‘I had to put everyone on edge’ – how managers make an impact

I’ve talked a lot in this column about all the different work a manager does in trying to build everything you need in place at a club to be successful, but this week I want to talk about what happens around a game itself – before, during and afterwards.

For me, preparation for any game always started two hours after the one I had just managed.

My drive home to the south coast on a Saturday night after a game could take three hours or more, and much of that would be spent on the phone while I had precious quiet time.

When I was at Stoke City, my chairman Peter Coates would always speak to me then if we lost. If we’d won, he never bothered, knowing I wouldn’t need comforting.

Win or lose, however, I would always ring my assistants, David Kemp and Gerry Francis, and we would discuss the game in finer detail – away from the stadium to give us a different perspective.

Then I would contact my chief scout, who would have been at our next opponent’s game, for a quick run-down of what he had seen – their shape, patterns, strength, weaknesses and any injuries.

By the time I arrived home then, whatever our result, I would have my dinner on a tray in front of the TV, while watching a recording of our opponent’s games, which I could get downloaded.

The players’ week is always scheduled around the next game too. Monday was a light training session with the players who played on Saturday, and a debrief in a match-related game versus the reserves.

Throughout my managerial career, I always wanted to show people I worked with what I wanted, and we would go through positives and negatives from Saturday live on the pitch.

If they needed it clarified then, whatever it was, it was sorted out in a game-related session on the grass. The players who hadn’t started on Saturday stayed out afterwards, and had a much tougher morning.

This kind of work was always vital to me for us to get things right the following Saturday. Whether it was at Stoke, Crystal Palace or West Brom, I always recognised each team’s strengths, and we all needed to be aware of the team’s identity.

Yes, at each of those clubs we took different routes to get to our objective, but the aims – and challenges – were the same.

Having that clear identity and also a system that suits your players is paramount to success, but as a manager you also have to be confident and brave in leading and directing your strong personal views.

Players will always test you, but will respect clarity and leadership if it stands firm under pressure. The reason I am mentioning this now, in respect to game days, is because it matters the most then.

The best example I can give is in the week before games against the very top teams I went overboard trying to exude confidence in my team and my tactics.

After a full week of working on every player – drilling into each individual the understanding of their role in the team and how it would affect everything if he did not carry it off – I would then set about the ways we could hurt the opposition.

Obviously set-plays have now become a byword for how teams can do that successfully, but that was the case before me and it is the same now I have retired.

As well as attacking set-plays, defending them was something else we would work on. Whether it was in attack or defence, every individual knew his own personal challenge.

On the Saturday, I would turn up for a home game at about 11am, and in my early years I would also train myself before games.

At this stage, with only a few hours to go until kick-off, I would run through everything again and wait until the lads started to arrive. Once they were all settled, I would have a quick chat – nothing too rousing! – and then leave the dressing room.

Once the opposition teamsheet arrived, about 75 minutes before kick-off, I would check our markers against their players – this was important because I always man-marked!

I would take that board into our dressing room, and out I would go again, until they arrived back from their warm-ups. Everything said from then on until the players left to start the game was confidence filling, with no negatives at all.

The actual team talk itself and the last things you said to the players could be very different depending on the occasion. It was not always me who gave it, either.

Again at Stoke, I got Ricardo Fuller up to speak right before our FA Cup semi-final against Bolton at Wembley in 2011.

Ric was such a great character and also a player with exceptional ability. Unfortunately he was injured and out of the game but he delivered a once-in-a-lifetime speech to the team, quoting Nelson Mandela.

We won the game 5-0 and to this day I am sure Ric believes his speech drove the lads to that famous result. The players would all tell you it certainly got them going.

It just shows you that the way to succeed in football management is not set in stone. You need tremendous resilience, yes, but also many more human strings to your bow.

In my early years at Stoke, we were always the underdogs, and the atmosphere was off the charts, never mind who we played.

As time went by and we became established, teams coming to Stoke were much more prepared for the experience, and our supporters became less reliant on our underdog status and rightly so.

To make up for this I began to use more psychological methods to generate the atmosphere in the dressing room that would help motivate the players.

That might mean mentioning recent comments or coverage that was negative towards us, or even bringing up stuff I had remembered from our early days at the club – anything that criticised us in any shape of form, that I knew would generate a positive response from the lads.

What you say at half-time is important too.

I would always get two or three main points over about how the match was going, but you have to be careful what you say and do because the break can dramatically change the whole flow of the game.

I’ve watched my team be really on it in the first half, then completely lose control of the game inside the first five minutes of the second half – and vice versa.

It’s something all managers and coaches must be wary of, and I certainly was.

I often tell the story of how Stoke were once 2-0 up at Blackburn at half-time and, as they were walking off the pitch, I just got a feeling a bit of complacency was setting in with our lads, who were patting each other on the back.

So, I decided to liven the dressing room up and picked on my captain Ryan Shawcross, who – by the way – had been absolutely outstanding that half. I gave him both barrels, and that left everyone extremely shocked.

The second half came and went with us seeing the game out and getting a deserved victory, but Ryan came to see me on the Monday – he was still pretty upset and did not know what had happened.

I explained my reasons – I knew Blackburn boss Sam Allardyce would be after a big response from his lads in the second half, so to compensate for that I had to put everyone on edge.

As a manager, you can obviously change things when the game is going on too.

When I started in management, there was only one substitute permitted, but today you can change five players.

That’s half of the outfield team that have started the game so, with squads so large now too, then it certainly can be a massive help to the coach.

I look at the top teams’ benches now and sometimes I can’t believe the quality on there, which is something else that has changed in the past 30 years.

Making changes is always a pre-meditated option. Yes, I have taken players off for playing poorly, because we needed to hold on to a lead or were desperately trying to claw a goal back, but most of the time you have still got a plan.

As I’ve mentioned before when I talked about scouting players, the game has moved on to such an extent in the past 30 years that computers play a big part now in providing you with information.

It is the same during today’s games too, to the extent computers on the side of the pitch can release certain data that can have an effect on a manager’s thinking, either around individuals for substitutions or overall team analysis.

I always trusted my own eyes, though. Although I have seen some fantastic advancements made with team analysis and individuals’ live game data, I always backed my experience and judgement.

Of course those decisions can have a huge impact if you get them right. I listen now to some commentators drooling over substitutions that change games, and what a genius the manager was to make those changes.

Well, I have had those plaudits myself but, if the truth be known, I had picked the wrong XI to start with.

Immediately after full-time, I was always quick to move on, whatever the result.

I would always explain to the players on Monday if I needed to get things off my chest about their performances.

It is always the manager who gets more of a grilling at full-time – many questions always followed the end of each Premier League fixture, with the agenda driven by the result.

As a manager, you are thrust almost immediately into the jaws of our unforgiving media and questions about tactics, substitutions and your team’s overall performance are fired at you, sometimes under severe pressure.

Obviously the more damning investigations are aimed at the losing team’s manager, where it is more than likely the questions are preordained.

For the winner, there are plaudits – but whatever the outcome, you have to think forwards not back.

I was soon back in my car and heading home… thinking about the next match.