Go Hard or Go Home with Colin Hendry: Manager Relationships

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5 August, 2024

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These recent months have proved one thing in the Premier League – the importance of player/manager relationships.  The respect between players and managers has never been more important, what with the rise of player power. We talk to Colin Hendry who gives us his experience and opinions of relationships between the manager and his team – good and bad.

Without doubt, the two most successful managers in the Premier League at the moment are Klopp and Guardiola. As top managers of the best teams, Hendry looks at their management style. “If you look at Pep, even when they team has suffered some shock defeats, he always shows humility to his players. You have never heard him disparage either his team as a whole or any of his players singularly.” This can be seen in his latest interview after his loss to Newcastle, where Guardiola says “Sometimes we don’t play the level we want to play. It happens…it’s everybody, it’s not just one player. We could not win, because we were not at our best, that’s all.”

This can also be seen of Klopp when Liverpool went out of the cup to Wolves. He may have used excuses such as weather and injury after Man City, but never did he blame his players. In fact, he still used the game to praise players: “Ki-Jana was fantastic, he’s 16 years old and the other two boys are 18 years old so it was a bit wild… It wasn’t a nice game for the young boys.” Despite Klopp not having to having to deal with many losses, he still remains positive about his players at all times. Hendry believes that truly this is important when it comes to mutual respect – and when that doesn’t happen it starts going sour.

Public Criticism

Hendry brings up one manager who, on several occasions, publicly berated and criticized his players – Jose Mourinho. In his days at Man Utd, he often criticized his players after a loss, and this obviously damaged his relationship with his team.

The most memorable of criticism from Mourinho, says Hendry, was that of Luke Shaw in 2017. Mourinho stated “I cannot compare the way he trains [with other contenders for the position], the way he commits, the focus, the ambition. He’s a long way behind.” Such stinging condemnation saw Shaw out of the team for a while and would have caused a severe lack of confidence.

Of course, the relationship with Pogba was the biggest issue within the squad. The relationship seemed to start well, with both men excited to work with each other. However, the relationship soon turned frosty – with digs from Pogba stating that he “will always give his best for those that ‘trust’ him.” The relationship never recovered from comments made by Mourinho during the World Cup and Pogba made his delight at Mourinho’s sacking very apparent.

The transformation of Man U since the departure is phenomenal. Despite the same players and the same tactics, the squad are back to winning ways… showing that players work for managers they like.

Neil Lennon

A recent example of a seriously bad player / manager relationship has to be Neil Lennon. It was announced that Lennon was to leave his role as coach in 24 hours. He was suspended by Chief Exec, Leann Dempster. Clearly the issues between the players and manager got to breaking point.