So Antonio Conte and Steven Gerrard have walked in to Premier League jobs and immediately banned ketchup from the dining room. Marginal gains, some people call it. Others call it meaningless fluff.
All Premier League clubs employ nutritionists. We are 25 years on from Arsene Wenger arriving in English football and changing most of what our players had been eating. At Arsenal, it wasn’t just the lager that Wenger flushed down the drain.
English football is modern and now obsessed with the small details. Some players thrive on the way their diets, sleep and lifestyles are micro-managed. Others find it oppressive and would like more leeway, more trust.
Steven Gerrard and Antonio Conte both banned their players from using ketchup
And this, not ketchup and mayonnaise, is what lies at the heart of what all the great coaches do. They find that elusive balance. Happiness, motivation and hunger — not the literal kind — are what drive all successful sport teams.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is not unemployed this morning because of the menu at Carrington. It’s because his players had lost faith in what he does on the training field, the way he sets up teams and the things he says to them.
The last successful United manager was Sir Alex Ferguson and the one great skill that remained with him to the end was an ability to drive and unite players.
Sir Alex Ferguson was a master in the art of motivating his players season after season
By the time he retired in 2013, his judgment in the transfer market had waned. But his ability to work psychological magic within a group of men had not.
Often we hear of new managers casting their spell on a squad. Changes to food, longer training sessions, shorter and more intense training sessions, evening training sessions. More days off. Fewer days off.
Ultimately, it’s the equivalent of moving the same chairs in to different corners of the same room. The work that matters is done on the grass and inside the heads and hearts of individual players.
Arsene Wenger famously revolutionised eating and training habits of Arsenal players when he first arrived in English football in 1996
Talk to those who have worked under the greats. Ferguson, Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, Don Revie, Brian Clough, Bob Paisley. They will tell you stories not of how long training lasted, but of great team talks and clever ideas. They will tell you how those men made them feel rather than what they allowed them to eat at half-time.
Bryan Robson’s solution to United’s recent problems were expressed in print over the weekend. He suggested a few nights out. But those days are gone and with good reason. The game is quicker and more demanding these days. Equally, what works for one manager will not always work for another.
At Leeds, for example, the great Marcelo Bielsa is notoriously obsessed with fitness and physical
