Glenn Hoddle - What The Managers Say - Part 4
Why should football be immune to that?
Why should managers be immune to that?
Daniel levy demands more from less.
There is nothing wrong with that strategy but it does take elite level coaching team to achieve that, any manager will not do.
A manager comes with a team of backroom staff and it is that whole unit that has to have a winning mentality so employing someone who has been there and done it on multiple occasions and in multiple countries gives us a chance to achieve.
To do that we have to trust him.
We have to do what it takes, what he wants.
He assesses what we have, including financial resources and formulates a plan within the resources available.
There is little point him coming in and demanding resources it is possible to give him, that would simply be making excuses for your own failings and winners don't do that, they take responsibility.
Every employee should be driven to provide their best to the club, but do they?
Unless they are a Spurs fan, it is unlikely they do, for some it's just a job I'm sure.
An American football team who had won the Superbowl were asked what was the keys to their success.
The players said a major contributor was a woman who we’ll call her Mrs X.
The same question was asked throughout the club and each explained their departments role but all, from the CEO to the head coach, all acknowledged Mrs X as playing a big role.
So who was Mrs X?
She was the ticket office manager and travel organiser!
She was so good at her job that the players explicitly trusted her with any arrangement for their families from trivial to major.
They didn’t have to waste mental energy worrying about a thing.
Everybody is important, everybody plays their part, everybody must perform to their optimum,not just the 11 on the pitch.
The supporters should be the most supportive they can be, but also a batch of our fans are not bright enough for that, they know better, well they don't but they think they do.
These things are proven, they are not my opinions, they are proven facts in the self development industry.
As a chairman, I'd want Tottenham fans working for Tottenham, there would be a natural determination to do their very best and thus motivation would be easier.
Success isn't achieved by accepting mediocrity and despite what some of our 90 minutes fans with a failure mentality might say, Joe Hart, Pierre-Emile Højbjerg and Matt Doherty are not mediocre.
They all have a better mentality.
Hart has won the Premier League and is still driven to get back to the top, Højbjerg is an improving footballer who would have been around £40m with a longer contract and Matt Doherty is regarded as the second best right-back in the Premier League behind Trent Alexander-Arnold at Liverpool.
Not glamorous names, but they are simply for fans egos or daft journalists who wouldn't know a statement of intent if it ran them over.
Getting winning mentalities in is the biggest statement of intent you can make.
These guys understand the little things matter.
Let me give you an example from cycling with the Tour de France.
"Aerodynamic drag is the major resistance and consumes around 69% of the power applied to the pedals."Jean-Paul Ballard co-founder Swiss Side
That means that only 31% of the power applied to the pedal drive you forward so the more you can reduce drag the further and faster you can go with the same effort.
Resistance to change is futile.
Football has introduced sports science but not yet harnessed mental development to its fullest.
Every part of the body is trained in football but the mind is hardly touched by comparison and yet it controls everything.
Football should be looking to the future and what is going to happen, then start doing it no, before everyone else.
Part of a footballers job is being mentally tough, so why aren't they working on it, when it will see a vast improvement in mental resilience, toughness, focus and concentration.
A lack of concentration creates mistakes so why would you not improve it?
It should be part of a footballers job.
Do football clubs need to look more to other sports?
Take sprinting, has any player ever received sprint training?
How much energy are they wasting if their arms are going in the wrong direction?
In a one-on-one race it could make the difference between winning or losing possession.
If everything is pumping in the direction you wish to travel, if you are running on the balls of your feet, not flat footed you'll maximise speed to effort. That involves controlling where your body weight is.
Have we ever brought in a sprint coach during pre-season to change up training and bring something different, that stimulates the players because it is something different.
You know pairing up players to race each other is going to stimulate their competitive streak and they'll have fun.
It adds to a skill, it's team bonding, it's creating that sense of belonging of togetherness, that winning environment.
Roberto Mancini looked to create a team with 6 or 7 potential captains in it, players who are respected by all te other players and who create a team spirit.
It's that same togetherness bond.
You can understand Mourinho's signings, leaders, former captains, players who have those qualities. Clearly there weren't enough captaincy material in the squad.
"What I want is five or six good leaders, one of whom has got the armband. The captain is important to the rest of the players because they go through the captain to the leadership team."The captain has to be an extension of your management. He goes on the pitch while we go to the sidelines, but you need a character, you need the players to respect him.’Glenn Hoddle
At Berkeley University California there used to be a sign hanging up that said "This is an environment where success is inevitable." Go to Liverppol and the sign in the tunnel is "This is Anfield."
It is to imply the same thing, it is a psychological thing for both sides, one to drive forward, the other to produce anxiety.
"In creating the environment in which you are going to work, the first thing to get right is the staff."Make sure that the team behind the team is competent and that they have a very positive attitude because that attitude will influence the players and create the atmosphere."The leadership team needs to infuse confidence, trust and positivity into the club."Gérard Houllier
Why then don't supporters who profess to support the club help create that positive environment?
The press report what's on social media, they report the general feeling so if social media from Spurs fans is anti-Spurs then they are just going to fuel it and that is going to find it's way into the club, as with Mourinho having the TV on in his office.
The players are not immune to social media so any self respecting fan who genuinely supports the club should be supporting it through their social media accounts creating the right vibe.
Tottenham are not Real Madrid or Barcelona, but neither are we a team without a winning tradition.
If you sign for Real Madrid there is an expectation of performance level that doesn't have to be spoken so if a player joins from such a club they can either bring than mentality or they can feel they can relax and not drive themselves as much.
If a player joins from Burnley, then no disrespect to Burnley, it's a step up to Spurs and there is immediately the mentality that I'll have to give my best to get anywhere here.
The manager has to understand what the pull of the club is, they have to create an environment where every player pushes themselves beyond their internal belief level.
They coaching team must set a standard for players to aspire to so perhaps Mourinho has, or needs to create an environment that doing something the club has never done before (winning the Premier League, winning the Europa League in current formats) is the journey.
Once that is in place, everything then drives towards that constantly repeated aim.
In the 1980's at the Tampa bay Buccaneers (American Football side) they already had a sports psychologist and a psychiatrist.
The psychiatrist used to do weekly one-on-one sessions with the players while the sports psychologist would do group sessions.
40 years later we are still not using them as a compulsory part of training, why not?
Why do we allow the problems with Danny Rose, the problems with some of the young players or with entitled professionals to happen?
They are preventable.
Not every level of the club is performing to an elite level.
There is room for improvement.
Glenn Hoddle tried to use them and was ridiculed by an ignorant press, many of whom are still as backward to change as they were then.
"I always used psychologists with the team. As a player I saw how it broke down barriers and made us purer to go on to the football pitch and perform as a unified team."When everything’s going well and you are playing well, life is easy. The real test of the leader of people comes when things are not going well."That’s when people turn on each other and they say things that have built up between themselves. It’s almost like an invisible wall starts to build."Using experts helps prevent the sort of problems we heard about in the Dutch squad in Euro 2012."Glenn Hoddle
Using experts prevents problems.
Not using them when there is a problem, that's simply treating an injury when you have one, but injury prevention is more important, preventing the problem in the first place.
Proactive management vs reactive management.
You see it in the fans don't you.
Those who don't have a positive successful outlook turn on the club and turn on those who do.
One set of fans are proactive, one set reactive.
There should be a collective belief, the overriding mindset should be one of positivity, one of optimism, otherwise what's the point.
You don't want the club to win deep down, a surface supporter, a 90 minute follower working against the club goals, a saboteur.
"My European background has taught me that players should be treated equally, because the club is always more important than any single individual player or employee."In the European model, the executive board actually comes to training sessions with the manager, and represents the club with him."At Chelsea and at Tottenham I’ve had to explain that when I encourage the group it’s not because I don’t want to praise an individual – it’s because you want the players to understand that the group is more important than anything."Within that, I want them to understand they are all important. The person who scores the goal and wins the game is only as important as the third goalkeeper who never gets to play."André Villas-Boas
Many haven't been brought up and taught how to achieve success or undertaken enough self development to understand it's principles.
Football isn't just kicking round a ball anymore, it is a high end sport that needs to be on the cutting edge of advancement, both physiological and psychological.
It is in one but not the other so the side who embraces it at the elite level first will have a big advantage.
It has been tampered with but not yet used properly I don't think.
To what degree has each player bought into the collective aim?
You can get an idea with their performance on the pitch, some give everything, some don't.
You retain those who do and work with those who don't to increase their buy-in level or you sell them.
A squad has its leaders, its followers and its saboteurs.
The leaders and the saboteurs try to recruit, hence you have to find out their problem and deal with it or if you can't, sell them asap.
Glenn Hoddle on the 1981 FA Cup Final against Manchester City in which we didn't play that well and drew.
"We got there as a team, we played well as a team, but at the big occasion we started to fragment."We all wanted to be the man of the match, and in a team sport that won’t work."Glenn Hoddle
Spurs learnt from that and won the centenary replay 3-2 of course and that famous Ricky Villa goal.
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