Fine lines fall JFH’s way but influence is obvious
BOSS EXUDES CONVICTION AS HE IMPARTS HIS IDEAS
WHEN Burton Albion drew 1-1 away to Shrewsbury Town on November 3, it was one of the travesties of the season.
Yes, it’s been well documented before but here it is again.
The Brewers generally outplayed a Shrews side struggling every bit as much as they were at the time and took a 59th-minute lead through Kane Hemmings.
They were hanging on for victory in the eighth minute of stoppage time when referee Anthony Backhouse awarded Shrewsbury a corner, to the fury of the Burton players.
The referee would later admit he had got it wrong in the car park to captain John Brayford: “It was too late then,” said Brayford.
Shrewsbur y scored from the corner. Daniel Udoh’s shot was blocked on the line but, through a crowd of players, the linesman was sure the ball had crossed the line.
It was a huge kick in the teeth to a Burton side struggling to get a foothold in the season and one from which, arguably, they never quite recovered under Jake Buxton.
I mention it now because memories of that match came back quite readily on Saturday. The pattern of the game was similar, except that Gillingham managed to put much more pressure on Burton in the last 20 minutes than Shrewsbury did. The biggest difference of all, of course, was that Gillingham did not score. They should have.
John Akinde certainly should have given Ben Garratt no hope with his late close-range opportunity but he gave the Burton goalkeeper just the slightest sniff of a chance and Garratt was up to the challenge. There you had the “fine lines” that football managers talk about a lot writ large.
Seconds later, Burton had their first clean sheet in 35 games, their first away win of the season and a winning start for Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink in his first game back in charge. Hasselbaink is fascinating to watch and to deal with.
He has that “something” you cannot quite put into words. Perhaps it his own confidence. He has been there and done that like only a handful of others as a player and exudes conviction that his path is the right path.
He says plenty but gives not a lot away in interviews – perhaps as befits a manager who has taken advice from Steve McClaren.
He talks so passionately about hard work and organisation, as if he is carrying tablets of stone down from the mountain with new information.
Most football managers talk about hard work and organisation. Most of them also say a lot without giving a lot away. It’s the nature of the game.
Hasselbaink has a knack of making it sound fresh. Unashamedly, I find myself hanging on every word.
If you ask him a slightly more detailed question, there’s a smile, a brief thought and then an answer that does not invite you to follow up, even if he has not told you all you were hoping to know.
It’s not as evasive as the average politician, it’s cleverer than them, although, of course, we are not dealing with such weighty topics. Hasselbaink would probably be a good and popular politician.
But back to football and the dynamic on the touchline between him and assistant Dino Maamria was also fascinating on Saturday.
For much of the game, Hasselbaink sat stock still in his seat on the front row of the dugout, concentrating hard on what was happening on the pitch.
Occasionally he was on his feet with an instruction but, as he said in his interview afterwards, he sees no value in shouting and screaming, that is more likely to put players off.
There was, of course, one of the starker contrasts in football a few yards away, where Gillingham manager Steve Evans was doing as Steve Evans does, delivering a steady stream of four-letter rants until referee Brett Huxtable had finally had enough and went over for a word.
Burton’s assistant manager, Dino Maamria, meanwhile, provided a contrast to his boss with a hyperactive presence, here there and everywhere around the dugout, off to the back row of the players’ area to get a little elevation, down to the touchline.
He shows his passion in a different way to Hasselbaink and, if we did not realise before, when he was a marauding hard-nosed centre-forward, the Tunisian is a deeply-committed character who was taking the coaching side of the game seriously long before he had finished playing.
Look at Maamria’s twitter profile: “Head coach/manager, UEFA Pro
He talks about hard work and organisation as if he is carrying tablets of stone down the mountain.
Licence, Diploma in Football Management, Proficient in Sports Psychology and Sports Science. Passion, Ambition, Resilience,” it says.
His “pinned Tweet” tells us that Giovanni Trapattoni, the renowned Italian coach, believes a good coach can make a team 5% better. Maamria proudly points out the stat that he made five teams at least 50% better, based on points per game, in five management jobs.
You could call that immodest or you could call it proud.
“Good morning Burton Albion. Thanks you all for a fantastic week, capped by a good performance and a big win. Hopefully, that will give us the belief and confidence to kick on and climb up the table,” he tweeted on Sunday morning.
So there you have it. Not a lot of diffence between how those Shrewsbury and Gillingham games panned out.
But, one way or another, the result was different. Perhaps Hasselbaink and Maamria are lucky as well as good at what they do.
There’s a long way to go. They will need a combination of both. But, so far, so good.