The best at the job are usually able to bridge the sometimes prickly path from changing room to manager's office
The principal responsibility of a coach is to instil the manager's playing philosophy into a squad the best way he knows how. That said, I have seen coaches driven to distraction by seeking perfection from players who simply can't identify with the playing style being asked of them. Some coaches end up on their own personal crusade which, strangely, isn't always a bad thing.
A coach I once worked with arrived at the club with a dismal record against Arsenal and, as a result, seemed to have developed an unhealthy obsession with blunting their cutting edge. His gameplan was, in effect, very simple, but it relied on correctly identifying a specific Arsenal player and nullifying his threat; this, our coach said, was the key to victory. Toeing the party line, we began working on it in training, the idea being that, wherever Emmanuel Adebayor went, a centre-half would follow him, a midfield player would drop into the space left and a forward would then sit on the deepest lying midfielder to stop him getting the ball. We worked on it all week until we were sure we had got it spot-on.
On the Saturday we started the game full of confidence but conspired to lose the match with ease, Adebayor scoring a terrific goal in the process. Undeterred, our coach convinced the manager to stick with the same strategy in games against Chelsea and Manchester United, when we got favourable results.
For the record, the players that were singled out for the man-marking treatment in those two matches were Wayne Rooney and, perhaps most bizarrely of all, Claude Makelele, for whom we used an advanced midfielder.
The latter game was where our coach earned his money. The side effect of nullifying Makelele's strongest attributes ? breaking up the play and giving the ball to his more adventurous team-mates ? meant he would be unable to start any attacks. We were sceptical at first but, after watching a DVD showing the Frenchman winning the ball and setting Chelsea on the attack time and again, everyone bought into the idea that it may well be a sound tactic.
At the top level it can often take a team of editors and Prozone experts working around the clock to identify a single weakness in another team; anybody can watch a football match but not everybody is able to see why things are happening.
For all of the above to come to fruition, the coach needed the trust of the manager, which can never be taken as a given. There are managers at all levels who find it impossible to delegate even the simplest of tasks, from telling the chef how to cook pasta (which I have seen, by the way) to arguing with the club doctor or physio about the diagnosis of an injured player. Some are, to be blunt, control freaks.
A major regret of mine is that I never knew what some of the most respected names in football ever felt about my game and how they could improve it because once they were on the training pitch they weren't allowed a voice; their knowledge gone to waste and influence reduced to nothing more than picking up cones and collecting balls. Thankfully those days are in the past and today I am working with a coach who has given me a renewed enthusiasm for football and a fresh outlook on the way the game should be played. He has got me thinking that perhaps a coaching role may be for me after all; he may even be changing how I look at those in authority and, if that isn't a reason to hate him, I don't know what is.
It is fair to say I haven't always got on with those in positions of authority. I've been known to point the finger at faulty genes, poor schooling and endless miscommunications but very rarely have I looked in the mirror and blamed myself, until a few seasons ago when a new coach arrived.
Since Harry Redknapp swapped the hot-seat at White Hart Lane for the more sterile surroundings of a hospital bed, his assistant, Kevin Bond, and coach, Joe Jordan, have held the fort. With Redknapp expected back for the Aston Villa game on Monday night, Bond and Jordan can now go back to their day jobs, which are much further removed from the top job than you may first think.
Many coaches find the leap of faith into the hot seat a stretch too far and are actually better suited to the daily routine of training players. Coaches that gain the most respect are those that are skilfully able to bridge the prickly path from the changing room to the manager's office and, throughout my career, I have witnessed every possible approach to this balancing act. Those unable to master it tend instead to hang on to the egos of the big-name players while feeding back to the manager any discontent in the ranks to score cheap points.
There are, though, a few that have an intuitive understanding of a player's gripes and are able to steer the manager towards making a popular decision. For example, at certain points in the season a degree of fatigue will inevitably take root in the squad, and part of a coach's job is to sound out the players before discreetly recommending to the manager that a day off or two would be beneficial; no player that I know would ever dream of approaching the manager to tell him that he can't train because he is tired. Making a judgment on when to step in and when to let a manager take the lead is a skill in itself.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/nov/18/secret-footballer-coaches-tactics
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