A modern managers role is multifaceted. He needs to find the right balance to keep twenty-five highly tuned athletes pulling in the same direction, act as a councillor mediating through factions and fights in the camp which inevitably happens when charged up men are competing with and against each-other on the training ground.
He needs to massage brittle egos while developing a winning culture, handle the press and agents while quickly figuring out who to trust and who to keep at bay.
The psychological warfare in our game is something altogether different to the accepted norms of what it is to be involved in the game at the top level. Alex Ferguson uses his leverage with certain sections of the media to issue petty barbs to anyone who threatens his position on his perch. As far as we are concerned he attempted to bully Rafa back in April 2009 after Benitez made the somewhat unforgivable act of folding his arms when we scored against the repugnant Sam Allardyce’s Blackburn. Big Sam decided to take the moral high ground, as he does so regularly, by claiming it was “disrespectful and quite humiliating”.
With Rafa’s Reds flying high at the time in a title race with the Manc’s, Fergie saw his opportunity to pounce and not for the first time, he also took the time to mention a throwaway line which the Spaniard used against our closest neighbours adding fuel to the fire:
“Everton are a big club, not a small one which Benitez arrogantly said, But arrogance is one thing. You cannot forgive contempt, which is what he showed Sam Allardyce last weekend. When Liverpool scored their second goal he signalled as if the game was finished. I do not think Sam deserved that. Sam has worked so hard for the LMA [League Managers’ Association] and he’s had a weakened team. I just thought it showed contempt. In my experience no Liverpool manager has ever done that. It was beyond the pale.”
We all know what happened in the aftermath; Rafa’s departure from his normally measured and emotion free approach in the infamous press conference what he said was reported as a “rant” or a “meltdown” in some quarters. It was undeniable that our form suffered in the few weeks after this. I believe that this was coincidental and not a direct result of the storm in a tea cup which Fergie’s acolytes paid homage to this Sigmund Freund wannabe.
I find it funny that every time managers have a public spat, the victor is always the man who’s in charge of the winning team, like it has some direct consequence to what happens on the pitch. The only people who really believe its uses are the knee jerk reactors.
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I like to see our managers defending our players publically even if they admonish them privately. This was apparent when Kenny got unfairly treated after his defence of Luis Suarez last year. The Manchester United boss is like a dog with a bone with this one reiterating his unqualified view that the Uruguayan cost our former boss his job:
“I wasn’t surprised at Kenny leaving,” said Ferguson. “I think that the Suarez incident … John Henry has obviously looked at that and felt it wasn’t handled in the right way. It certainly wasn’t a nice thing to happen you know. I think that must have been part of it.”
If these comments seem uninformed to you, you are right. John Henry has come out publically to rubbish this pre-conception and excuse to throw another stone our way by explaining the true reason for the changing of the guard, explaining that poor league form was the sole reason for the Scotsman’s dismissal.
“The FA Cup would not have made any difference had he won it,” Henry said. “For us we were 17th over the second half of the season and Liverpool should not be in that position.
“I don’t place the blame on Kenny and assistant Steve Clarke but I think it was obvious to every fan that something was wrong and something needed to be done.”
We knew this already but it was nice for the rest of the conspiracy theorists to be informed.
Newcastle’s Alan Pardew has used the media in an attempt to take Andy Carroll off our hands on the cheap in his efforts to practice his own brand of psychology:
“[The Reading chairman] John Madejski used to say to me about certain players, ‘Just wipe your nose and move on’, and I think [Liverpool] are going to have to do that with Andy. I think it was obvious as soon as Brendan went into Liverpool that Andy’s time was going to have to be somewhere else.”
Presuming he knew what Rodgers would do with Carroll is a classic case of fishing for a reaction mainly from the Geordie striker, unsettling him further and coaxing him into returning home where he was once idolised and more recently ridiculed by his kin.
These types of comments are just empty soundbites when they fall on deaf ears which they seem to have on this occasion.
What do you think? Is there a place for mind games in football or are they just soundboard for the attention seeker?
Quotes courtesy of: The Daily Post, The Independant, The Daily Telegraph
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