Discipline is the key to make youngsters grow up..that’s why the sin bin works

STRUGGLING managers up and down the country must hate October – because it seems to be the month when trigger-happy owners get busy.

On Six-0-six last weekend, we had Spurs fans going cold turkey on Mauricio Pochettino and Manchester United fans saying Ole Gunnar Solskjaer must go.

And although I am not in favour of sacking managers, especially just eight games into a season, I do fear for Marco Silva’s job at Everton.

This week, we’ve already seen Daniel Stendel – who won promotion last season – part company with Barnsley and Jack Ross, who took Sunderland to the play-off final, having to leave Sunderland.

I fear the sacking season is not over by a long chalk.

But here’s a stat that makes you realise how vulnerable a manager’s job has become in the last 25 years or so.

In the Premier League’s first season, 1992-93, there was only ONE manager sacked during the whole season – Ian Porterfield at Chelsea.

How times have changed – and not necessarily for the better.

I HAVE seen the future on my grassroots crusade – I want to be a manager. Working with the PFA Academy All-stars Under-14s this season has given me a taste for management.

I’m not going to be knocking on the doors of Premier League clubs yet. I want to learn the ropes and climb the ladder in stages. Maybe in three years’ time, I would like to be working towards National League level. After that, who knows?

But I have gone from being just another parent, standing on a touchline every Sunday morning, to being seriously bitten by the bug. SIN BINS are the way forward if we want to turn the tide on discipline in football.

I am passionate about grassroots football providing a pathway to careers in the professional game and I have seen a big step forward in terms of players’ behaviour.

And I have come to realise that, even at 14, players can develop and win at the same time.

Of course you don’t want them to be playing at a level where they are out of their depth.

But in Italy, France and Spain, kids in academies play for points in competitive leagues from an early age – here we don’t do that until under-18 level, although at grass roots (outside the academy system) we do it from under-12 onwards.

Real Madrid’s former chief scout Manuel Romero says: “Apart from making the competition more legitimate, it makes the child grow with that competitive gene, which is apparent when they become professional.”

In other words, young lads at academies on the continent are exposed to a competitive environment much earlier. What’s wrong with looking at a league table and wanting to be top of the pile?

And a bit of discipline never did 14-year-olds any harm.

My PFA Academy All-stars under-14 team plays in the Timperley and District Junior League and this season they introduced sin bins – primarily to cut out dissent.

As the manager, I’ve told my players that if anyone is sin-binned for backchat to referees or officials, they will miss the next two games – with no promises they will get back in the side.

So far, it has worked. None of my boys has been sent to the naughty step. And it’s something well worth looking higher up the food chain.

Since we are in the middle of another international break, I am revisiting an area of the game I’m passionate about – grass-roots football – because we need to get a grip.

In some regards, my lads are lucky and not just because they’ve got me as manager!

We play our home games on a 4G pitch, so at least the boys wake up on a Sunday morning and know their game will be on, whatever the weather.

But here we are in October and already other games are being postponed because grass pitches are waterlogged.

What chance have we got of playing in January if we can’t maintain pitches to a decent standard barely two months into the season?

I went to watch one game a few weeks ago and the ‘surface’ was a joke. The grass must have been five inches high – you could only see the top half of the ball – and the council hadn’t bothered to mark the white lines.

How are kids going to develop when conditions are so poor?

But sin bins have been a revelation. They are an excellent deterrent to ill discipline.

If you are ordered to cool down for 10 minutes and your team concedes a goal while you’re off the pitch, you are not going to be popular with your team-mates – or the manager.

I’ve adopted a hardline approach to my players being sin-binned as part of a sea-change in my grass-roots mentality. I still want the boys to enjoy playing – but at under-14 level I’ve decided that winning matters too.

Already this year, we’ve had three lads picked up by professional clubs – Liverpool, Preston and Rochdale – which gives me immense satisfaction.

And if we go through the rest of the season without winning a game, but another 10 of my players are signed by clubs, I would regard that as a success.

But the best way for lads to get noticed by scouts is to play with ambition – in a team where winning is the target, not just having a game with your mates.

I’m trying to give them the best of both worlds – grassroots ethics with Premier League desire.

When I was taken on by Manchester United as a teenager, I played for the youth team at weekends – but I was also allowed to play for the grass-roots team managed by my dad back home. I once played for United on a Saturday morning, went home and scored the winner in a derby game for my dad’s side in Wrexham.

It meant that while I was cleaning boots and sweeping the dressing rooms at one of the biggest clubs in the world during the week, I never lost touch with the grass-roots culture I came from.

My major incentive now, as manager of a team where all the boys have suffered the disappointment of rejection by professional club academies, is to get as many of them as possible back into the system.

We work hard, play to win and if you play well, you keep the shirt. All the boys have bought into that mindset

because they know there are scouts out there watching.

And they know that if they are sent to the sin bin for dissent, it may be a long time before they get back in the side.

I know there will be parents who disagree, but, for me, from now on – at under-14 level and upwards – it’s all about a combination of development and winning.

Lionel Messi (left) played every minute of every game coming through grass-roots and the age groups at Barcelona’s academy.

Do you think he would have become one of the greatest players of all time if he had been subbed every week to give a player of lesser ability a run?

Grass-roots football exists for players to enjoy football, to develop – and in the case of my players, win.