Silent stadiums switch focus to touchline tussles and the art of coaching
‘With 50,000 fans, you can pretend that you haven’t heard what the manager is saying’ Guardiola’s instructions were far more simplistic than the intricate football he demands
As Bernardo Silva ruefully, and revealingly, put it – there is no more ignoring the manager on the touchline. One of the few boons of games behind closed doors is that we can hear every word on the pitch and from the coaching staff. And we know which managers, in fact, say very little.
“It is weird because the only thing you could hear was what Pep [Guardiola] and Mikel [Arteta] were shouting. You could hear every word,” Bernardo said after Manchester City’s win over Arsenal.
“When you are playing with 50,000 fans, you can pretend that you haven’t heard what the manager is saying to you. Now it’s impossible.”
There can be no more hiding by players – throwing out their arms in an “I can’t hear you” pose, deliberately not looking towards the bench, or even having to wait for a team-mate to run over with a piece of paper from the manager – because the instructions and their reactions to them are all there to be heard.
Such is the lack of noise inside the stadiums, with just 300 people present, that Dean Smith, the Villa manager, has even taken to positioning himself halfway up the Trinity Road Stand, reasoning that he can get a better view – and his booming voice can still be heard. It also places him near the press box and he could be seen looking over to the radio commentators at one stage during his side’s defeat by Chelsea when goalkeeper Orjan Nyland was criticised for spilling a shot.
There was also no doubting Smith’s frustration at the number of fouls on his star player, Jack Grealish. Against Sheffield United, in the first game of Project Restart, he eventually implored referee Michael Oliver by simply shouting “Michael” with his arms outstretched as Grealish was yet again brought down.
His opposite number in that game, Chris Wilder, has perhaps – and predictably – been the loudest manager so far, and the work-rate and effort he demands from his team are matched by his unrelenting involvement from the touchline. There was no mistaking what he meant as he hollered at captain Billy Sharp during the goalless draw against Villa. “Skipper! Billy! That’s four tackles we’ve missed. Four!”
So far, no Premier League manager, despite the level of paranoia that exists, has followed the example of Brentford’s Thomas Frank, who admitted giving instructions in his native Danish so that Championship rivals Fulham did not understand what he was saying. The half-dozen Danes in the Brentford squad then translated.
Pleasingly, Pep Guardiola was as involved as would be expected, although his instructions were far more simplistic than the intricate football he demands. There was a constant cry of “outside!” – and all three of City’s goals against Arsenal came from passes down the right. Beyond that, Guardiola shouted the names of his players – a lot – as he demanded to whom the ball should be played. The most frequent was “Kevin” as, time and again, he asked his team to pass to De Bruyne.
In Tottenham Hotspur’s draw at home to Manchester United, there was a predictable contrast between Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. The United manager was far less vocal.
Mourinho stayed on the edge of his technical area throughout the first half and, when United were initially awarded a second penalty, his intense cries of anger rang around the empty stadium until the decision was overturned.
The most vocal presence for United was midfielder Scott Mctominay, while there was an interesting contrast as to how loud the Spurs goalkeeper – and captain – Hugo Lloris was compared to David de Gea. Tellingly, the United goalkeeper did not appear to speak to his defenders at all.
There is a school of thought that the absence of fans will take the emotion out of games, which will become more a test of coaching, organisation and technical ability.
Some managers, such as Andre Villas-boas when he was at Chelsea and Spurs, disliked the randomness of English football – how you can set your superior team up better than the opposition, dominate a game and yet lose with a switch in atmosphere changing everything in the final 10 minutes. For him, it was illogical.
With that in mind, it was a fine restart for Southampton, whose manager, Ralph Hasenhuttl, dominated the decibels against Daniel Farke, just as his team were too much for Norwich City, and one of the conclusions of the opening round of fixtures is that the bottom three are in the relegation places for a reason.
“From the coaching side, it is a little easier, because you have more chance to coach them and the players who are further away they can hear you,” Hasenhuttl said.
At the same time, it makes you wonder how some managers, noticeably Jurgen Klopp, who feed off the energy that can be gained from a full house, will find it behind closed doors. Although he was hardly subdued on the touchline at Goodison Park, there was not the same intensity as normally comes from him.
For Liverpool, the jeopardy has gone. What will be fascinating is to see how those managers who are being exposed by the lack of noise fill that void, and whether some of them will adapt.
What is so startling about Arsenal is the apparent lack of discipline. At the final whistle in their defeat at Brighton and Hove Albion, they looked like an angry, finger-wagging pub team on a Sunday morning in search of a fight when they should have put up more of a battle on the pitch.
Project Restart has been a disaster for them: three bad injuries, two defeats, one red card and zero points. That is some countdown on their return, with a bizarre late flight to Manchester to kick it all off last week and now news three players had to rule themselves out of training because of a positive coronavirus test that eventually proved to be false.
There is more. Captain Pierreemerick Aubameyang is out on the wing and looks like he is edging towards the exit, Alexandre Lacazette could also be off, the future of bright prospect Bukayo Saka needs to be sorted, Arsenal are struggling to find the money to renew contracts, and have warned of the consequences of failing to qualify for the Champions League. Plus Mesut Ozil earns £350,000 a week and, remarkably, could not even make an expanded 20-man squad against City for what manager Mikel Arteta said were “tactical reasons”, when the Arsenal manager surely owed a greater explanation.
Arteta, it is said, has done good work behind the scenes. Backing him, of course, makes sense as the problems appear to lie elsewhere, although he needs to regain a grip on things, and quickly. It looks like Arteta’s “Wheel of Fortune”, to dish out punishments to players who break the rules, requires another spin or two.