The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders Read Online Free Page A

with them when they lied to me. Once I felt that I’d lost trust in
them, then I might as well have left. Once somebody lies to me or I lose trust in them, then I can never be committed to that same person again. When I left Sheffield United, the chairman – a
friend of 17 years, I thought – came out and said on reflection he should have probably changed the manager. I had known this guy for 17 years and I rang him immediately and asked him why he
said it. He said he was misquoted and he didn’t mean to say anything like that. I told him I had heard it on the radio.’
    The pain that comes from lack of appreciation and recognition is a significant challenge to managers. Many simply find they have to protect themselves. Sam Allardyce says: ‘What happened
at Blackpool taught me never to be sentimental and always get out when you’re ready. I thought if I can get sacked by losing in the play-offs ... The year I took over, the club had finished
fourth from bottom, just stayed up, the first year we finished 11th, the second year we finished third in the play-offs. We missed out on automatic promotion by a couple of points, we got beaten in
the play-offs and I got sacked. So I said to myself if I got back into management I would never stay when it was the right time for me to leave. I wouldn’t get emotionally involved in the
football club and get talked into staying. And I played that out at Bolton and Notts County.’
    So pain doesn’t happen only with the high-profile clubs and their high-profile owners. Allardyce is more concerned about the young managers trying to make it work in the lower leagues:
‘Some of the conflict I have had with owners and chairmen – it made you want to leave as quick as you could. I had to put up with it because I was making my way in management. It was
brutal. Most managers still suffer the same now: the brutality, the bullying, the interference, the threats. It’s a cruel and hard, hard world trying to make your way up as a manager. You
come through that, you generally end up being a good leader.’
    As with most high-profile relationships in business, politics or sport, the one between football chairman and manager is at the same time combustible and essential. Many will become strong; some
never will. All require mutual commitment and effort to make them work – and a basic acknowledgement that both parties are human beings, often caught up in the emotion of the game.
    Stability ...
    Across the domains of club finance, governance and personal experience, the chairman can create either stability or instability for the manager and the club. Tony Pulis speaks
enthusiastically of a relationship that fuelled the unexpected rise of Stoke City: ‘My relationship with owner Peter Coates was paramount to everything that we achieved. He trusted me and I
trusted him. Being a local Stoke businessman Peter was massively important to our progress. He had a dream to put Stoke City back on the map but to do it in a way that also brought the community
closer to the football club.’
    Howard Wilkinson contrasts his experiences as manager of Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds. ‘Sheffield Wednesday were fifth or sixth in the First Division when I was approached by Leeds, who
were at the bottom of the second. The board at Sheffield Wednesday had dragged the club from the brink. But we got to the point when I said, “We need to invest now – I can’t keep
squeezing juice out of these oranges. All the juice has gone. They just can’t come back next season and produce it again and again. We need to get better players.” And they said,
“Howard, you know what our policy is – we can’t go down that road.”
    ‘When Leeds approached me, I met the chairman three or four times. Every time I met him it was a long meeting because I saw at Leeds the opportunity to go to a one-club town, with a
chairman who was backing things with his own money. My message to him was, “I’ll come here if