After United got beaten at Norwich in November 2012, out of courtesy I had to show my face in their manager’s room. Chris Hughton was gracious enough, but the room was packed with people celebrating their win. I did not want to show any weakness, so I put on a good face and listened to what they had to say–particularly about the players they were singling out for praise. I just remembered all their names and made a mental note to put everyone on our radar screen.
Looking back further, I remember another critical piece of advice. In 1983, when Aberdeen–the team I managed between 1978 and 1986–were due to play Real Madrid in the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup in Gothenburg, I invited Jock Stein to accompany us. Jock was one of my heroes and was the first British manager to win the European Cup in 1967, when Celtic beat Inter Milan. Jock said two things that I have never forgotten. First, he told me, ‘Make sure you are the second team on the ground for training on the day before the game because then your opponents will think you are watching them while they work.’ He also advised me to take along a bottle of Macallan whisky for Real Madrid’s manager, the great Alfredo Di Stéfano. When I gave Di Stéfano that bottle, he was really taken aback. It made him think that we were in awe of him–that he was the big guy and that little Aberdeen felt they were beaten already. I’m glad I listened to Jock because both his tips helped.
Later, when I worked for Jock as assistant manager of Scotland, I used to pepper him with questions about tactics and dealing with management issues. He was as close to a managerial mentor as I ever had, and I would soak up almost everything he had to say. Jock used to advise me never to lose my temper with players straight after the game. He kept saying, ‘Wait till Monday, when things have calmed down.’ It was sound advice; it just didn’t happen to suit my style. Nonetheless, it is no coincidence that in my office in Wilmslow the largest photograph on the wall is of Jock Stein and me, before the Wales v Scotland game on 10 September 1985–the night he died.
There is one final example that comes to mind: Jimmy Sirrel, who was manager of Notts County and an instructor on a coaching course I attended in 1973 at Lilleshall, one of the United Kingdom’s National Sports Centres, taught me a crucial lesson. He told me never to let all the players’ contracts expire around the same time because it allows them to collude against the manager and the club. I’d never thought about that before Jimmy mentioned it to me but, afterwards, I paid very close attention to making sure we staggered the contracts. I bet Jimmy’s advice took him less than a minute to convey, but the benefit of listening to him lasted me a lifetime. It just shows that advice often comes when you least expect it, and listening, which costs nothing, is one of the most valuable things you can do.
Watching
Watching is the other underrated activity, and again, it costs nothing. For me there are two forms of observation: the first is on the detail and the second is on the big picture. Until I was managing Aberdeen and hired Archie Knox as my assistant manager, I had not appreciated the difference between watching for the tiny particulars while also trying to understand the broader landscape. Shortly after he arrived at Aberdeen, Archie sat me down and asked me why I had hired him. The question perplexed me, until he explained that he had nothing to do since I insisted on doing everything. He was very insistent, and was egged on by Teddy Scott, Aberdeen’s general factotum, who agreed with him. Archie told me that I shouldn’t be conducting the training sessions but, instead, should be on the sidelines watching and supervising. I wasn’t sure that I should follow this advice because I thought it would hamper my control of the sessions. But when I told Archie I wanted to mull over his advice, he was insistent. So, somewhat reluctantly, I bowed to his wishes and, though it took me a bit of time to understand you can see a lot more when you are not in the thick of things, it was the most important decision I ever made about the way I managed and led. When you are a step removed from the fray, you see things that come as surprises–and it is important to allow yourself to be surprised. If you are in the middle of a training session with a whistle in your mouth, your entire focus is on the ball. When I stepped back and watched from the sidelines, my field of view was widened and I could absorb the whole session, as well as pick up on players’ moods, energy and habits. This was one of the most valuable lessons of my career and I’m glad that I received it more than 30 years ago. Archie’s observation was the making of me.
As a player I had tried to do both–paying attention to the ball at my feet whilst being aware of what was happening elsewhere on the field. But until Archie gave me a finger wagging, I had not really understood that, as a manager, I was in danger of losing myself to the details. It only took me a handful of days to understand the merit of Archie’s point, and from that moment I was always in a position to be able to zoom in to see the detail and zoom out to see the whole picture.
As a manager you are always watching out for particular things. You might be monitoring a player in training to see if he has shaken off a thigh injury; appraising a promising 12 year old in the youth academy; looking at a hot prospect in a night game at some stadium in Germany; examining the demeanour of a player or coach at the lunch table. You could also be searching for patterns and clues in a video analysis reel, the body language during a negotiation, or the length of the grass on a pitch. Then, on Saturday afternoons or Wednesday evenings, there would be the need for the other, wider lens–the one capable of taking in the whole picture.
It sounds simple to say you should believe what your eyes tell you, but it is very hard to do. It is astonishing how many biases and preconceived notions we carry around, and these influence what we see, or, more precisely, what we think we see. If I was told by a scout that a player had a good left foot, it would be hard for me to forget that observation when I went to watch him in action–and in doing so it would be easy to overlook another quality or, much more painfully, ignore a major fault. I was certainly interested in what other people had to say, but I always wanted to watch with my own eyes without having my judgement swayed by the filters of others.
Here is one observation from which I benefited for decades. In 1969 West Germany were training at Rugby Park in Kilmarnock and I asked Karl-Heinz Heddergot, of the German FA, for permission to watch the practice. The only people in the ground were the German players and staff, a few groundsmen, and me. I watched the training for around an hour and a half. The German squad played without goalkeepers, and just concentrated on possession of the ball, which was unusual during a period when coaches used to emphasise training sessions composed of long-distance running. That one encounter made an enormous impression on me, and thereafter I started to emphasise the importance of possession. As soon as I became a coach at St Mirren, I started doing ‘boxes’–where we’d pit four players against two in a confined amount of space. We started with boxes that were 25 yards by 25 yards, which forced the players to perform in a confined space and improve their ball skills. As players’ skills improved, we tightened the boxes. It helped with everything: awareness, angles, touch on the ball, and eventually it led to being able to play one-touch football. It was a coaching technique I used right up until my last training session at United on 18 May 2013. Watching that practice for 90 minutes in Kilmarnock back in 1969 furnished me with a lesson I used for half a century.
Observation–sizing up others and measuring situations–is an essential part of preparation, and, at United, we made it a habit to carefully watch opponents before going up against them in big games. This was even more important in the era prior to sophisticated video analysis, when the best we could do was fast forward or rewind through a videotape. One example of this paying off was in United’s 1991 European Cup Winners’ Cup final against Barcelona. It was the first European final to be played by an English team following the ban from European competition after the Heysel disaster of 1985. I had attended Barcelona’s semi-final first leg against Juventus with Steve Archibald, a former Aberdeen player, during which their main striker, Hristo Stoichkov, was
hugely impressive and scored two goals. In the second leg in Turin he suffered a hamstring injury that ruled him out of the final. It played havoc with their normal formation. During the final they relied on Michael Laudrup to be their chief offensive weapon, driving forward from midfield which, thanks to watching Barcelona previously, we had anticipated. We had already adjusted our tactics, steadfastly refused to be lured too far forward by Laudrup, and eventually won 2–1.
There were also plenty of times when I saw a player out of the corner of my eye who came as a complete, but pleasant, surprise. In 2003 I had gone to watch a young Petr Čech play in France. Didier Drogba, whom I had not heard of, was playing in the same game. He was a dynamo–a strong, explosive striker with a true instinct for goal–though he ultimately slipped through our fingers. That didn’t happen with Ji-sung Park. I had gone to get the measure of Lyon’s Michael Essien in the Champions League in 2005 during their quarter-final ties with PSV Eindhoven, and saw this ceaseless bundle of energy buzz about the field like a cocker spaniel. It was Ji-sung Park. The following week I sent my brother, Martin, who was a scout for United, to watch him, to see what his eyes told him. They told him the same thing and we signed him. Ji-sung was one of those rare players who could always create space for himself.
These were very special moments. I always enjoyed stumbling across a new talent when I was least expecting it. Very rarely do you see something so astonishing that you sense it arrived from another world (though Eric Cantona, at his very best, could have done so). These moments–and players–are the reward for a lifetime of careful watching. None of them suddenly dropped into our lap; they were the result of keeping our radar operating 24 hours a day.
Reading
I have picked up a lot from reading books over the years. As a boy I disappointed my parents by not working hard enough at school (largely because I was already besotted by football), so my formal education ended when I was 16. But I’ve always liked reading. In fact I was in the library in Glasgow on 6 February 1958 when I heard about the Munich air disaster. I’ve subscribed for many years to the Daily Express during the week and the Scottish Sunday Mail and Sunday Post, the Sunday Express and Independent on the weekends. I’ve also been partial to the Racing Post, which keeps me up to date on horse racing. But, more importantly, I’ve always liked books.
My interest in books stretches far beyond football. One of the coaches I read about came from a sport about which I know nothing. He was the great UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, who led his team to ten national championship titles in 12 seasons. He was probably stronger as an inspirational coach than as a master of tactics, but there was no misunderstanding about who was boss. He would not tolerate any waywardness or people straying from the path he mapped out. I also read up on Vince Lombardi, who was a household name in the United States during the time he was the coach of the Green Bay Packers. He was as obsessed about American football as I was about English football. I found him easy to identify with and love his quote, ‘We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time.’
I have dipped into other books about management and leadership but, maybe because I was always so preoccupied with my own job, I never found one that spoke to me. The same goes for sports books and players’ biographies. For the most part, a United player’s autobiography was an account, albeit from a different angle, of something I had already lived through. I just found I preferred reading books that had little to do with my daily work. From time to time I tripped across other football books such as David Peace’s novel, The Damned Utd, a fictionalised account of Brian Clough’s 44-day spell as manager of Leeds United in 1974, but cannot say I found it captivating. However, I was taken by Farewell but not Goodbye, the autobiography of Bobby Robson, a man whom I admired greatly, who started his life down a coal-mine and who, after being fired as England manager after being one step short of the 1990 World Cup final, showed great courage by picking himself up and going to the Netherlands to manage PSV Eindhoven before later heading to Porto and Barcelona and, eventually returning to his hometown, Newcastle. Of the players’ autobiographies, the one I would single out is Gary Neville’s Red, which was published in 2011. It’s a thoughtful book and helps the reader understand the pressure on players and their need to succeed.
I don’t want to overplay this, but I found some observations in books about military history relevant to football. Every general has to learn the best time to attack and when it is better to be conservative. Oddly, this was reiterated by a training course I attended with the SAS, who explained how they mounted attacks by outflanking and diverting the enemy on either side and then launching a deadly assault down the middle. One year we took the whole United squad to the SAS training grounds in Herefordshire for a couple of days during a break in the season. They gave us a taste of everything–winching descents from helicopters, the shooting range, and simulated break-ups of hostage situations. The players loved it. One lesson I took from the SAS was the effectiveness of a battle formation, where troops attacking on the flanks create softness in the central defences. I took that lesson right to the training pitch where we worked on it for a week before a Liverpool game. I had players attacking the back post and the front post and then Gary Pallister came from right outside the centre of the box to score. In fact Pallister scored twice using precisely the same ploy. It could have been a re-enactment of a battle plan–except none of the TV commentators picked up on that.
I’ve always been interested in American history–both military and political–and I’ve read a fair amount about Abraham Lincoln and JFK, especially the value of taking your time before making decisions. I found Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln absorbing, while JFK’s careful approach during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is as fine an example of deliberate decision-making as you will find. I certainly found more virtue in patiently working towards the right decision as I got older. In my early days as a manager I could be impetuous–always in a hurry to get things done and stamp my authority on a situation. It takes courage to say, ‘Let me think about it.’ When you’re young you want to fly to the moon and you want to get there quickly. I think it’s usually enthusiasm that causes this. As you get older you temper your enthusiasm with experience.
I realise that we’re shaped by lots of other forces beyond just watching, listening and reading. We’re all accidental victims of our parents’ DNA; we are shaped by the luck of the draw, the circumstances in which we grew up and the education we received. But we all have two sets of very powerful tools that we completely control: our eyes and our ears. Watching others, listening to their advice and reading about people are three of the best things I ever did.
2
RECOGNISING HUNGER
Discipline
Discipline was drummed into me from an early age. My father was a real disciplinarian. He worked in shipbuilding, which was a hard and cruel business. He didn’t talk much. He could be stubborn and was a man of few words but he was very intelligent. He was self-educated, left school at 14, but read all the time. He wanted my brother and me to be trained in a craft and refused to let me become a professional footballer until after I had finished my apprenticeship as a tool-maker. He drummed discipline into us from an early age. On schooldays he would always shake my leg promptly at 6 a.m. He would also be out of the house at 6.45 a.m. on the dot because he liked to be at the yard when the gates opened. Maybe that’s why, a couple of decades later as a manager, I got into the habit of appearing for work before the milkman arrived. After I started being paid for playing football, I used to go out on Saturday nights. My father didn’t like that. He thought I was living life too well. I went about six months without talking to him. The two of us were too alike.
When I was 14 I started playing for Drumchapel Amateurs, which was the biggest amateur team in Scotland. It was run by Douglas Smith, a relatively wealthy man whose family owned a shipbreaking yard. He had an arrangement with Reid’s Tea Rooms i
n the centre of Glasgow so that boys could get a free lunch. He ran five teams–Under-18s, Under-17s, Under-16s, Under-15s and Under-14s. Every weekend he would take us down to his estate in Dunbartonshire, just outside Glasgow, walk us through his piggery and then make us play five-a-side games on his bowling green. He tensed up when one of his teams lost and would start sweating and get visibly angry. He had a great sense of discipline and a deep desire to win.
Discipline had been an issue from day one at St Mirren, which I managed between 1974 and 1978. When I first arrived, the local paper, the Paisley Daily Express, sent a photographer out to take a picture of the team with their new manager. The next morning I saw the photograph in the paper with Ian Reid, the player who had been the team captain, standing behind me with his fingers making a set of rabbit ears. After we lost our first game to Cowdenbeath, I called Reid into my office on the Monday morning. He said that his rabbit ears were only a joke and I told him, ‘It’s not the kind of joke I like.’ John Mowat was a good, young player who started answering back when I gave him instructions during a game. I put both Reid and Mowat in my black book. There was another player who told me that he couldn’t attend a training session because he and his girlfriend had tickets for a pop concert. I asked him whether the concerts were on every night of the year. When he said that wasn’t the case, I told him, ‘If you want to go to the concert, fine, but don’t come back.’ I just wanted to make it very clear to all the players that I did not want to be messed about with. They got the message.
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