Give it your best shot

From the moment I led my first session, I knew I wanted to coach.

I was a player at Leicester, doing my licences, when I took that session with Birmingham’s Under-14s. I walked off the training pitch and thought to myself: “Yes, this is what I want to do.”

Then I took my second session and came off thinking: “Bloody hell, I’m hopeless!”

I knew then that I would have to work hard to become a coach. That was not a problem, though, because working hard has always been my mentality.

To become a football player I had to work very hard. Yes, at a young age I was quite a good footballer, playing for England at youth level up to Under-21s, but I wasn’t physically brilliant and I wasn’t quick. What I did have was heart, and a mentality that would be difficult to beat.

My dad gave me lots of great advice. It was a huge benefit having a father who had won everything in the game; who had played and coached the amount of games he had, at the highest level. You need a strong work ethic to play at that level, and Dad was good at driving me on and keeping me grounded.

I also played for some excellent managers. I will be forever grateful to Gerry Francis for giving me the opportunity to play for Tottenham, even though he was only there for the first 11 games of my career.

My breakthrough came as a midfield player who had scored a lot of goals in youth and reserve teams, but I found that harder when I got to first-team level. When George Graham became Spurs manager, I found myself out of the picture for a bit. I was training with the reserves under Chris Hughton, when George called me into his office. It would prove to be a big turning point in my career.

"glenn saw the game differently, and opened my eyes to different aspects of the game"

“Why do you think you’re not being selected?” he asked me.

“I don’t think you fancy me, and I’m probably going to have to move to get on with my career,” was my honest reply.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want you to do that.” 

He asked which players I’d looked up to as a boy. Paul Gascoigne and John Barnes, was my reply. “Great players,” he said. “But – and I know they play for Arsenal – I want you to start looking at Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit, and see how they get about the opposition. I don’t doubt your ability on the ball, but that little bit of bite you need to play as a midfielder in the Premier League? I’m not sure you’ve got it. I’m giving you an opportunity to get it, though. Do the other side of the game well, then you will play for me.”

With that advice ringing in my ears, he put me back in the team the following week, when we went out to Moldova for a UEFA Cup game. Thankfully, I played alright, and went on to play more than 100 games for Tottenham. But without that conversation, I’m not sure I’d have had the career in the Premier League that I did.

Glenn Hoddle came in after George. He saw the game differently and opened my eyes to different aspects of the game. He was the master as a midfield player and showed me ways to receive the ball in midfield that were different from what I’d been used to. Back then it was generally 4-4-2 in English football, but under Glenn we worked on rotations. He started playing three in midfield, and would explain when it made sense to go towards the ball and when to stand still. That helped me a lot.

In 2003, Steve Bruce signed me for Birmingham City, who were in the top flight for the first time since the 1980s. Steve is an out-and-out winner, a great motivator, and better tactically than people give him credit for. If he’d have made the move from Birmingham to Newcastle early in his managerial career – when they wanted him the first time round – he probably would have gone on to manage England.

"I KNEW IT WOULDN'T BE A POPULAR DECISION, BUT IT WAS AN OPPORTUNITY I COULDN'T TURN DOWN"

I loved my time at Birmingham, playing 135 games across five seasons, mostly in the Premier League. After we won promotion in 2007, I moved on to Leicester, but unfortunately my time there – and my playing career – was cut short by a serious injury.

Once I had retired, I began what was a fantastic coaching journey with Steve, across 12 years at some top clubs. I worked my way up from being an assistant with Sunderland’s Under-21s, to Under-21s head coach at Hull City, then a first-team coach and assistant at Hull, Aston Villa, Sheffield Wednesday, Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion. They were all important experiences on the path to becoming a manager myself.

Not many people are fully equipped to go straight into management after playing, so I believe I did it the right way. Steve went straight into management himself, as a player-manager at Sheffield United, so we had conversations about his experience and the right time to become a number one.

I didn’t feel I was ready to do it straight away, and didn’t really believe I’d get the opportunity anyway. If you’re Steve Bruce, Steven Gerrard or Frank Lampard, you will likely get the opportunity a lot earlier. I’m proud of my playing career, but people like that played at the very top, in three or four times as many matches as I did. I can understand that if you have that kind of profile, you might take the step into management quicker.

I took the path that was right for me, which meant working at some wonderful football clubs. When I started as assistant to Keith Bertschin with Sunderland’s Under-21s, the club was in the Premier League. When Steve lost his job with Sunderland’s first team, I then had six months working under Martin O’Neill before I went to Hull to work with Steve again.

It was an incredible time, during which we won a couple of promotions and came close to winning an FA Cup final. After that we went to Aston Villa, which was a bit of a funny one for me, given my affinity for Birmingham City. I knew it wouldn’t be a popular decision, but it was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down. We scored a lot of goals, with Tammy Abraham and Jack Grealish in the team, but unfortunately we lost the playoff final.

"THESE TACTICAL DEVELOPMENTS ARE FILTERING DOWN TO LEAGUE TWO"

After a brief spell with Wednesday, at Newcastle we were asked to keep the club in the Premier League. We finished 12th, then 13th, which I thought was pretty good at the time. It didn’t go down well in the area, though, and there was a lot of criticism towards Steve. In the Premier League, if you’re not improving year after year, it can be difficult. We weren’t making massive improvements, as far as players we were able to bring in. Nonetheless, to be in that city and assistant head coach of that club was a privilege.

We had the challenge of coming up against teams led by managers of the calibre of Pep Guardiola, Jürgen Klopp and José Mourinho. Against Guardiola’s Manchester City, you could know the way they would play, yet they were still nearly impossible to stop. It was the same with Klopp’s Liverpool. You knew they had world-class players who were going to press the living daylights out of you.

Graham Potter at Brighton could change shape from game to game – he was so difficult to predict. Tactically, he was outstanding. We had some good results against them, but also some difficult moments.

Before we played them at the Amex in 2021, we worked on our press, with players equipped for the job. In the game, though, we didn’t get near Brighton, because they used their goalkeeper so well as a spare player. He was going into areas that were unexpected, while their centre-half was in a wide area; they were making the pitch big, so we couldn’t get a press on. I could see then how goalkeepers were really affecting the game in the Premier League.

These tactical developments are filtering down to League Two. In the 2024 playoffs, Scott Lindsey’s Crawley did really well, with the goalkeeper at times like a right-sided centre-half, bringing the ball up the pitch and drawing people on.

"I GOT TALKING WITH PEP GUARDIOLA AND ASKED WHAT ADVICE HE WOULD GIVE"

There are other really good footballing teams in League Two, such as Notts County and MK Dons. On the other side, there are teams that are still ‘up and at you’, putting it on you a bit more. You have to be prepared for different styles.

I had started watching a lot of League One and League Two football when my time at West Brom came to an end, because I thought that is where I’d get the opportunity to manage. When I told Steve that I wanted to go on my own, his response was: “You are more than ready. Go and have a crack at it.”

I took some time off, then I got a call from Brian Eastick at the City Football Group, who asked if I could coach Manchester City’s loan players. This was a group of about 20 players who sat between the Under-21s and the first team. Players probably not ready for the first team, who might be in the future, or who might need to move on.

I was there over the summer of 2023 and, by the end of it, there were only six players left in that group, so you had to adapt every day. Some went on loan, or you had players like James McAtee, who joined the first team on their pre-season tour of Asia.

While I was there, I also watched some first-team sessions. One day I got talking with Pep Guardiola and asked what advice he would give. “Sign good players,” he told me. “Recruitment is key.” He reckoned that with the Barcelona team he had, he could have managed them blindfolded. Now, he was obviously being very humble, because he is the best coach in the world. I have seen him work and, wow, he is unbelievably good. But it was good advice, because recruitment is so important to a manager.

Unfortunately, to get my chance to manage, somebody had to lose their job – which happens far too frequently these days. The Gillingham job became available and, after three interviews, I was named manager in November 2023.

"IT'S NOT ALL TACTICAL. YOU'VE GOT TO GET THE ENVIRONMENT RIGHT"

I inherited a team that was quite good at stopping the opposition, with some good defenders, and midfield players who were more sixes and eights. You don’t win anything unless you’ve got the foundations right at the back, and thankfully that wasn’t too bad at Gillingham.

When I took over they were just outside the playoff places, albeit with the fewest goals scored in the division. With 14 goals from their first 16 games, my remit was to improve the style of play. In the two previous seasons, the team had scored 36 and 35 goals. I knew that to get into the playoffs, we’d need to be scoring closer to 70, so I tried to find the answers with the players we had.

With the ball, I would usually work on three areas of the pitch: the build-up, creating the attack, and finishing the attack. At Gillingham I recognised pretty quickly that working on the build-up would be difficult, because some of the players weren’t comfortable playing that way. That meant concentrating on creating the attack in the middle zone, and finishing the attack.

When I first arrived, inside and outside the club people were saying: “We need a new striker.” We had four strikers, so I wanted to know if they were getting the service that they needed? No, was the answer we got from the data.

So we worked on creating overloads in different areas – especially wide – to get more balls into the box. We worked on lots of different patterns, against different shapes for different opponents, where we could try to hurt the opposition and get more crosses into the box.

For every opponent, we work half the week on what we do with the ball, and half the week on what we do without it, plus set-plays. But it’s not all tactical. You’ve got to get the environment right, and give a bit of time for the players to express themselves. 

"I WAS DISAPPOINTED, BUT IT HAS FUELLED MY FIRE"

I try to give 50 per cent for the coaches – so the players get the tactical information – and 50 per cent for the players. You’ve got to give players their five, eight, nine-a-sides in training, or have a round robin, because they enjoy it. You want them smiling, and to have that competition there as well. 

There might also be players who are struggling with their game. If they’re constantly standing still with us giving instructions – “Okay, stand here, stand there, this is what we're going to do when the ball is here” – they’re not getting a chance to work on their game. If you’re struggling, you might need an eight-a-side to get that feel of the ball back.

At Gillingham, we improved in a lot of areas. Our final-third entries, entries into the box, crosses and shots all went up over time. Compared with the previous seasons, we scored more goals. Our conversion rate wasn’t enough, though. Despite being in contention with a handful of games remaining, we missed out on the playoffs by six points.

I lost my job at the end of the season, but I’m really grateful to Gillingham for giving me my first opportunity as a head coach. Naturally I was disappointed, but it has fuelled my fire. I really want to show people what I can do, by doing as well as I can for Barrow.

They have given me another wonderful opportunity in League Two, and I will be going into every game looking to win. We want to be challenging in the top half of the table and I would love to get this team out of the division, to bring success to Barrow. 

It is easy saying it, but it’s not so easy doing it. The owners know what they want, but they also understand it’s not easy and that we’re all in this together. League Two is a tough division, where anybody can beat anybody, and we will need to show a lot of resilience through the year.

I will work my hardest, though, and together we’ll give it our best shot. Then we will see where that takes us.

Author: Craig Bloomfield

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