The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football’s Leaders
£3.40
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.
Contents: 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 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.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing (29 Aug. 2013) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Hardcover | 320 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1408158825 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1408158821 |
| Dimensions | 15.75 x 3.3 x 23.62 cm |
by Greg
This is a decent read which gives some interesting insights into the world of management and leadership. At times the content/info was rather broad stroke generic though and (as the reader) I was left wanting further detail and information, especially within some of the examples provided
by Kram Ekosum
Clearly written and a helpful addition to the many books on leadership out there. Carson has done an excellent job and he uses examples from a wider range of managers than one would initially expect. What emerges is that the sheer strength of the manager’s personality and his willingness to ‘stick to his guns’ really matters even in the modern age. Football may represent a more traditional model of leadership with everyone showing great deference to ‘the gaffer’ but Carson also highlights that the managers are still willing to innovate and find new ways of going about their near impossible jobs.
by David Douglas
If like me you’re a business manager then you are also a people manager. Arguably it’s the world’s hardest job. Arguably it’s also the world’s most rewarding too.
If, also, like me you find business management books to be boring and find football to be exciting then you’ve landed on a real gem with this. The lessons are so valuable across business management and you’ll enjoy reading them because you’re actually reading about football.
If you’re a Man City or Chelsea fan though I didn’t want to help you so please – this book is of no use to you. Stick with the roubles and oil. They seem to work as well….;-)
by Adam Samuel
I purchased this book at the Amazon discount price, and it proved to be a bargain. As football spectators and supporters, we are reliant on post match interviews or skewed media stories and reports for our information. Yet, clearly, there is a lot more to football management than meets the eye.
“Managers” is the word generally banded about to describe the likes of Ferguson, Mourinho, Wenger, Ancelotti and co but Mike Carson through his extensive research and interviews with numerous managers of the ‘great game’ demonstrates how they are in fact more akin to leaders.
It is the behind the scenes insights and little gems of information that made this book a captivating read for me – partly one of the reasons why it only took me a couple of days to finish. For example, Fergie’s encyclopedic knowledge of the game that was an inspiration to his fellow peers and players of the game. David Moyes pursuit of professional development, travelling around France on a limited budget, occasionally sleeping in his car in order to observe some international training sessions. Harry Redknapp pouring his heart and soul into everything he does both football and family.
The book is not an ode to the stars of the game . It is balanced and unbiased, attributing time to a myriad of individuals rather than just focusing on those running the top teams.
It also deals with peritinent issues in an informative and measured way. For example, how has technology affected and enhanced the game? How have managers dealt with this change?
After reading this book you will be under no illusions that the day to day job of these ‘leaders’ entails picking the team on match day and leading a few training sessions. Carson shows how there is not a once size fit’s all. Each of these leaders is an individual. Their success can’t be bottled and sold but is the result of oodles of passion, resilience, vision, knowledge but perhaps most importantly, their awareness and acceptance of their own vulnerability in favour of the team.
by KL Woodward
As a football coach myself I was eager to get my teeth into this book and I was not disappointed.
First off the organisation and structure of the book is fantastic, each chapter leads onto the next in a logical order and is easy to follow. Each of these chapters are packed with in depth and rich information about the world of management from a number of world renowned managers such as Jose Mourinho, Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Carlo Ancelotti.
The book offers no jargon, instead all information is specific but easy to follow. The book is broken into 5 sections with 2-3 chapters (based on a specific manager) within those sections.
The chapters themselves offer fantastic insight with invaluable reflections from each manager of certain situations they have faced and how they were overcome.
This book is a must buy for anyone interested in sport business, sport coaching or just a behind the scenes look at some of their favourite managers.
by Jon C
Really enjoying this book. If you are interested in both business and football (which is a reasonably common combination!) I think you’ll find it a fascinating take on the normally rather hidden world of football management. The book draws heavily on extensive quotes from recent candid interviews between the author (Mike Carson) and many world class football managers, which are interesting in themselves (amazing how he managed to get access to them all!). Mike then does a good job of drawing out “management themes”, which have various parallels with the regular challenges in day-to-day business that we all face, helping making the whole topic accessible and bedded in reality for us the fans. Wouldn’t surprise me if it ended up in a number of blokes’ Christmas stockings this year 😉
by Craig
Great book that has been very insightful into the minds of different managers of different eras and styles.
by Amazon Customer
whoever is fronting the game… consultancies and pros are making it the game it is today..