Building Success - What The Managers Say Part 3
A manager has to create the environment for success, it is an essential role so negativity has no place and a negative player has no place so removing such players is a key component.
You only have to look at the Dutch who have been shooting themselves in the foot at international tournaments since the 70's.They should have won more than they have on ability but in-fighting always seems to come to the fore to scupper their chances.
After Holland lost all three games at the 2010 World Cup Ronald de Boer told the BBC website:
"There were too many egos on the pitch. Too many wanted to be the star of the tournament. Football is still a team sport."Ronald de Boer
There is a difference between a negative player and a player who perhaps requires controversy or confrontation to motivate themselves.
Players have to work for each other, having one player who can't be bothered will destroy the work of the rest, particularly if that one is a central midfielder, that stops the whole team playing as the game goes through them.
Remember Nicolas Anelka in 2008 being banned from the French camp for insulting the manager Domenech, the players revolting and then refusing to train?
A bunch of individuals do not make a team.
Taking a leaf from the self development industry is the image of an iceberg with 10% above the water and 90% below it.
The 10% is what a player says and does, the visible element.
The 90% is the unseen, his mindset, his thoughts, his feelings, beliefs, values, needs and his fears.
Behaviour is driven by thoughts and feelings and these are driven by needs and fears.
If you don't know what a players needs and fears are, then you can't tap into them or tackle them, only by accident.
Should a club operate with multi-million pound assets by accident?
It doesn't make sense to stay in the past.
If you are interested in the whole human being, if you are interested in players as people then you'll get the best out of them so you should be doing everything you can to achieve that, particularly as today's generation are over sensitive.
If you are 20, 21, 22 the world revolves around you but 'us' is more powerful than 'me'.
A team is more powerful than an individual.
Look at a player like Marcus Edwards, it was all about him and now we have Ndombélé who is only concerned with him, can't be bothered when he doesn't have the ball, needs to do a bit of growing up.
There is something in every individual that pushes them to try and be excellent, finding it and tapping into it will produce greater results.
You can only tapinto it if you tap into a players mentality.
A player with talent also needs to be able to keep his feet on the ground to excel.
If he gets too big for his boots, if it is all about him, he'll lose the respect of his teammates and it will affect results.
There has to be a sense of belonging, there has to be that team sense.
Without feeling you belong you won't produce your best again.
Kevin Keegan on his relationship with John Toshack:
"John Tosh and I were a great partnership. We weren’t great friends, we were good friends."I never went out for a meal with him, we never socialised together other than at club functions, but on a football pitch we were best friends."Everything I tried to do was to make him a better player, to make him score goals, to help him – and vice-versa."Kevin Keegan
Take someone like Ryan Sessegnon, as Jean puts it below, he looks like a deer caught in the headlights.
His whole demeanour on the pitch is of a boy playing mans football feeling he is out of his depth.
He lacks the confidence which really is crazy, £30 million for a guy with no confidence.
I suspect he doesn't feel he genuinely belongs so he holds anxiety and that holds you back.
The more it holds you back the worse the anxiety, it's a vicious circle that has to be broken.
Compare that to £5 million for Dele Alli.
If that isn't a prime example of the affect mentality can have then nothing is.
Are we working on his mentality, did we assess him mentally before we bought him?
We are wasting our money and reducing the effectiveness of our purchases by not doing so and not getting the best out of them for the longest period.
Simply waiting around in the hope that he toughens up mentally is a pathetic way to conduct business.
The human being of today is far more fragile than they used to be, Ryan Sessegnon is a prime example.
It is up to football to change and deal with that, at the moment it hasn't changed a thing, apart from the use of sports science while we leave the biggest asset, the brain, untouched.
Take winning the Premier League.
What does it take?
Mentally pause, take a moment and answer that question to yourself before you read on.
From that, if i asked you or the players, I'd get vague answers, a generalisation.
But what if you had studied the last 10 years results?
Points: 99 98 100 93 81 87 86 89 89 80 = 902
GF: 85 95 106 85 68 73 102 86 93 78 = 871
GA: 33 23 27 33 36 32 37 43 29 37 = 330
Now what if you sat down with an individual and gave them these figures?
To win this league you need XYZ points (90.2)
To do that you need to score XYZ goals (87.1)
You need to concede no more than XYZ goals (33)
And looking back over the last ten seasons, the number of players we need to use is XYZ (haven't checked but to give it a figure we'll say 17 for this exercise.
Then ask them how can we achieve that?
That guy will tell you how he can contribute, you can be specific with him, nail down the number of goals he'll score or, how many tackles he'll make, blocks, interceptions, crosses etc.
He will set his own goals (targets) and that is more powerful than you telling him he has to achieve a set of targets.
He will try and achieve targets he sets, targets you set don't carry the same weight.
You can agree specifics with him and he WILL buy into it, he will go away with a real sense of purpose, with goals to achieve and he WILL be utterly determined to achieve those goals.
So you have done that with every player.
Now do it with the team as a group.
Create that collective, we are all in this together camaraderie, there will be a collective determination to help each other to achieve those team goals.
A goal conceded will hurt the forward as much as it hurts the central defender or the goalkeeper and equally every goal will feel like a goal they have scored, one more towards the target.
You have something to work with then, something to motivate, something to adjust if the season is going well, it's a tough year, we might need to score X more number of goals etc.
Now what if I asked you he same question, what would it take to win the Premier League, you give me a far more enthused answer.
You can't achieve goals without having any.
You don't drive to the other end of the country without directions.
Winning a Premier League title is no different, you need directions, not some meaningless vague idea.
Look at Sours under Mauricio Pochettino.
He brought in young players, mixed with those seemingly young but with Premier League experience and he sold them on going on a journey and boy did they go on a journey.
The club improved and that journey culminated in a Champions League Final.
After that it went flat, his time was all about the journey.
The Final loss was an anti-climax the club didn't recover from.
He couldn't motivate the players for another journey or indeed to finish that one, hence a change was needed.
He would have had to rebuild the team or we would have to change the manaher, the latter was the route taken.
Now we are on a new journey.
The fans that can feel that support the club, the fans with their own agenda, don't.
That's why there are two sets of supporters, one group hasn't bought into what the club is trying to do long-term or short-term.
It has to be done their way, not the way Spurs are doing it.
These fans will never properly support the club.
Would you want any of them on a journey with you?
Would you want them in your team?
You need team harmony, everyone on the same page and you have that element.
What do you do, you cut it out.
That's exactly what you do with a disruptive element who hasn't bought into the team goals.
A team with 10 players playing for the team and 1 player at the heart of the team playing for himself and as in the case of Ndombélé, only when he is on the ball would have disastrous effects on results and team morale.
All your hard work being undone by one guy and the players themselves would be able to see it, they'd resent him in no time.
A coach is taught to look for the root cause.
When you have a problem, when there is a player not pulling his weight, you have to find out why.
It is never a case of because I'm not being picked, if it were you'd have 14 disruptive influences every week, the 14 you have not picked, the 14 you have effectively sacked until Monday morning.
The reason, the root cause lies in that iceberg.
Take Étienne Capoue, he admitted a couple of years after he joined Watford that his troubles at Spurs were his own fault, he thought he was entitled to a place and shouldn't have to fight for it, he hadn't had to in France.
You see the same thing happening with Tanguy Ndombélé and nothing will change until you tackle that root cause.
Tap into his emotions and you'll change him, if you are not working to do so you won't.
Equally when someone has made their mind up against you, you'll never have their full trust, they'll never totally buy into what you are doing and every time you leave them out, they would be mentally asking themselves questions and questioning why.
It's unhealthy and masking problems which will resurface at some stage.
We'll leave Part 3 there folks, more parts to come.
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