The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders

by Carson, Mike

  Sir Alex Ferguson as much as anyone embodied this principle of central authority over the last 26 years at Old Trafford. ‘I always remember starting at Manchester United. [Chairman] Martin Edwards said to me that the guiding principle of our football club is that the manager is the most important person at Manchester United. Everything is guided by what the manager thinks. There has never been an occasion in my time that the board has overruled the manager at any point on how you control the football club.’ His great peer and rival in north London, Arsenal’s Arsène Wenger, goes a step further. ‘I don’t think it can be the future of the manager to have no control, because the quality of the manager is basically determined by the quality of his control. How can you judge a manager if it is not for the fact that he controls the club? I believe that the manager is a strong guide inside the club. His players must have the feeling that as well as establishing authority, he has complete control. If the manager is not the most important man at the football club, then why do we sack the manager if it doesn’t go well?’

  Whatever the model of governance in a football club, the manager is invariably the pivotal figure. Hodgson feels the same responsibility applies to the manager of national teams: ‘Managing a national side brings its own challenges. The most obvious one is that I’m not with the players on the training field every day. I see them less often, and I have a wider selection pool [it’s not about affordability]. My other big challenge, though, is the different demands on my time. I have time between matches, of course – the question is how best to use it. I like to give of myself and of my coaching experience to the federation and the country. I believe I should be involved in helping all interest groups through coaching schemes and programmes designed to produce coaches for the future.’

  Whatever is going on – selection, injury, high achievement, low achievement, rumour – chairman, players, media and fans turn to him to make sense of it all. And not only is the manager key to the business success of the club – but as Hodgson points out, his influence can extend a long way beyond the current team: ‘The manager’s philosophy, if sufficiently clear and powerful, will filter down not only to his team, but also to other teams at all levels within his club’s structure – and it might actually impregnate the whole club for a long, long period. We’ve seen lots of examples in the past of iconic football managers whose philosophy has actually led to the club adopting a certain style of football and projecting a particular image that the club itself is very proud of. This is true of iconic leaders everywhere, of course – great military leaders, great business leaders or political leaders whose character and philosophy can have a lasting effect on one or more nations.’ Managers who started out as football coaches now find themselves at the very heart of a complex business. The coach has become a leader.

  Gérard Houllier reinforces the point: ‘There was a time when clubs thought that winning on the pitch was enough. Now times have changed and you need to win off the pitch as well – by which I mean commercially. If the commercial aspect works, the club generates good revenues, and from that flow better facilities, better staff, better players and then again better revenues for the club. Then it’s important that the technical part is there too – and this is also based upon very good human relationships. I think that a good club is a club that looks after its players, looks after its people, looks after its employees, its staff and everything. Its human atmosphere is to me the foundation for success. And it is the manager who is at the centre of that.’ The familiar lesson of putting people first translates directly to organisations in just about every sector and industry; the leader who can focus on his people even in the whirlwind of wider stakeholder relationships is set up for success.

  The Man in the Chair

  ‘The single most important thing for a manager is the relationship with the owner of the football club.’ So says Tony Pulis, former manager of Stoke City. Is this simply a case of ‘The man who pays the piper calls the tune’? Or is it that the owner has the potential to disrupt the smooth running of the club? Either way, if the manager can win the trust of the owner, then he will be given the space and resources to pursue his philosophy. If not, then the owner is likely to intervene. It is, after all, his club. If the authority of the manager is tested, then it is his relationship with the chairman/owner that will most likely present the greatest challenge.

  The rise of the powerful owner

  The acquisition of Chelsea in 2003 by Roman Abramovich triggered across a decade a series of high-profile football club takeovers. The emergence of Manchester City as a new footballing power in Europe has been driven by the Abu Dhabi United Group led by Sheikh Mansour. Similar investments by high-net-worth individuals have taken place at Paris St Germain, Malaga and elsewhere. Other clubs in the Premier League, while not in the hands of a single individual, are owned by large organisations led by salient people. These owner-chairmen control the flow of funds around the club, including all that is needed for transfers and salaries. Sir Alex Ferguson represents many who have genuinely mixed feelings: ‘In England, you had a generation of people who were fans who stood in the stand, and when they became successful their dream was to buy the club. That period looks to have gone and has been replaced by a generation of people coming in with different motivations. With some of them it is to make money, with some it is for the glory. To have more money in the league is good because you want to be the strongest league in the world. But it is very important that the structure of the game is not destroyed and that the pressure on salaries does not become ridiculous because the inflation pressure of too much money coming in at one time can be very destabilising for the players. For example, if a player is paid 1 and then is offered 5 somewhere else, he may want to stay but want 3. So then you go from 1 to 3, and the direct consequence is that all the other players go up as well – so it puts a huge pressure on the club’s resources.’

  As Sir Alex points out, huge sums of money can be destabilising. Yet, for the managers working with the investment, there is clearly enormous potential to create something special. Carlo Ancelotti describes enjoying the great freedom provided by the new owners at Paris St Germain: ‘The owner recently bought the club and they are changing everything. They changed 12 players. They have good ambition. We have to build a team, and the club want to be competitive in Europe. This is a very good challenge. The owner is young, very ambitious, very calm, not afraid or worried if you don’t win a game; he is looking forwards. They are very focused on their objective – to be competitive in the future. This is difficult to explain to the media, because the media are thinking if we don’t win there is no future. The first season’s objective was to play in the Champions League. Then, in the summer, to buy some players to increase the quality of the team, to invest money for the next five years and to build the new training ground. The objective is very, very clear. If we win or don’t win it doesn’t matter. This is rare, and I hope that they will stay focused in this way.’ At PSG Ancelotti and his club’s owners achieved something important, which culminated in PSG winning the French Ligue 1 title at the end of Ancelotti’s second season in charge: a truly shared vision, shared responsibility for delivering on that vision, and clarity around what success looks like. For a leader, this is extremely empowering. Because he has both clarity and trust, he can pursue his philosophy with confidence, and without looking over his shoulder. This gives purpose and stability to the organisation as a whole.

  Roy Hodgson, while acknowledging the shift in nature of the high-profile, high-net-worth owner/chairmen of today, makes two significant observations. First, it remains a relationship game; and second, the onus – at least initially – is on the owner to get it right. ‘In the past the chairman of a football club would be a local figure, a local businessman who would have been brought up with that club and had the club in his blood. But he had the capacity to have a good, bad or indifferent relationship with his appointed manager – just like any owner today. That hasn’t changed. This is all a
bout personalities, the personality of the owner and of the manager/coach. What has changed is the scale of wealth some owners bring. But if they are going to have success with their club, they must choose their manager very wisely, work with him and give him the support he needs. They will only get success for themselves through success of the team, and success for the team is going to come through the man who leads and manages the players. He is the one who will mould the team, i.e. bring the right players to the club and coach them to play in a way that brings success.’

  So the powerful owner is very much a part of modern football, and he has a great influence on the game. But to be successful, he needs a manager who can share his vision, convey it with clarity and passion, take ownership for outcomes and deliver on all his professional responsibilities in the face of enormous expectation.

  Agents

  The nature of the chairman himself is not the only evolution of the last 20 years. Harry Redknapp believes that, for managers, the rise of the player’s agent is threatening not only the sacred bond between them and their players, but also the critical stability of their relationship with the chairman. ‘If a player had a problem, he would come and see the manager and speak to the manager: “Why aren’t I playing, gaffer? I think I should be in the team. What am I doing wrong? Why don’t you give me a chance?” But they don’t come and see you any more. Instead, the agents ring the chairman and complain that you aren’t picking their player! Very, very few players knock on your door – they all go through their agent now. So agents build relationships with chairmen, not managers. They aren’t silly, they know that the chairman owns the club and that managers come and go. This can be very undermining – and it’s happening all the time. More and more chairmen are choosing players in the transfer window. In the past, players were chosen and the chairman wouldn’t know anything until the player arrived! It’s very different now.’ It’s in this climate that the critical relationship between manager and chairman needs to stay watertight.

  When it all works

  The owner-manager relationship is absolutely critical and can create or destroy a club’s chances of success. Gérard Houllier tells how it can have a direct impact on team performance: ‘I remember one specific moment when I came to a club part way through a season. I wondered after a few months if maybe the team was not clicking, or maybe the players were not playing for me. Particularly in the Barclays Premier League, the players play for the manager in some ways, so I thought that maybe because I had changed a few things they were not playing for us. So I went to the board and I explained that maybe we have to take some action. One of the board members stood up and said, “Well Mr Houllier. We don’t have the best quality in the world, but there are two qualities we do have: patience and trust. We are patient and we will trust you do what you have to do.” So when I left the board I went to my staff and I said, “Now we are going to start winning,” and we won. Because the more the board trusts you, the more assertive and the more strong you will be in your management.’ This is an excellent example. Martin O’Neill agrees: ‘The owner–manager relationship is of paramount importance and I don’t believe that can be underestimated.’ Above all others, this relationship can be the most painful one for managers.

  Pain

  For Neil Warnock, the pain comes most of all from not being understood. ‘I said to Amit Bhatia [QPR Director] when I left, “You don’t really know what I’ve done at the club.” I don’t think people understand what managers do. Yes, they are managers, but they are also fathers, brothers and friends to everyone at the club. The way QPR is run I was actually sort of Mother Superior to everybody, the cleaner included. I made everybody feel important and that’s not easy to do. No disrespect, but you don’t get that from a university. You can’t put what we do behind the scenes into qualifications.’

  And once the relationship between the manager and the chairman-owner is broken – as with many other relationships – it is hard to rebuild. Warnock says: ‘I always work better when I work for one person who I trust totally. I have fallen out with a few chairmen in my career, but I only fell out with them when they lied to me. Once I felt that I’d lost trust in them, then I might as well have left. Once somebody lies to me or I lose trust in them, then I can never be committed to that same person again. When I left Sheffield United, the chairman – a friend of 17 years, I thought – came out and said on reflection he should have probably changed the manager. I had known this guy for 17 years and I rang him immediately and asked him why he said it. He said he was misquoted and he didn’t mean to say anything like that. I told him I had heard it on the radio.’

  The pain that comes from lack of appreciation and recognition is a significant challenge to managers. Many simply find they have to protect themselves. Sam Allardyce says: ‘What happened at Blackpool taught me never to be sentimental and always get out when you’re ready. I thought if I can get sacked by losing in the play-offs ... The year I took over, the club had finished fourth from bottom, just stayed up, the first year we finished 11th, the second year we finished third in the play-offs. We missed out on automatic promotion by a couple of points, we got beaten in the play-offs and I got sacked. So I said to myself if I got back into management I would never stay when it was the right time for me to leave. I wouldn’t get emotionally involved in the football club and get talked into staying. And I played that out at Bolton and Notts County.’

  So pain doesn’t happen only with the high-profile clubs and their high-profile owners. Allardyce is more concerned about the young managers trying to make it work in the lower leagues: ‘Some of the conflict I have had with owners and chairmen – it made you want to leave as quick as you could. I had to put up with it because I was making my way in management. It was brutal. Most managers still suffer the same now: the brutality, the bullying, the interference, the threats. It’s a cruel and hard, hard world trying to make your way up as a manager. You come through that, you generally end up being a good leader.’

  As with most high-profile relationships in business, politics or sport, the one between football chairman and manager is at the same time combustible and essential. Many will become strong; some never will. All require mutual commitment and effort to make them work – and a basic acknowledgement that both parties are human beings, often caught up in the emotion of the game.

  Stability ...

  Across the domains of club finance, governance and personal experience, the chairman can create either stability or instability for the manager and the club. Tony Pulis speaks enthusiastically of a relationship that fuelled the unexpected rise of Stoke City: ‘My relationship with owner Peter Coates was paramount to everything that we achieved. He trusted me and I trusted him. Being a local Stoke businessman Peter was massively important to our progress. He had a dream to put Stoke City back on the map but to do it in a way that also brought the community closer to the football club.’

  Howard Wilkinson contrasts his experiences as manager of Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds. ‘Sheffield Wednesday were fifth or sixth in the First Division when I was approached by Leeds, who were at the bottom of the second. The board at Sheffield Wednesday had dragged the club from the brink. But we got to the point when I said, “We need to invest now – I can’t keep squeezing juice out of these oranges. All the juice has gone. They just can’t come back next season and produce it again and again. We need to get better players.” And they said, “Howard, you know what our policy is – we can’t go down that road.”

  ‘When Leeds approached me, I met the chairman three or four times. Every time I met him it was a long meeting because I saw at Leeds the opportunity to go to a one-club town, with a chairman who was backing things with his own money. My message to him was, “I’ll come here if at the end of this long conversation you say yes. So it’s not me that’s going to say yes – you say yes.” So I put to him what I wanted to do and what I thought they could do. And it sounds ludicrous now, but the first part was five years and the second part
was another five years and included everything – being promoted, winning the league, starting up an academy and so on. So by the time I’d got to that point I was starting to have very clear ideas about how I thought a successful club could be run. And he said yes. That was the start of an experiment, funded by him, which worked.’ This rare example of a vision set for the long term and faithfully executed over the long term lent unusual stability to the club.

  Sharing a long-term vision is a sure-fire way to secure a long-term relationship – and, with it, stability for your organisation or team. Former Newcastle United and Manchester City manager Kevin Keegan will never forget the inspirational phone call he took in Marbella from Sir John Hall at Newcastle United, who said: ‘The two men who can save this club are talking to each other now.’ Pulis found similar inspiration. ‘I had just finished the season managing Plymouth Argyle and was really enjoying it there. I was on holiday with my family when Peter Coates phoned me. He said to me, “I’m going to buy Stoke, but I will only buy it on one condition ... if you come back with me.” He described his vision for Stoke to me and what he thought the club could achieve if it was run properly throughout. A good few years before I was at the club the first time around, Peter hadn’t been treated very well by certain sections when he had been chairman. So I thought if he’s got the guts to do this then I should have the guts as well. In reality we were two really unpopular figures returning to the club – but I felt what he had outlined to me as the way forward made so much sense.’