Sir Walter Smith

The level of man management guys like him and Fergie had is so difficult to find nowadays. I worry the next generation of managers are tacticians with little social skills. You need to be well-rounded to be a top manager and I think the scale is starting to skew the opposite way when in the past you found alot of managers who were tactically poor but would have a squad of players who would die for them.
I wonder if there might be an age thing about the skills of the likes of Smith and Fergie. When they were at their best they were older, already had the tactical knowledge and could work on the personal relationships. Plus they would have seen it all before with regard to troublesome players. Younger managers (and there are many in the game at a senior level, outside Scotland anyway) might be more imaginative and risk-takers on tactics but they don't necessarily yet have that extra skill that Smith and Fergie had.
 
I wonder if there might be an age thing about the skills of the likes of Smith and Fergie. When they were at their best they were older, already had the tactical knowledge and could work on the personal relationships. Plus they would have seen it all before with regard to troublesome players. Younger managers (and there are many in the game at a senior level, outside Scotland anyway) might be more imaginative and risk-takers on tactics but they don't necessarily yet have that extra skill that Smith and Fergie had.
It was also how they learned how to be a manager, these guys seem to just get churned out of an academy production line, whilst Walter and Fergie learned from Stein, Wallace, McLean, etc. not just about football but about people. If I was a manager, I would certainly have attended plenty of Fergie's man-management lectures.

It's also a worry I have with Gerrard, when players are signed he seems very close and pally with them, which for me should be the assistant's role. He needs to be colder and more distant at times with the players (and I don't mean throwing them under the bus) so they feel like they need to earn their respect, you always had that feeling that's how Smith and that operated. Gerrard hasn't learned that IMO because he never had an elite man-manager throughout his career (he said Rogers is the best man-manager he's worked with :oops:).
 
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