I have always believed that your team’s strategy, or playing style, is determined by the quality of your players.
Once you have an identity that suits your players, finding ways of getting the best out of them, week in and week out, is vital.
Players can be very insecure, or over-confident. They might be rock-solid characters, or a loose cannon. Taking the time to find out what makes them tick is priceless, and that determines either success or failure.
Part of that is addressing their issues away from football. For example, I have spent many hours dealing with players who have had gambling problems.
I hope I helped them in a way where the players involved always appreciated the need to understand the excessive nature of that illness, which can be controlled. When it was controlled they saw how much more enjoyment there was in their playing days.
Similarly, I was close enough to some of my players for them to share shocking experiences they had at home, as children growing up. I was able to direct them to people who, again, helped them clear their minds, so they could enjoy playing professional football again.
These situations away from football can affect players’ characters and performances. Dealing with them in this way was only possible because of the strong bond created in a club environment and by building a relationship between the manager and players.
In all the clubs I managed, togetherness as a group was a vital aspect of our success, no more so than at Stoke when we got to the Premier League.
We had a group of players who loved being together. When the new training ground had been built it was a job to get some of them to go home.
It would get well into the afternoon and they’d still be there, drinking coffee, chatting, playing pranks on each other and up to stuff you wouldn’t believe. They were a real group, a real team and that goes for the players who were outside the team as well.
Everybody bought into what we needed as a football club to be successful – it didn’t matter if they were being picked or not. That’s exactly what you aim for as a manager.
