18th August 2022
Obviously, football is a team game but it’s the team-around-the-team that I want to talk about today. Isaac (Assistant Manager), Chloe (Physiotherapist), Morgan (Analysist) and I (Manager) make-up the Development Squad’s Management Team. We are working closely to both support and also to push each other in making the coaching environment as good as it can be. We regularly talk about our roles and, just like the players, we all have positions and responsibilities that we feel more and less comfortable in. We are working our way through our plans in order to get the best out of each of us so the players see and feel the many benefits. We therefore need our own levels of creativity, resilience, initiative and determination in order to wade through the problems and difficulties that arise. We discuss our tactics and approaches to certain situations and debate how best to deal with issues. Sometimes they are of a technical nature, other times they are to do with a certain player and his self-esteem or confidence. If any ambitious manager is reading this, I encourage you to get a team of people around you that you can trust to not only turn up and be helpful but to ask questions and be curious about what you are doing and why you are doing it. As the manager, I can’t possibly have every answer to every challenge. Football has too many variables for anyone to profess that they know it all but by being open to conversations with other qualified and experienced colleagues allows me to confirm when my own opinions are correct and challenge them to improve if I haven’t got it 100% right. That doesn’t mean that I lower my expectations though: I believe that we are only limited by the ceiling that we put upon ourselves. As a management team we will remain ambitious in our expectations and be positive in our support to get ourselves and the players to new heights. Whilst we are creating and refining the conditions required for our players to thrive, we will continue to check and challenge each other. Most of this will happen behind closed doors, at times when we should be doing something else such as spending time with our families or getting our day jobs fulfilled but that is the sacrifice that is made for the love and passion that we all have for the club and this game. It takes a big commitment in order to get the training session and the match to the best outcome possible and for making this pledge I am very thankful to all of our management team (and all of those inconvenienced by it).
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