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The English Schools Of Management

27th February 2008

Whilst I use 3 schools here it is all shades of grey in reality. Some managers in one situation will be led by goals which feed into strategies and thence tactics whilst in other situations they will become people who go game by game wedded to a belief in individual players.

I clearly prefer the thought out school but accept that sometimes you may wish to just bring the players together in a tight knit group or to allow individuals more responsibility and say in their role.

I could probably include a school of the truly poor managers but I'd prefer to concentrate on the serious guys who have had some success and draw out why many fail long term. In terms of manager with nothing discernable other than random comments in response to the last pin prick Peter Moores, England's cricket coach would seem to qualify with his truly make it up each day coaching - hard to know if the selectors are equally at fault. These types defy analysis but one look at McClaren will tell you they always go with what worked last and bow to big name players - they add nothing especially not the hunger to win.

• The Right Stuff School (Svennis, Ashton, Fletcher)

  The Right Stuff is what I call Duncan Fletcher's view of his ability to see beyond ability and select character. Yeah, right the man who picked Harm-less-son and Flintoff regardless of fitness or form or sobriety says he can look at someone and assess their fighting spirit. That Chris Read had none because he would not sledge! Yet many decent coaches, like Fletcher was at times, will narrow their options and place untold trust in a core of players. Replacements will know to do nothing to stand out and just try not to make mistakes in such a world.

  Svennis, Ashton, Fletcher and Bobby Robson did have limited success with all or several of these characteristics; a belief in certain players to the exclusion of others often on arbitary grounds; steady team selection - formations would change but not the players; an abundance of talent to choose from but often produced functional teams to limited game plans; bad press from people who found their public comments bordering on the dumb and uninformative; team having a key say in selection and tactics; seige mentality; players acting like an elite; obsessions on single words/phrases as somehow conveying ethos, goal, strategy and tactics - tempo, consistency of selection, partnerships, experience, character, pride, passion ad nauseum; repeating the same mistakes again and again; one size fits all approach to tactics and selection.

  This school can be quite good when bringing talented players together for short series or world cups when no clear plan currently exists or when things go badly wrong they don't change a great deal recklessly and hold the course - see 1990 world cup and 2007 Rugby World Cup.

  It tends to fail long term, or be plagued by inconsistency as the 1st XV/XI tends to get quite static and the squad hierarchical. It often leads to replacements being seen as performing the role of the person they replace - regardless of suitability or team need. Thus the first team almost becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. New players who are not naturally alpha males rarely get the time to adjust - thus talent is wasted.

  As assessment of players is not based on meeting a team need/ethos/strategy/tactics hence players who fail to produce are indulged to annoying proportions - Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Jonny Wilkinson, Phil Vickery, Steven Harmison, Andrew Flintoff, John Terry, Michael Owen, Andrew Strauss, David Beckham.... Often at their personal expense in terms of public perception.

  As certain players become fixtures and the media can focus on a definable fixed side so selection comes caught up in the media furore that dropping a Gerrard, Rooney, Wilkinson or a Flintoff would unleash. This leads to a sterile debate where every game is a referendum on a particular player or players. Thus Wilkinson continues to not be a part of an exciting back line for England makes 1 break against Italy and improves his goal kicking and the rest of us are expected to admit the 10 lousy performances prior are nothing! Apparently the rest of us are vanguished! No, I have no idea how.

  This school rarely leads to consistent success as the players who become fixtures have complacency set in. Where it really falls down is nothing motivates a player like the drop or real threat of it.

  Indeed when it really starts to decay is when the teams tactics and set up become geared to supporting the weakest star player. No top football club would line up to score through one player but England did with Michael Owen. Why do England rugby leave their wingers wide? So the only way we can score is a Wilkinson cross kick? So he has an excuse for continually trying drop goals?

  Probably the worst mistake in this kind of player centric management was the selection for the 2006 World Cup. Despite their poor performances in the 2 years prior and being injured Rooney and Owen were selected with only 1 reserve Peter Crouch. This was classic putting yourself in a position where you could do nothing more than select your favourites. 3 strikers would be fine if we were playing 451 but we were a 442 side which implies you take 4 or 5 to have cover and options with size and pace. In the end we went 451 and it was an abortion.

  This school tend to be quite popular with the popular press as their sides are predictable selection wise and the cod analysis can be used each time. Indeed after a few years you end up when the team is unsuccessful for a period with journalists criticising the manager but only making 1 change from his team as though such fine tuning can turn it around... See Sven Goren Eriksson.

  One also doubts that managers obsessed with a limited squad and finding rotation anathema are going to cope in the current Premier League, English club rugby or the increasingly crowded international cricket calendar. The increasing demands demand players stay fit and hungry and are given time off to re-charge - English cricket would rather wait for injuries which just makes its policies a mess. So I feel this approach has its limitations.

  Picking on the Swede again Sven Goren Eriksson reached 3 quarter finals. England got ahead in 2 games and the other was goal less i.e. a narrow margin of failure each time. You cannot help feel his preference for unfit, out of form, out of position name players was his down fall. The nadir being the most winnable tournament in 2004 where a distinctly unfit Beckham played and stayed on 120 minutes as Paul Scholes asthma, which should have ruled him out altogether lasted 65, and Gerrard's commitment to vodka had him off after 85 in a widthless and witless 4 central midfielder alignment in a tournament won by Greece. The coup de grace being Helder Postiga a total flop at Spurs equalised and he replaced Figo i.e. Scolari won because he picked what he had to do the roles he had, not his biggest names.

  I think this approach is what McClaren and Moores aim at but their lack of ability/insight of any sort means they just seem to be chasing what worked last. Their decisions and reasons end up contradicting over time as well. In cricket they drop Strauss as an opening batsmen as he is not good enough over a long period and then bring him back as a no 3 - classic preferring the person and the cut of his jib over logic i.e. we'll try Strauss rather than pick someone who might have earned a chance as of course Strauss is the right kind of person (note how that involves not looking at his 28 average over his last 15 or so tests!!!!).

• The Relentless Perfective (Woodward, Ferguson)

  Ferguson and Woodward as they showed managing the Scotland and the Lions respectively that when asked to manage for a short period of time they were not good. They built their reputations on the daily desire to get better. The remorseless demands and hunger to get better.

  Woodward said something once that instead of getting drunk when you won you should examine why you won more than why you lost (get drunk then). Ok that could be BS but it shows he looked at things all ways. He would also get the best coaches around to work under him. He would have visual coaches, psychologists, physios, defence coaches etc.

  Indeed we saw at Newcastle Sam Allardyce fail partly because in a short period of time he was no better than some bad signings he made. However at Bolton he brought in sports sciences and got the maximum out of often tired and broken cast offs like Kevin Davies, Campo, Djorkaeff, Diouf et al

  Arguably Ferguson's hunger is more raw and personal and he usually has a highly rated coach like Knox, Kidd, McClaren and latterly Queiroz on hand. Indeed when Carlos Queiroz disappeared to Madrid for a year he was not adverse to getting the sweats on himself.

  In many respects Ferguson is much like the Right Stuff Coaches only he will make changes and big changes before they are absolutely obvious to the media. He also understands when things are not working you change big components not the fringe players. Such that Beckham and RvN may have had productive years ahead of them but the team would develop better without them.

  These managers too get wedded to a set of players but one often finds that they and not the players have all the say. They are not attached to one player and tend to be successful long term because their teams are not built around things that may change like one player's form or fitness.

  If these managers have a flaw it is that when they do not have the horses their one size fits all approach can fail. Long term they can correct such flaws but in the short cycles of 2 years in international football or a Lions tour they can come up short.

  These managers work best by creating the platform for talented performers and by having a clear game plan that evolves without dramatic revolution.

• First Principals - Goal Driven (Gatland, Edwards, Mourinho)

  Everyone if asked has a goal. They can probably say how they hope to achieve that but their descriptions do not exactly correspond to problem, action and likely resolution. Ask McClaren how England would win in Croatia and we got 'Pride and Passion'. Ask him about his selection for Croatia at home and you get 'Experience'. One liners/single words for analysis and knowledge. Listen to Alan Hansen describe anything and it is either a list or a cliche or a string of cliches. This just annoys me as an analytical person I do not accept that vague statements that sound good but have no real information content is good enough.

  Whereas when Warren Gatland and Shaun Edwards began coaching Wales they clearly have an idea of how they want to win. They keep making changes to winning teams in search of more - the opposite to the Ashton approach. What they have clearly done is said our goal is obviously a winning Welsh team. The decided how they intend going about that in terms of the type of team (ethos) and then decided on how that translates in terms of training and selection (strategy) and finally the likely match tactics with further allowances no doubt for each opponent. They were saying they shocked the players with only one training session of 37 minutes carried out with a lot of intensity. A session aimed at achieving something specific not run for a set time. So even training is targeted to achieving the goals directly through backing up the match tactics and overall strategy. Not the 5 a sides of Kevin Keegan.

  A strength of the first principals approach is that because you know what you are trying to do and what components of the team need to do to meet that whole you can analyse performance at a deeper level than did he have a good game subjective judgements. For instance did our striker; keep the ball; make runs to make himself available for the ball; take defenders away and open space for others; hit the target with shots; the key is that they do what they should for your game plan to work.

  Look at players like Defoe and Anelka in football and it is easy to say when they score and don't score. Their effect on the flow of team play can easily be missed if you are not looking for something more from them. Yet until Chelsea bought Anelka as a stop gap when was the last time a top team bought a one dimensional goal scorer? Indeed Man United had jettisoned the goal every 4 or 5 strikes van Nistlerooy for the more like 1 in 10 from Wayne Rooney. Liverpool passed on Mickey Owen's return ending up with 3 times the price pace and size of Torres. Mourinho added Drogba who until last year had not threatened 20 goals (note how he gets 20 and the team goes backwards). Clearly some people assess a more holistic view of even front players.

  Jose Mourinho for 2 years organised his defense and rotated his wingers and front players. He aimed to have height all through the team and Chelsea aside from matching anyone in open play became very good at set pieces. It was eye opening to those of us used to the manager as merely a selector and shouter at of players. He talked about transition and practising moving from defense to attack and attack to defense. Chelsea would lose the ball and instantly form up a defensive shield. Nothing was left to chance.

  Mourinho turned up at Chelsea with a self written game plan. When he went for the England job he had a plan of what he would do. Ditto allegedly Barcelona this year.

  Even with an ethos one can fine tune thus a defensive side may decide to be come more attacking. So the ethos has changed; recruitment is to get players who suit the new strategy and ethos better; training is about maybe full back overlapping more; about breaking quicker; taking more risks.

  Take the best example of an ethos feeding through. Arsenal clearly determined that their best bet was to develop their own talent (cheaper). The manage to find times and games to play these players. Chelsea (Liverpool?) have apparently been stock piling young players yet they never get a chance and it is hard to see when they ever will when Chelsea will take so called free transfers like Sidwell, Ballack and Ben Haim and then 15 million for 29 year olds like Anelka whose career suggests overall they are not even a top class player. Or giving 5 year contracts to players you will not play like Paulo Ferreira (baffling).

  I am not sure this level of intense management would suit a premier league club over a long period. It is worth noting how often Capello moves and how Mourinho never appears to be anywhere for a long time. For instance last year was an abomination as Mourinho's need to justify Ballack and appease Abramovich over Shevchenko as well as seemingly trying to save his job led him to throw all logic/thinking out of the window. He chased 4 tournaments and wore his best players into the ground as the managers in our first section would. Mourinho gave up all his seeming strengths and just flogged his best players (many coming off the world cup) only to win 2 competitions his boss did not even care enough about to retain him beyond August.

  I do feel that in international football, rugby and test cricket where there are frequent breaks that a more structured and planned approach would be better than England currently use.

In addition I think there are generally good management techniques and bad. For instance look at Capello; no toys or phones; eat together and no one leave the table; no injured players near the squad; no consultation with the players. For those of us used to the individual player centric stuff of Brian Ashton, Sven Goren Eriksson and Duncan Fletcher where the coach and press have conspired to have a defined first team and made games referendums on declining players they decline to drop this is refreshing. I just don't know enough about how to categorise Capello yet, although would probably have him in the hungry manager camp with a bit of ethos thrown in! hey the categories are to make you think not to strait jacket people.

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