Cult of gaffer losing the plot
âBarnes has not only lost the dressing room, he has lost the entire stadium,â wrote Tom Shields then in the Scotland Herald.
Later, in his autobiography, Alan Stubbs described how that Celtic dressing was misplaced.
âWe had Henrik Larsson, Mark Viduka, Lubo (Lubomir MoravcĂk), Eyal Berkovic. Everything was about getting the ball to them, preserving their energy. When they lost the ball, John instructed them to walk back into position.
âIt created a division between the front players and the rest of us. It left the rest of us feeling like hod carriers. It led to arguments and the group spirit broke down.â
Stubbs was injured for the match that finished Barnes, the cup defeat by Inverness Caledonian Thistle. With Celtic 2-1 down at half-time, he popped into the lost dressing room.
âIt was a chaotic scene. Mark Viduka was going mad and threw his boots away. âFuck yer, mate⊠Iâm not going back on.â
âJohn was simply out of his depth as to how to deal with that. Mark wasnât to be budged and Ian Wright came out for the second half instead.â Barnes lost his job two days later.
The expression âlost the dressing roomâ has since become almost as intrinsic to football narrative as âcontrovassyâ.
Alas, we are rarely placed at the scene of the kind of meltdown Stubbs describes. Nor are we often afforded mass public demonstrations of dressing room loss, such as a 25-man march on MacHale Park.
The GAA lads in Mayo and Galway are providing novel clarity in this notoriously difficult area to diagnose. Some might argue this rise in player power is an overdue correction in the market, to counter runaway inflation in the cult of the manager.
But that is to digress.
The Premier League lads tend to be a little subtler on the public demonstration front, what with contractual obligations to consider, so we must be more resourceful to determine whether or not their dressing rooms are anywhere to be found.
We know enough now to ignore entirely any âbacks under-fire bossâ statements. Instead, we watch closely for involuntary shrugging and players not bothering to track their men, which wouldnât have worked in Barnesyâs day, since those were their instructions.
Of the many ups and downs the late Bobby Robson endured in football, perhaps one sleight, during his spell at Newcastle, stung most.
âOne stupid remark made by the press â claiming Iâd lost the dressing room â hurt me more than anything.â
For Arsene Wenger, another manager beguiled by football and footballers, we saw again last weekend the one thing that has always served him well in his many crises; he has never yet lost the dressing room.
Nowadays, perhaps it is the pervasive cult of the manager driving the current epidemic of dressing room loss.
It has been said that Brendan Rodgers was a victim, during his final months at Anfield.
In truth, it is a difficult charge to make stick, since the Liverpool players looked industrious enough until the end, if increasingly hapless.
Then we remember the words Rodgers told Michael Calvin for Living On The Volcano, Calvinâs book on management.
âI donât need players motivated. If youâre a life-saving surgeon, you work on commitment. If you do five operations a day and save peopleâs lives, you might be motivated for the first four but the fifth guy needs you like the first one. So you need to commit to your work.â
As Gilesy put it this week, if you asked Rodgers the time, heâd tell you how to build a clock and this seemed like another example of that tendency.
By the finish, Rodgers had changed his âphilosophyâ so many times, it may have been difficult for players to know what they were committing to.
And as with all the great modern gurus, eventually you come round to wondering if this will really save anyoneâs life. In the end, it may at least satisfy Rodgers that he was proved right: motivation wasnât enough.
It has been suggested too that Mourinho has lost his men, with Nemanja Matic this weekâs ceremonial sacrifice.
As Chelsea issued the dreaded vote of confidence, there were echoes of Peter Kenyonâs â100% backingâ for Mourinho in March 2007, after Chelsea had lost three in eight.
In William Gallasâs sending off for stamping in defeat by Fulham, Mourinho had just uncovered evidence of the latest great conspiracy against him.
âYou see for Chelsea one measure and for other teams another measure.â
In the same match, he shamed Joe Cole and Shaun Wright-Phillips by taking them off after 26 minutes. We didnât know it then, but we were seeing the unfurling of a pattern.
When things begin to go wrong, Jose doesnât so much lose the dressing room as become wildly paranoid about losing the dressing room. He lasted another few months then, but by the finish, a regular feature of his lost dressing rooms had emerged; the rat.
Notably, a rat has surfaced again lately. And Chelsea may have the choice to sack Jose or invest ÂŁ300m in another team and make hay in the two years the have before the dressing room or the plot is lost again.
The rats confounded Jose in Madrid too and many of those are Rafa Benitezâs problem now, with five of his senior players supposedly already confronting him about Realâs style of play.
It is debatable if Rafa has ever lost a dressing room, since he has always made it clear he doesnât need it in the first place.
At Chelsea, he appeared to thrive on the knowledge that nobody really wanted him there and Steven Gerrard recalled a similar âfrostinessâ at Liverpool.
âIt drove me to become a better player. I had a hunger to earn a compliment from him.â
At Liverpool, however, Rafa eventually realised there are only so many people you can take on. And Madrid has never proved a fruitful battleground for managers.
Incidentally, Ireland may have hired Martin OâNeill mainly for his ability to keep track of a dressing room, even if there had been some signs that power was waning during his time at Sunderland.
When he was finished with Barnsey, Alan Stubbs recalled a statement OâNeill liked to use just as his players left the dressing room.
âThereâs only going to be one word today and thatâs US.â
As far as dressing room management goes, Thursdayâs magnificent result underlined the value of that first principle.
Heroes & Villains
Best one yet in the series gave the eighties stars of BBC and ITV their turn in the spotlight. Jimmy Hill and Mick âLine-acreâ Channon are inspired additions and you have to say that Barry Davies impression is magnificent.
Produced the only fitting headline for another tragic Scottish hard-luck story:
âThe Ultimate Kick in the Bollocksâ
For all the riches, maybe he needed a moment like this to prove he was right not to hang on for an All-Ireland with Tipp.
Turns out it was denial of access to Beats headphones that pushed the England eggers over the edge and fatally undermined their World Cup prospects. Perhaps more people should have heeded Gilesyâs dire warnings about the debilitating effects of personal stereos.
âThe fame thing he hates,â said the Rooneys to the documentary crew in their kitchen.
What else would a UFC fighter nicknamed Brown Bomber do but deposit a poo in the Octagon? The race to the bottom has been won.
