The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders

by Mike Carson

From the post room to the board room, everyone thinks they can be the manager. But how do you manage outrageous talent? What do you do to inspire loyalty from your players? How do you turn around a team in crisis? What’s the best way to build long-term success? How can you lead calmly under pressure? The issues are the same whether you’re managing a Premier League football team or a FTSE 100 company.

Here, for the first time, some 30 of the biggest names in football management reveal just what it takes. With their every decision, remark, skill, and success or failure under constant scrutiny from the media and the fans, these managers need to be the most adroit of leaders. In The Manager they explain their methods, give examples of lessons they’ve learned along the way, and describe the decisions they make and the leadership they provide.

Each chapter tackles a key leadership issue for managers in any walk of life and, in their own words, shows how the experts deal with the challenges they face in an abnormally high-pressure environment. Offering valuable lessons for business leaders and fascinating behind-the-scenes insights for football fans, The Manager is an honest, accessible and unprecedented look at the day-to-day work of these high-profile characters and the world of top-level football management.

A Piece of the Action (Roy Hodgson); The Art of One-on-One (Carlo Ancelotti); Behind the Scenes (Arsène Wenger); Building High-performing Teams (Sam Allardyce); The Field of Play (Roberto Mancini); Handling Outrageous Talent (José Mourinho); Pursuing a Career Under Pressure (Brendan Rodgers); Seeing the Bigger Picture (Harry Redknapp); Creating Sustained Success (Sir Alex Ferguson); Crisis Response and Turnaround (Walter Smith); Triumph and Despair (Mick McCarthy).

Also Gerard Houllier, Tony Pulis, Martin O’Neill, Neil Warnock, Howard Wilkinson, Kevin Keegan, Dario Gradi, Andre Villas-Boas, David Moyes, Alex McLeish, Hope Powell, Martin Jol, Glenn Hoddle, Chris Hughton, David Platt, Paul Ince, and George Graham.

Genres: Football, Nonfiction, Sports, Soccer, Business, Leadership, Management

320 pages, Hardcover

First published August 29, 2013

Reviews

[Can Eryürek · Rating 1 out of 5]

sıkıcı pahalı ve kötü çevrilmiş...

[Ryan Willox · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basically a thesis on management strained through a filter of David Brent-speak that somehow manages to drain the colour from some of the most charismatic and revered leaders in sporting world. Jose Mourinho features prominently on the cover but you would be hard-pressed to find anything enlightening or of value from the brief space afforded him in the book. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of leadership, ostensibly using a different manager as a case study, but then the writer chimes in with quotes culled from a plethora of other managers so that the point is lost and any sense of the 'subject' of the chapter is diluted. There is a lack of perspective here also, taking the end of Walter Smith's tenure at Rangers as an example. The writer uses Smith's departure after failing to win a 10th consecutive title as being indicative of the cut-throat nature of football, but doesn't afford any context so instead of - Celtic stopped the quest for ten and the emotional, spiritual and physical toll on Smith prompted a need for change and renewal, we get Smith lost once in ten years and was gone. If you are aware of the context, it works, if not you get half a picture. This was written in conjunction with the League Manager's Association and you sense the santizing hand of their P.R or medial relations department. Pick up 'The Management' instead, which focuses specifically on Scottish managers, but is a much better and more educational effort.

[Ögeday Karabulut · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 yılda belirli aralıklarla okuya okuya bitirebildim. Benim için hayal kırıklığı oldu. Tamamen futbolla alakalı bir kitap olmadığını biliyordum ancak futbol soslu kişisel gelişim kitabı olmasını da beklemiyordum. Sıkıcıydı.

[Dmitry Kurkin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Много общих слов, мало конкретики. Жемчужины мудрости таких светил, как Нил Уорнок и Мартин О'Нил. Вместо того, чтобы сосредоточиться на индивидуальности, Майк Карсон как будто пытается вывести среднего эффективного менеджера по больнице АПЛ. Но такого просто не существует. Как не существует идеального пузыря, где нет бесноватых президентов, капризных звезд, алчных агентов. Что почитать вместо этой книги: автобиографию Анчелотти ("Тихое лидерство"), "Футболономику" Купера и Шиманского, "The Mixer" Майкла Кокса.

[Horia Bura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is more than a book about the careers of famous football managers, it is, in fact, a detailed study of the art of leadership, with all its lights and shadows.

Using the one-on-one interview method, the author aims at a plenitude of states and moments in the life of a football manager (the study is applied to British football, especially English one), referring to the revealing experience of famous names such as Sir Alex Ferguson, A. Wenger, J. Mourinho, S. Allardyce, N. Warnock, W. Smith etc.

The author successfully attempts to theorize the experiences of the above-named managers and encapsulate them in teachings regarding the art of management, beyond the world of football.

[Benjamin Pearson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating read, the lessons presented at the end and an explanation of different categories.Lots of fascinating stories in here as well, things that I wasn't aware of for most of these managers and I gotta say I have greater respect for since reading it.

Only issue with the book is the fact that it has aged terribly in those two years. Ironies abound when you compare the comparative strengths of the managers as they are presented here, have since been fired or exposed as the opposite of those characteristics. I mean look at Big Sams chapter, where it portrays him as a great builder of staffing and management teams. Yet he gets fired last season via a backstab from the organisation itself. Again, Harry Rednapp as the think outside the box creative dude. His last two stays, he just buys big name older players and then asks them to perform which they usually do under performance wise. He even bankrupted a club and forced them down into the championship with his short term thinking!!!

Anyways, the book was well written and the information inside is pretty solid.

[Trevor · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's not often I don't finish a book, I tried really hard with this one, in fact I read almost half of it but just found it to be incredibly dull.

It's quite poorly written in my opinion, I found the way quotes were interspersed within the writing was not very clear so there were quite a few times when I had to re-read some sections to see who had said it - I don't recall that ever happening in any other book.

I love football but just couldn't get into this at all. Having read practically half I have to say I gave it a good go but couldn't persevere until the end, life just isn't that boring!

[Bobby Wong · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reads like a dry management book. Not enjoyable at all. Didn't finish it.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book falls somewhere between Living on The Volcano by Michael Calvin and Leading by Alex Ferguson, both in subject matter and quality (Managers/good and Managing/awful respectively). This has the feel of a book that is about football management, but to give it a veneer of legitimacy for football-fan ambitious future leaders, is also about business. But it's not really about business at all, and the most appropriately business sections are in fact the dullest due to their sheer obviousness.

The major plus point for this book is that it did have genuinely big-name managers interviewed at the time it was written (more on that shortly) which is quite impressive, and probably related to the Barclays and Deloitte logos on the back cover. And these are not one-liners dotted on the odd page, but genuinely long interviews whose content is spread over the book in the relevant sections. It is not just the names, but the nature of the interviews that is more unusual - though managers are permanently in the press, it is in the context of doing the best for their team, rather than talk about management in general, which is interesting in the cases of, say, Mick McCarthy and Carlo Ancelotti who get a lot of airtime here. The flipside to this, is that these are former footballers who are now football managers, in a job that requires 24/7 attention to the game itself. And that means all the stories and techniques are based around football and footballers, not How to Lead people. For example, the managers talk about pleasing the chairman, which is used to make a wider point about 'stakeholders.' But even the most low-ranking employee knows his priority is to be on the right side of his boss and then worry about the other relevant parties, so drawing on wider conclusions is a waste of space.

However, in four years, the managerial landscape has changed. Mancini's descent makes the lauding of him here seem absurd despite his previous achievements, and Walter Smith is made out to be some God who may well be Scotland-famous, but isn't as well-regarded elsewhere. Mourinho, too, has had a bit of sheen taken away from him, and Roy Hodgson embarrassingly left England. There is also some wilful rewriting of history. Mourinho 'moved from' Chelsea to Inter, just as Joey Barton moved from his house to his prison cell, and any drier periods for a manager are excused. McCarthy had one bad derby result and was sacked by Wolves, ignoring the preceding events that led to one bad result being enough justification to find a new manager. One could be forgiven for thinking that good leaders are those that happen to be at the top at a given moment, rather than the best at leading people, if we are tempted to draw big conclusions about the world from this.

There is also the lack of rigour applied to managers of conflicting views. Warnock sees himself as a great Chamionship manager but not good enough for the Premier League, yet the book talks about self-improvement and ambition to get to the top. One manager is prepared to sacrifice his family life for a demanding job, Warnock tells the chairman at the outset that he needs to see his family a lot. Warnock is presented in a flattering manner. Could it be that there is no defining trait of a good leader? This book falls into the usual trap at times, which is to look at those having success at the time, asking them their traits, and concluding those are the right ones, ignoring form, circumstance and causality. If this book had stayed as a manager profile it would not have missed much but could have missed out the rubbish.

[Sunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a decent book overall. It gave some really good managerial insights into what made some of the greatest managers of our time so great. Mike Carson looks into some of the secret of success behind managers like Ancelotti, Wenger, Allardyce, Mancini, Mourinho, Rodgers, Redknapp, Walter smith, Mick McCarthy and of course Sir Alex Ferguson (my all-time favourite manager). The book covered topics such as: one on one conversations, building high performing teams, handling talented individuals, managing under pressure, seeing the bigger picture, sustained success, crisis response and dealing with triumph and disaster (and treating those 2 imposters just the same) as the Kipling poem goes.
Here are some of the best bits:
• “Without deliberate mentoring footballers are unlikely to model something better than the society in which they live.” This would be true of most people and most professions in general.
• “when British swimmer Adrian Moorehouse arrived at Berkeley California in the mid-1980s to begin training for the Olympic gold the first thing he saw was a large sign high up that read: this is an environment where success inevitable.”
• “I tell them don’t start practising when it’s too late. Most players start practising when they are going bad. Practise while it’s going well because it’s easier then.”
• “Mick McCarthy embodies this idea, not least because of his sense of perspective. I’ll be honest with you: the fact that I’m never ever doing to be skint helps. I’m not going to be out of work because I have belie in myself and think I did well. This self-belief is also a practical antidote to fear.”
• “Brendan Rodgers enjoys what he calls thinking in ink. I write a lot and I’m always thinking and I have little blocks of time to write. Reflection is important to me, it allows me to move on quicker. It’s really the lever that helps me. I wouldn’t over analyse a big event but I would think first make little references to moments use them as referrals and plant them into my story.”
• “Leading without knowledge is difficult. Deep knowledge of the core of the business earns respect and enables accurate decision making. Deep knowledge shared suggests a different level of leadership – where someone is investing in the long-term health of an organisation and even of the wider environment in which it operates.”
• “Many elite sportspeople use the concept of a belief wall – a mental construct built of the bricks of undeniable achievement. Thus a runner might look left and right to his opponents in the starting blocks and say to himself “I have beaten every one of you over this distance before.” That is a brick from his wall.”

[Y T · Rating 3 out of 5]

My last book for the year. As what the others have written, it was pretty blend and lack character. General leadership skills have been mentioned, e.g. take time to connect with others, personal leadership, etc. It felt like you could take out the football managers and replace the stories with any other famous leaders.

It read like the themes were there and the author tried to fit in the managers. Unfortunately 6 years have passed since this book was written, only to prove some of the write up wrong, e.g. Sir Alex's foundation could not withstand the test of time after he retired and we all saw the state of Manchester United the immediate years after his retirement.

The author interestingly also doesn't touch on the topic of how Mick McCarthy had such a horrible time at Sunderland during their time in the Premier League. Sunderland was almost known to be a "free frag" for all other clubs in 2005/06 season. How did he respond? How did he feel? How come he couldn't get the team to perform under his leadership? No insights into his leadership during that crisis season.

Nevertheless, still a good general read for general leadership.

[Kaido · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Leadership is all about people"
Autor Mike Carson uurib selles raamatus, kuidas erinevad jalgpalli maailma vägevad managerid nagu Wenger, Fergusson, Ancelotti, Moyes, Mourinho, Rodgers jne. tulevad toime erinevate aspektidega jalgpalliclubi juhtimisel. Millised on nende vaated staaridega toime tulemisel, kuidas nad meeskonda koostavad, mängijaid palkavad ja teine kord ka neid minna lasevad. Kuidas nad ebaõnnestumistega kohanevad? Raamatus on hästi palju läbivaid põhimõtteid erinevatest juhtimisalastest raamatutest (näiteks ownershipi võtmine), kuid leidub ka põnevaid jalgpallile spetsiifilisi vaateid. Ei oska öelda, kas asi oli e-raamatus, aga vahepeal kippus nagu peatüki sees arusaam kaduma, millist teemat me hetkel vaatame. Kes jalgpalli vaadanud, siis ilmsed paljud teemad ka juba tuttavad, aga huvitav lugemine siiski.

[Vangie Montalbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Realized how lately, I’ve been liking books that dig to the bottom of geniuses and high performers in the athletic world. The Tao of Muhammad Ali, The Mindful Athlete and now this. The Manager, discusses how the the likes of Sir Ferguson, Wenger, Mourinho and 30 other biggest names in football management take on an adroit kind of leadership you must have in an elite football team. It breaks down how that familiar corporate management principles apply also to a Barclays Premier League Football Team, where outrageous talents abound! You’d be amazed how though the team’s success is measured by numbers, there’s a lot more intangible successes internally you have to achieve! Very interesting read! Highly recommendable to y’all leaders or being groomed as leaders.

[Jim Bouman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rating: Skip this

After one chapter of The Manager by Mike Carson, I skimmed 3 more and ended up reading only the introduction and summary sections of the final few chapters.

It’s dry, dull and poorly written. Carson introduces a manager’s philosophy at the start of the chapter, then lists generic management advice, interspersed with quotes from any of the managers mentioned in the book.

It reads like a dry management book filled with platitudes. Any of the “wisdom” can be found in management-related Twitter threads. For management, you’re much better off reading Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive. And for sports (leadership), you’re much better off reading Bill Walsh’s The Score Takes Care Of Itself.

Extensive summary: https://jimbouman.com/the-manager-mik...

[HA · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tried my very very best to finish the book. The only chapter that makes most sense to me was "Pursuing a career under pressure". Although the author provides many little stories about a wide range of EPL football managers, I really don't like the way he put things together in this book. Each chapter seems to feature one manager but then it goes mixed with other managers' stories to illustrate the author's point, which is one aspect of the football manager, but this made the reading very weird and not interesting at all.

[Pinko Palest · Rating 1 out of 5]

There seems to be a cult of leadership, where, like most cults, the believers don't really know what they believe in. This is, in the main, the usual psychobabble waffle about leadership, but more dire and badly written than most. What makes this appalling is that he engages in trying to whitewash some quite shady characters, like Glen Hoddle (no mentions of Eileen Drewery here). No one will be fooled by this though, since it is more clumsy than most whitewashes, despite the big business seal of approval. All in all, a complete waste of time

[Kerem Ozgenel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dunyanin en zor ligi olarak kabul edilen ve en cok izlenilen ligi olan İngiltere Premier Lig'inde gorev alan hocalarin on plana cikan ozellikleriyle alakali yazilmis bir kitap..Mourinho'nun oyuncularla iliskiye verdigi onemi ve arkadaslik kurmasinin onemini, Ferguson'un basariyi surdurulebilir kilmak icin degisime verdigi onemi, Wenger'in futbolcusuna insan oldugu icin deger verdigini hissettirmesi ve aidiyete verdigi onemi vb onemli detaylari kitapta okuyacaksiniz..

[Peacefully Snoozing by the Fire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely not the most eloquently written or well structured book but plenty of useful insights into effective management.

As someone working in the sport industry and with some experience as a sports coach I found many of the insights invaluable and look forward to implementing them in my own work.

Helpfully the author has provides bullet point summaries at the end of each chapter. I recommend scanning these if you want a refresher or don’t fancy reading the whole book.

[ชาครีย์นรทิพย์ คนช่างฝัน · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book comprising valuable insight into the thoughts, values, and experiences of the leading football managers in the Premier League. For a football fan, the names and the games are familiar, which brings out even more excitement.

Certainly, it may seem somewhat concise, but it still provided a glimpse into the minds of the leading football managers, and was an entertaining read.

[Monil · Rating 5 out of 5]

You will get insights on football managers

Great work !! Author very well connects football world to corporate.
You should read if you love football and want to know 'how football manager thinks?' and 'why do they do what they have to do'

[Arnaldo Neto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uma viagem pra dentro da mente dos principais técnicos do mundo. Pra quem gosta de futebol e principalmente pra quem quer extrair lições de liderança pra aplicar no esporte ou qualquer campo da vida!

[s7mu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have given a 3 star rating, the fourth star only because of first hand interviews with a handful of managers.

[Gregory Affonso · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best insights into management

[Jesse Eskelinen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jotenkin raskas luettava. Kirjan ”punaista lankaa” oli jokseenkin haastavaa seurata. Parasta antia olivat managerien tarinat tietyistä tilanteista, tuoden konkreettisia esimerkkejäkin luettavaksi!

[Francisco Maldonado · Rating 2 out of 5]

So boring. Feels like a business book not a football book

[Shane O · Rating 4 out of 5]

very good interesting books getting views on leadership and how to handle setbacks and pressure situations very interesting reading.

[Carlos Tomas Aguirre]

The Manager by Mike Carson is a book that talks about how to be a manger. Many think that it is an easy job and just by watching TV and by knowing some basic knowledge you can triumph. With interviews from real manager of all over the world and facts and statistics that enrich your soccer knowledge comes one of the best soccer books. There are many problems managers face and they are not so recognised. Many ask themselves: But how do you manage outrageous talent? What do you do to inspire loyalty from your players? How do you turn around a team in crisis? What's the best way to build long-term success? How can you lead calmly under pressure?

This book answers all your doubts and concerns on those topic and more! It includes interviews to players and even its separated by sections if you are interested only in some aspects. It gives you a whole new look at soccer. If you read this book it most likely affect your way of thinking of coaches. Inside the book you find:

Contents: A Piece of the Action (Roy Hodgson); The Art of One-on-One (Carlo Ancelotti); Behind the Scenes (Arsene Wenger); Building High-performing Teams (Sam Allardyce); The Field of Play (Roberto Mancini); Handling Outrageous Talent (Jose Mourinho); Pursuing a Career Under Pressure (Brendan Rodgers); Seeing the Bigger Picture (Harry Redknapp); Creating Sustained Success (Sir Alex Ferguson); Crisis Response and Turnaround (Walter Smith); Triumph and Despair (Mick McCarthy). Also featuring: Gerard Houllier, Tony Pulis, Martin O'Neill, Neil Warnock, Howard Wilkinson, Kevin Keegan, Dario Gradi, Andre Villas-Boas, David Moyes, Alex McLeish, Hope Powell, Martin Jol, Glenn Hoddle, Chris Hughton, David Platt, Paul Ince, and George Graham.

[Paul W · Rating 1 out of 5]

How do you manage outrageous talent? This book seeks to answer this question by gleaning insights from a number of managers from football (soccer) teams. Unfortunately the author has been unable to coherently answer this question.
His five years at McKinsey fails to instil an academic rigour to his analysis which results in a meandering collection of inconsistent, and often long-winded, anecdotes. The primary weakness of this book is that it fails to assess either causality or contingencies when it describes the behaviours of various managers. So the reader is left uncertain whether the particular manager's behaviour has also been used by those who fail, or whether the efficacy of particular manager's behaviour is limited to particular circumstances. We also learn, though unintentionally, that many of the football managers interviewed are not particularly erudite. As a result, many of the quotes leave the reader none the wiser, and appear to have been included simply to add to the volume of the book. A stronger hand from the editor should have prevented this.
However, if you are a diehard football fan, you will probably see past this books flaws and enjoy the reflections on specific games and players. The most telling statistic that the author includes is that 98% of managers in the English leagues are sacked at some point. Given that a number of the managers interviewed were also sacked, it is hard to draw any meaningful conclusions to answer the question posed at the beginning: How do you manage outrageous talent?

[Tarique Ejaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If you are able to take the pressure off your players and channel them into their belief to not only strengthen their performance but also to enhance their conviction. You are on the right path."

The Manager takes a trip into the mindsets of some of the best managers to have ever embraced the Premier League and the Scottish Premier League. It takes up the various areas that are essential in effective management and places a leader who has had profound experience and success in that particular area. From Sir Alex Ferguson to Arsene Wenger to Jose Mourinho to Alex McCliesh to Hope Powell, Carson analyses as to what is so different about these people in general that it puts them at a par higher than all their counterparts. From Mourinho's ability to handle outrageous talents to Wenger's conviction at dealing with immense expectation to Sir Alex's aptitude to inculcate sustained success at a top club for a prolonged period, the manager is a beautiful piece written tastefully to cater to the minds of all football enthusiasts who are more than eager to cross-examine a manager for any reason what so ever.

"You don't say that okay, we lost so I need yo beat myself up. Rather you say okay, now these are the mistakes we made. We need to work on them."

A beautiful book to be held and read. Certainly.

[Hamadovich · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides useful insight on the inner workings of football management and it I enjoyed the references to business management as well. My main issue with the book is the expectations set by its cover. You see Wenger, Mourinho and Sir Alex Fergusson on there and you you'd imagine that the majority of the content revolves around their experiences. Sadly this is not the case, the book mostly the experience of British managers whos achievements cannot be compared to those of the very top caliber managers in football. I would have rather had Ancelloti or Mourinho go on for longer than one chapter (with some snipets here and there) than read about Mick Mcarthy's relegation battles. This warped sense of success for British managers (Sir Alex being the obvious exception) compels me not to take their stories of triumph seriously. This definitely hurts the book and prevents it from being a an essential one for football fans to read. I would still recommend it to anyone who is specifically a fan of the Premier League and wants to get "Inside the Minds of Football's Leaders" but take note that its not all the leaders included are Great ones.