While the whole of the football world was being turned on its head last week, I was at home lounging about doing not much.
It’s one of the strange things in the Premier League that after three matches the whole thing gets put on hold for an international weekend. Some of the younger lads at the club used the break to get away, but sadly it clashed with my kids going back to school so I stayed at home with the wife.
We’re still smarting from our big defeat to Wigan the other week, but I think the break has done us all good. The players and the manager came back fresh to training on Monday and we’re ready to put the defeat well behind us.
As it turns out, our next match is against Newcastle who have had a few problems of their own over the past fortnight. Everyone seems to think that they’re in such turmoil that we only have to turn up at St James’ Park on Saturday to take all three points, but it’s not going to be as easy as that.
No matter what’s going on in the boardroom, we’ll be up against 11 players who, once they cross the white line, will want to beat us for their own professional pride and the club’s fans.
The situation at Newcastle, and West Ham for that matter, has been the talk of football over the last couple of weeks but for me it’s very simple. It’s the manager who should have the final say over who comes in and out of clubs and who plays.
I’ve done all my coaching badges and am very interested in becoming a manager once I retire but it will have to be on my terms. A manager must be left alone to manage.
Football is a results business and a manager knows he’ll get the sack if he loses games so he’s got to be left alone to get on with the job until then. I think some of the glamour is going to the chairmen’s heads.
Another club to be experiencing huge change is Manchester City, but I think there fans will be much happier than those at Newcastle. The world is their oyster right now but I think they’ll need to be careful about just going out and buying the best players in the world, they need to knit together as a team. Luckily I think they’ve got a manager in Mark Hughes who will do this.
