‘Maybe I should have ignored Stoke City requests and why three weeks felt like three years’

‘Maybe I should have ignored Stoke City requests and why three weeks felt like three years’

Since my last column Stoke City have appointed their new manager Narcís Pelach who has had his first week in the job. I always find that first week interesting because when you go into a club you’re trying to gather as much information as you can.

For me, I would want to know how the previous managers worked. I want to know what his training was like. I want to know what some of the some of the challenges the players maybe had. There is all of the information you want to gather.

I would always go in to have a meeting with the staff and get into the training ground early to make sure I had my bearings if I had never been there before. You then have a meeting with the players, but I’d let them mill around for a little bit first. Essentially I would have two meetings that were quite different.

The one with the staff is you’re trying to make them feel like this is going to be a good fit and good fun, but everybody will work hard and trust each other. You’re going to try to create that instant buy-in straight away and often a lot of that is done with a view of them going to the players saying ‘look, this guy looks really good’.

Straight away you try to create that positive feeling and then you would go and see the players where I would be very clear on what I’m saying because I think they judge you instantly. They will be looking for any little weakness or spot things that they don’t like.

But I’d be very clear as this is how we’re going to play, this what we are here for and we will give you a clear style that will equate to the training. Usually, you get the lads nodding away as if to say this sounds great, but then come the caveats when you say this is what I need back, these are the non-negotiables and these are the standards you expect.

Sometimes you might go into a club where the managers have been really relaxed with players who might ask for days off here and that might be a problem that you want to nail early on. You have to be clear on how you work and and what you want out of that sort of relationship.

But there are times when you go to a club where there has been a little stress and pressure. I’ve done it before where you just chuck a few little things into meetings to get people to relax. I told a story years ago when one of my coaches at Birmingham City, Mark Sale, was given an ill-fitting suit.

He is 6ft 7in and I got him to walk into the meeting with the players while he was wearing it and I knew what was going to happen. Saley walks in and all the lads have burst out laughing. Honestly, Darren Randolph was still laughing midway through training so it was just a really easy way to diffuse a bit of tension. I just wanted to create a more relaxed atmosphere.

And maybe the players were thinking these could be good fun because you want players to enjoy what they’re doing as well as work hard. If you get results quite quickly, it’s so easy to then build confidence. When I first went into Stoke it was a funny one. I had four or five weeks over the summer but we struggled to get the staff in until the last minute. Some of them were frustrated because they hadn’t got their deals done and so there were few things that put you on the back foot a little bit.

I think the challenge was there were all sorts of agents ringing up saying this player doesn’t want to be there, this player has been promised this or the the previous manager told me I can leave. But Stoke was just a very challenging environment where I turned around to one of the staff after about three weeks of pre-season and said I feel like I’ve been here three years because of the challenges after the club was relegated from the Premier League.

Sometimes you look back and say maybe, because I was so desperate for success, that I should have taken a backward step and managed that situation differently so I’m not saying that that was all down to the club or the players. A lot of it was me going to a different environment, the pressure was different and when all those players came knocking on the door wanting to leave, maybe I should have just ignored them and tried to get through the window with the Premier League players in the squad still there. But hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Derby search for investment is a good move

History is littered with stories where you see so many owners coming in to save clubs when there is a distinct threat there might not be one. I don’t know how close Derby County got to that stage, but it felt as though David Clowes came in at the right time. However, it is one thing saving a club to then actually being promoted.

I’m sure that was part of what Derby hoped for and Paul Warne has done a fantastic job getting the team up from League One into the Championship. Now, all of a sudden, it costs a lot more money because you’re in a whole new division where some of the spending is significantly high. The TV money is worth around £9m which helps, but when you look at the average playing budget in the Championship, it’s probably around £15m to 16m.

That TV money doesn’t even touch the sides of a decent squad let alone a sensational one in the Championship. It’s great that the owner is looking for investment because it means he wants the club to move forward. That’s the first thing I would say looking from the outside.

It looks like he wants the club to move forward and perhaps understands it’s going to need money to do so. What most owners don’t want to do is be in a position where they’re just spending their own money and forking out millions after millions trying to get somewhere.

That’s because, as we know in football, it has an uncanny way of sapping people’s money without getting an awful lot back for it. From a manager’s perspective, what you’re always doing is you’re looking at how you can take the club forward. And there are times when you’ll be saying maybe we need to pay £2m to £3m on a striker for instance.

It might be you need to pay £16,000-17,000 a week rather than £12,000 for the next player and that’s just me throwing some numbers out there. And sometimes it’s not even players. You might want extra members of staff who you feel can improve your off-field support.

At Millwall, for example, we would have to try to move a club forward in terms of the facilities. In Derby’s case, you might want something that’s an additional cost to help the recovery of the players or analysis. Most managers want more and you want a little bit extra. Can we have this? Can we have that? That’s my experience but it costs money as we know and that’s why football club ownership is not a cheap hobby. It’s also a thankless one too at times.

But in this instance, I think it’s a very positive situation for Derby in the fact the owner wants to wants to try to get outside investment to help. That, allied with the results on the pitch and the start to the season by the team in a difficult division, means it is very positive at the moment.

But looking at the overall picture, there are instances when owners buy football clubs and they don’t want to own it for the next 10 years. I am of the mind that as long as the club’s in a much better position then everybody would be grateful. Generically speaking, if you’ve saved your club, I don’t think anyone would begrudge you from making a few quid out of it and maybe moving on or getting someone outside to get it to the next level.

But there’s a lot of goodwill because of what David Clowes has done to help the football club. When I look at what it takes to get a club to the next level, there are some really good examples. If you look at someone like Brentford where they have a clear model and a clear way they want to do it, the year they went up they brought in Ivan Toney from Peterborough. You hear rumours that they were paying big wages for a player that was about 24 at the time. They’ve probably gone outside of their model where they maybe felt we just need to take that little gamble.

And whichever way you look at it, if you’re a Derby then, at some point, it might be very difficult to get in the top six unless you just take a bit of a gamble on a striker. And the reality is you might be paying £10,000 to £12,000 a week for a centre forward against someone who might be able to pay £40,000-a-week.

Whether that’s sensible, or whether that fits your model or not, every club at some point is tempted into that gamble. Obviously, Derby are a long way away from that situation because they want to solidify. They have an excellent spirit and they look like a team that wants to fight for each other.

You don’t want to lose that, but, at some point, in season two or season three, there is always a temptation where you ask yourself do we need to go big on one or two things. And there are some really interesting studies out there that say changing manager doesn’t have as much impact on your league position compared to your budget. Of course, there’s always going to be an outlier or two, but the majority of the time, the budget will be quite an accurate depiction of where you finish in the table.

Get more related news on https://sportviewers.com/