Shamelessly Stolen

[Rocky]

Bloody good read this is.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,,2214670,00.html

With 3 losses on the bounce, this makes will make you smile again. With the media attention we're getting, me thinks players of real quality will be observing and hopefully wanting to play for GJ. The summer might be very interesting!

[greenun]

The best English manager of our generation

For a modern-day Revie, look no further than Bristol City supremo Gary Johnson. Tobias Jones reports on the revitalising of a club

Sunday November 25, 2007
Observer Sport Monthly

Unless you live here, Bristol City are not a team you will have heard about for a very, very long time. The Robins sank leaving barely a trace in the 1980s and for 25 years they have been playing attrition football in the lower divisions. But now, something has changed. The city's buses are full of teenagers wearing their red kid. The average gate for the first five games of this season was the highest for 28 years, the last time they were in the top division. When you ask why, one name keeps coming up: Gary Johnson.

Asked who is the best English manager of our generation, only a few would think to name-check the 52-year-old Johnson, a short, charismatic man who grew up in Fulham, west London. Yet he has an unbelievable CV. He was John Beck's assistant manager when Cambridge United rose from the Conference to the play-offs that had a place in the inaugural Premiership as a prize. He has managed at international level with Latvia. With Yeovil Town, he won the FA Trophy and was twice promoted. Last year he took Bristol City from League One to the Championship. In the higher league this season, City have shown their class: they were unbeaten until October and have never been out of the play-off positions. Johnson has transformed a moribund club in the manner of Don Revie and inspired his players to rise to the new challenge.

'I'm telling you that will happen.' Johnson's hoarse voice carries across the training ground as another drill ends in a goal. A minute later another cross is whipped in by left-winger Michael McIndoe. It's awkward for David Noble, City's attacking midfielder, who has to skip on to the other leg and clip it with his heel into the far corner. 'Make that the fourth goal,' shouts Johnson from back at the centre circle. 'When we're three up, that'll make a nice fourth. I'm telling you that will happen.'

Johnson transmits to his players unstoppable belief in themselves. 'Trust your training,' he keeps saying. He talks them up constantly, and even when something doesn't come off he admires the daring. Darren Byfield, the club's top scorer, tries an elegant lob which bounces behind off the crossbar. 'He's so close to being brilliant,' Johnson jokes.

You can tell by watching the training that there is something special going on. The players are having fun, but it is very serious at the same time. I sidle up to Johnson's assistant, Keith Millen, who knows him from their Watford days. I ask how things are going at the club. 'Absolutely buzzing,' he says. Why? 'Structure. Concentration. Organisation.'

There's a cliche that the very best managers were often the also-rans as players and it certainly applies to Johnson. A diminutive midfielder, he left the Fulham youth team to sign for Watford just as Elton John took over. He never broke into the team and went to train with Malmo in Sweden for a couple of years, but again never played for the full side. He trained with Brentford and Northampton, but never quite made it. 'I always had a player in front of me in the first team who never got injured,' he says wistfully.

Johnson started a company, Pro-Am, running soccer schools for children. It was very successful, with 5,000 youngsters on its books including a young Tim Sherwood. But Johnson was noticed by the Cambridge United set up and so began one of England's great fairy-tale ascents. With players such as Dion Dublin, Gary Rowett, Liam Daish and Steve Claridge, Johnson and manager Beck led a revolution in the way football was played. 'Our methods, our tactics, our preparation were unbelievable,' he says. 'It was all about stats and getting the ball in the final third as often as you could. While it was going well, everybody was happy. It can still look a beautiful game when you hit a good ball 70 or 80 yards, then a great cross, then a header.'

Cambridge reached successive FA Cup quarter-finals, but, once momentum had been lost, they slipped back. Beck left, Ian Atkins was manager briefly and when Johnson took over he had to sell players who had made names for themselves. He was eventually sacked, moved to Kettering Town and was fired again.

He ended up back at Watford, where Graham Taylor offered him the job of academy director, overseeing youth development. It was while he was at the club that a 'Russian agent' organised a meeting between Johnson and the head of the Latvian FA. 'He wanted to invite me to Moscow to see his team, Skonto Riga,' Johnson explains. 'I presumed he wanted to make a bit of money himself. So I went out to Moscow and saw Marians Pahars for the first time and I said, "I think you've got one Premiership player and I'd like to help." Pahars got sold for a million, which was a lot of money for Latvians, the boy got a good contract, so all of a sudden I'm king of Latvia.'

Johnson was duly appointed national manager. 'I had to change a country's philosophy and mentality, they were still playing with a sweeper,' he says. 'I think they knew that I was strong, but humble if you like. After six months, the team was Cockney speaking. My only sentence in Latvian was, "Where is my aeroplane?"' It's a tribute to Johnson that he leaves friends wherever he goes. Years later, he still takes his teams to Latvia for pre-season friendlies.

The one thing everyone says of Johnson is that he is brilliant with young people. You do not have to be Freud to realise that, with four younger siblings, Johnson has probably been doing a spot of parenting ever since his teens. The result has been a loyalty from his foot soldiers that is rarely seen in the football world. There are five players at Bristol City who were with him during the glory years at Yeovil. He has re-signed players, he estimates, 15 or 20 times. Even players who have had bust-ups with him come home eventually. Michael McIndoe, who had 'three great years and three bad weeks' with Johnson at Yeovil, decided to swap Wolves for Bristol City solely because of Johnson.

McIndoe has been on fire this season, scoring three goals and setting up many more. 'Anyone can talk tactics,' he says. 'He (Johnson) actually makes the tactics count on the pitch. You go into every game knowing exactly what he expects you to do. That's why people want to play for him.'

If loyalty is one ingredient of the Johnson magic, the other is psychology. He loves telling players they are underdogs, the misunderstood minnows, while at the same time persuading them they are far better than the opposition. He employs a confidence coach and the home dressing room at Ashton Gate has a lot of swagger about it. Above each peg are photos of the players in their most glorious moments. 'My players aren't frightened of this league,' Johnson says, nodding proudly.

The spirit is obvious on the pitch, where his teams never believe they are beaten. Any Yeovil Town or Bristol City fan can recall memorable matches when Johnson turned games that seemed hopeless defeats into victories. Yeovil Town fans still talk about being 3-0 down at Doncaster in 2002 in the FA Trophy. At half time, an irate Johnson threw a bag that hit Steve Thompson, who was already holding ice to his groin, exacerbating the injury. Johnson had to replace him with Carl Alford, a striker he had worked with at Kettering and who had unfinished business with Doncaster. That substitution changed the game. Yeovil won 5-4, the beginning of a victorious cup run.

What is perhaps surprising about Johnson's Bristol City is that they don't just play winning football, they play beautiful football. The route-one tactics from Cambridge are long gone. Bobby G, a City supporter who writes a column in the programme, says: 'It's been amazing. There's no big boot or "hopeful" any more. They really fizz the ball about.' Martin 'Badger' Baker, a Yeovil Town fan and co-editor of CiderSpace.co.uk, remembers the Johnson rollercoaster fondly. 'He was never a 1-0 manager. He would play wingers almost as wide forwards and at times it was nearer to 4-2-4 than 4-4-2. He would be the sort that would rather lose 2-0 than not have a go. It was always entertaining.'

Johnson is often caricatured as the wise-cracking Cockney and it is true that his wit and insight have turned him into an unlikely media figure. There are not many managers from the lower divisions who have been invited into the Match of the Day studios. But his family describe a man who profoundly analyses the game. 'There's a huge amount underneath,' his wife Karen says. 'People often think he's a talker, but he's a deep thinker. If he says a joke, he's probably thought about it for days before saying it. He's very, very intense. After away games I can tell by Gary's "hello" on the phone if they've won or lost. At home, he'll watch a game over and over and over again.'

That, Johnson says, is how he relaxes and handles stress: 'I watch other people's games because then it's someone else's problem.'

'He's so passionate,' says his son Lee, the playmaker at Yeovil and now Bristol City. 'He demands so much from each player. There are people who can't handle it, they crumble under the mental pressure. But he's so dopey outside football. The other day he was driving home and phoned me to say he had run out of petrol.'

With City currently in the leading pack for promotion, optimism in Bristol is sky-high. Given his track record, nobody would be surprised if Johnson takes City to the play-offs this year, if not into the Premier League itself. Johnson, of course, is quick to put the brakes on such dreaming. 'What is the top level? I'm not too sure we're not at the top level and the reason I say this is because I think the Premiership is a world league played in England. It's the biggest league in the world, for viewing figures and finances. We'll take each step as it comes...' Whatever else happens this season, the Robins are flying again.

[redsalesman]

fantastic read

[REDOXO]

fantastic read

I second that.

A must read for every body on this forum

[tin]

Stumbled across it in the Observer Sport Monthly today, which is always a great read. Thought this peace was brilliant written though did feel a touch out-of-date given our slump at the moment...

[Gaffer]

An absolutely fantastic read and a real insight into Sir Gary's motivational tactics and man management. With this guy at the helm we will do great things, despite the occassional blip.

Plus, GJ running out of petrol made me laugh!!