to be ‘one of us’. When he sounded genuine and enthusiastic, a lot of people called him a few unsavoury things. Maybe this hardening up is something he will learn in time. Alex Ferguson used to drive journalists and referees to Aberdeen railway station back in the day. I don’t think the city of Manchester has seen that version of him.

Which brings me to Jose Mourinho. Wherever he has found success, it has been founded on the principle of high-intensity team unity, tactical discipline, and most importantly, leaving before the kitchen gets too hot, because that kind of pressure can take a toll on a squad in the long run. If you’ve ever run a management unit you’ll know what I mean. The same is happening at Real now, and it did at Porto, at Chelsea and at Inter. Yet what is his public image? The winner, right? The Special One?

That, my friends, is how the likes of Brendan Rodgers should have conducted himself.

Because this soundbytes-and-snapshots society does not have room for that overexcited playground kid who has more talent than what it looks like from the outside. As Nietzsche said, “all things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

The naysayers have the power as long as Rodgers doesn’t get Champions League qualification.

Or solve world hunger. Even then…
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