O’Neill must not repeat Clough’s intransigence
Considering how he loved throwing in an old Cloughie anecdote in his last gig, and he now occupies Old Big ’Ead’s old chair at the City Ground, we’ll start with another Martin O’Neill yarn from their time together, albeit one less romantic than the ones he was inclined to recount in recent years.
In Jonathon Wilson’s biography of Clough, , there’s a passage describing a dressing room scene on the eve of the 1976-77 season where Clough is outlining his plans for the upcoming old Second Division campaign.
With his old assistant Peter Taylor on the verge of teaming up with him again, there was a lot of speculation about management’s intention to majorly rebuild the team, prompting O’Neill to pipe up: “So does that mean we’ll still be here next season?” Clough glared at him, and according to Wilson, a frostiness entered their relationship that never left until O’Neill himself departed the City Ground to join Manchester City in 1981.
In hindsight, O’Neill would reflect to journalist Tony Francis: “If there was one time in my career when I wished I’d shut my big mouth, that was it.
Now that O’Neill is the one standing at the top of the dressing room, there are certain similarities between the one he inherited and the one Clough began outlining his plans to that summer of 1976. For a decade now, the City Ground has been one typhoon-like revolving door, where, for all the pleas for some stability and sanity, everyone is wondering and fretting whether they’ll still be there the following year, not least the manager himself.
Just like Clough long before him, and O’Neill now subsequent to him, Aitor Karanka was appointed Forest manager within the first two weeks of January, in his case, the eighth of the month, 2018. One of the bullet points on his CV that made him such an attractive candidate to the Forest ownership was that he had previously promoted Middlesbrough, though, just like Clough at the City Ground four decades earlier, it had taken him two-and-a-half seasons to secure such top-flight football. With patience would come promotion.
Karanka inherited a team that had been saved from relegation the previous May on goal difference, and yet, up to last month, had Forest in their strongest position in six years to win a play-off spot and challenge for promotion. A week into December and they had lost only two of their opening 20 games. This despite the wild turnover of players with 17 new signings made over the summer. A bad month didn’t make Karanka a bad fit for Forest. They were still just outside the play-off spots. But clearly from the climate around the City Ground, it wasn’t good enough for the owners.
Even in October, the owners were growing restless. There have been reports that after a 1-1 away draw with Leeds, a game where the league leaders only earned a draw with a late fortuitous goal, Evangelos Marinakis relayed a stark message to the players at their next training session — it’s promotion or nothing. Boom or bust, yet again. And when Martin O’Neill obviously became available a month later, Marinakis’s head was further turned, looking for someone new.
The other day, as news of Karinka’s departure was breaking, we were listening to the Christmas party edition of the coaching podcast in which contributors spoke about how many sports organisations still operate by baffling and outdated concepts of leadership.
The English underage rugby coach Russell Earnshaw spoke about how they tend to think short-term than long term and how “all the stuff about caring and love is [viewed as] just pink and fluffy”. Derek McGrath wouldn’t be exactly their prototype.
Podcast host Stuart Armstrong outlined five typical myths he finds they tend to work off. That good leadership is all about being “strong”. It has a “very clear idea” of what it wants to achieve. That they tend to favour “powerful”, “forceful” personalities that are “alluring”. And they are “prepared to be tough when they need to be”. “Often,” Armstrong would recognise, “organisations have a perception of a good leader that is the absolute opposite of a good leader in the eyes of the person being led.”
The past day or two, we’ve been wondering had their frustration being informed by any dealings with Nottingham Forest, or upon Roy Keane’s utterances on Sky the day of Jose Mourinho’s last game over Manchester United players that “simply aren’t good enough”.
The City Ground hierarchy is fixated with the quick fix and we could only laugh with echoes of Armstrong’s voice in our head when we read yesterday morning that apparently Marinakis was “blown away” by O’Neill’s “energy and drive to succeed”.
At the time of writing it is uncertain whether Roy Keane is part of O’Neill’s ticket but if he were, he’d certainly tick another box in the Forest ownership’s archetypal idea of a leader in being “strong” and “forceful” and being “prepared to be tough” when needs be.
As it happens, O’Neill himself often favours a softer, arm-around-the-shoulder approach with players. In Wilson’s book he’s spoken about how he wished Clough had adopted the approach he took with John Robinson and applied it in his case.
If they [Clough and Taylor] had given me more encouragement, they could have got 20% more out of me. In fact, I played my best football... after leaving Forest.
It will be fascinating, especially given how criticism of their methods with Ireland have subsequently emerged from the players, how amenable O’Neill — and possibly Keane — will be to adjusting their leadership style with Forest. Will pride prevent them from adapting at all or are they banking on the novelty and temporary charm of their old-school ways and old-boys return narrative, giving Forest the necessary immediate impetus to push for and win promotion back to the stage the club feels it belongs? Or will they have the humility to adopt their methods which are more in keeping with the best practice that the likes of Armstrong, Earnshaw, and indeed Matt Doherty and Shane Supple have advocated?
Last weekend, Supple gave an outstanding interview to the ’s Daniel McDonnell in which he outlined his concerns and criticisms with how the modern footballer in England is shaped and developed, or rather not developed, as both a person and a thinking footballer.
Supple returned to the national squad for last May’s friendly against France having previously spent time as part of Jim Gavin’s Dublin setup and while he didn’t reference the latter, the inference was obvious that the amateur setup was easily the more professional and impressive. The Irish setup had no equivalent of sweeping the sheds like the Dubs or the All Blacks or handing the jersey back folded like Mickey Harte insists all Tyrone players do. Instead training kit was just discarded flippantly outside hotel team doors for staff to collect.
“Maybe they could [even] have just turned it in the right way,” Supple observed. “I’ve seen how that stuff affects a team. It’s about setting standards. And having values and principles.”
The manager of the current leaders of the English Championship, Marcelo Bielsa, believes such things are big things. He’s made his players collect the litter at their training ground to remind them how hard fans work and to take pride in how pristine their work environment is.
Supple found a large number of O’Neill’s squad weren’t capable or encouraged to think for themselves, unlike again the Dublin setup he had been involved with.
“I don’t know if any player would have questioned Martin [about the discarded] kit and said: ‘This isn’t right. We’re not happy and we need to do this.’ It should be player-driven. ‘It’s your team, it’s your country. We need to do shape and set pieces and have a plan.’
I think the lads in England are so over-coached and told where to be and what to do that they don’t think for themselves. They don’t rock the boat because they might fall out of favour and not get a new contract.
Supple also spoke about how the foreboding presence Roy Keane was for players at both Ireland and in their time at Ipswich. Organisations with certain notions of leadership might have loved such “strength”, but Supple, having been around a Jim Gavin, recognised how such fear wasn’t conducive to consistent performance.
The irony is that O’Neill was once like Supple. The thinking footballer, craving positive feedback, and stability and a safe environment where the players think and problem solve themselves. (Even Clough recognised this virtue; in Forest’s twitter account announcing O’Neill’s appointment, they included a clip of Clough talking about O’Neill’s intellect standing out when the rest of footballers were largely “dumb”).
As Earnshaw would remark on , the best coaches now look to empower players and allow them to crack on and think about things themselves in a session. They need to be given some framework and clarity — which O’Neill’s laissez-faire style didn’t really provide — but then allowed some creativity and control within that.
Could O’Neill possibly become the leader he wanted in that Forest dressing room back in 1976? If not, he mightn’t be there himself the following season.
