If leadership is pizza, Neil Warnock is pineapple - The Square Ball 16/3/22

FLYING

Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

The high-speed handbrake turn from Leeds United against Aston Villa to Leeds United against Norwich City was already remarkable before the squealing doughnuts of stoppage time. Out beyond listless on Thursday night, into useless, Leeds had turned it round from the start against Norwich, and they had to. Jesse Marsch’s aggressive pressing explains his focus on high morale, clear thinking, reducing stress: it’s almost impossible to play his way, running twenty yards full speed to tackle a centre-back, in a bad mood.

There will be downsides to this. Marsch emphasises that football is “a business for men”, which it is not. And because his style of play is entwined with demanding a particular kind of positive mental masculinity, it positions stress and depression as part of a kind of anti-masculinity, which is one of those ideas that leads to silent mental health agonies among young men when they’re told depression is weakness and to ‘man up’.

That’s a wider problem about sports coaching and society, while the main aim at Leeds is to get Rodrigo and the lads playing better now. The fast turnaround between the Villa and Norwich game, by the sounds of Phil Hay’s article in The Athletic, played to Marsch’s strengths for rapid, meaningful communication that pushes the right buttons to get his players in the right mood.

Marsch’s first act, after the Villa game, was to say nothing. There was — obviously, blessedly — no on-pitch huddle, and perhaps no key messages in the changing room either. The players, per Phil’s report, were getting into it among themselves after the match, and the best thing for Marsch to do was let them. The story of this season’s problems goes back much further than two weeks, and if there was bloodletting to be done, the players knew best from where to draw it.

That meant Marsch was a fresh voice, once they’d all slept on it, on Friday and Saturday. Training was kept light, talk stayed heavy. Marsch met them in groups and individually and, if his earnest buzzphrases sound odd in public after so much brusque Marcelo Bielsa, the conversations I feel sure he’ll describe himself as facilitating in those 48 hours bore the fruit we saw against Norwich.

Rodrigo was, apparently, key. He organised his own 31st birthday party for the day after Bielsa was sacked, not for the sort of cheerful sing-song Crawley Town’s players held after Steve Evans was gone, but to get the players away from the grief of Thorp Arch and into the fresh air of Flying Pizza on Street Lane. Every player had to attend. It was a fitting venue. When Leeds sealed the league title in 1992, the squad was spread across Yorkshire, watching Liverpool’s decisive win at their homes; but they were so used to the Flying Pizza that, in a time before WhatsApp groups, a couple of phone calls and some gravitational pull brought them all there to start the party. Marsch says he wants more of this from Rodrigo, and as a senior party-planner he would be following in Gordon Strachan’s footsteps. As captain, he and his wife had fostered the title squad’s team spirit by hosting mandatory open-houses at their home for all the players and their partners to come together, with the wise understanding that, after a certain time, the younger ones could head into town and live it up while the seniors stayed as late as they liked at the Strachans. That does pose the question of what thirty-year-old Mel Sterland was supposed to do, desperate to latch on with Speedo and Batts into town but nearer to Gordon’s age than theirs, but every player said the togetherness of the squad was vital and Strachan was key to making that happen.

Rodrigo, along with Kalvin Phillips and Pat Bamford, has been invited into Marsch’s ‘leadership council’. This is not new at Leeds, but it is being freshened up, and perhaps wisely. Liam Cooper, Luke Ayling, Stuart Dallas and Adam Forshaw were in Bielsa’s leadership group, and Marcelo spoke about seeking advice from Gaetano Berardi or Pablo Hernandez in their time. Cooper and his partner have been responsible for greeting new players and bringing their families into the circle, but I can imagine Liam’s longevity at Leeds generating its own awkwardness when a multi-million pound superstar is taken for his first get-to-know-you meal. At some point in the night, they’ll ask Liam, ‘what was it like when you first joined? You must have seen some changes, right?’ And his answer will be a panicked stream of flashbacks taking in packed lunches, Dave Hockaday, Verne Troyer and ransacking Sports Direct for training socks. It might be better, in future, if new recruits can just ask Rodrigo, and he can tell them about making his debut at Anfield.

That Rodrigo, Phillips and Bamford have only just graduated to formal squad leaders describes a problem with the concept: some good players might be put out to be left out (no Raphinha?). The last time I heard so much about the leadership at Leeds was when I was torturing my senses by reading Neil Warnock’s book The Gaffer. The infamous ‘blame Tom Lees’ match — when in his post-match interview Warnock tore so many strips off the young defender for getting sent off that Ken Bates’ wife Suzannah was phoning the team coach home to check on him, nearly six months after Bates had sold the club to GFH — had a lot more going on. It was a long journey away to Ipswich and back, on which Warnock saw fit to take teenager Chris Dawson, so he could sit on the bench while the Under-18s team he’d led all season was winning and celebrating a league title without him. Dawson travelled because El Hadji Diouf did not, Warnock judging that, ‘At his age, he wasn’t going to play twice in three days, and there was no point dragging him down there.’ That had Ross McCormack pissed off, when he realised after going all that way he’d be dropped for the next match, so Warnock brought his leadership group together to decide what to do about him: ‘Lee Peltier, Stephen Warnock, Paddy [Kenny] and Brownie [Michael Brown]’. He ‘pulled McCormack in’ and called him out for being injured all season and missing chances, and that, Warnock says, meant he was ‘motivated to score’ when he came off the bench in the next game, at home to Derby. Warnock doesn’t mention McCormack was also motivated to celebrate by screaming ‘Fuck off!’ at Warnock on the bench, but does explain how he was sacked later that night after the 2-1 defeat. ‘The following day was Sharon’s birthday’, he adds.

That’s the risk of a leadership group. They can be important for bonhomie, home truths, and to save the manager explaining things thirty times. But if you manage it badly you can end up with Michael Brown standing there with Neil Warnock’s arm round his shoulder and a contract extension in his pocket, telling the team’s best player that he isn’t committed enough. Leeds, at that time, had problems even a pizza party couldn’t solve.