IT’S SAME GAME BUT BIGGER & BETTER – SLAVEN
VASTLY experienced manager Slaven Bilic welcomes Danny Cowley to the Championship today and what he calls “the next level of the video game”.
Bilic is taking his first steps in Championship football himself having spent most of his career as a player and manager with VIP status.
He’s not put a foot wrong. He’s got West Brom in the promotion race as the only unbeaten team in the league.
Bilic has Hajduk Split, West Ham, Everton and the Croatian national team on his CV.
For Danny Cowley and brother/assistant manager Nicky there was no showbiz playing career, just slogging it out at the lower end of Non-League football.
Management started in front of about 50 people in the Essex Senior League - but five promotions in 10 years with Concord Rangers, Braintree and Lincoln have brought them the job of stopping the considerable rot at Huddersfield.
The Cowleys might have been at West Brom now. They had talks and impressed, but when Bilic was known to be keen on the job, it was he the Baggies went for.
Energy
“The Championship for Danny Cowley? It is like the next level of the video game,” says Bilic. “It is still the same game they know. It’s the same kind of grounds, just bigger. The same energy, the crowd is the same, the mentality of most of the teams is the same, but there are better players in the Championship.
“The difference is in quality but that should be good for him because he can ask from these players maybe what he couldn’t ask, or get, from the clubs he was at before
“I would say the biggest difference is from the Championship to the Premier League. The Premier League is less ‘football’, it is more ‘corporation’.
“Look at the Press conferences in the Premier League. In the Championship we have 10 reporters maybe, in League One it’s five, I don’t know, I’ve never been there, but I think so.
“While in the Premier League it’s everybody, Croatian TV, it’s world-wide.
“What I found when we played pre-season friendlies with Scunthorpe and Rotherham was that the structure of the teams were the same, but it is more British players in those leagues than foreigners.”
Danny Cowley’s background is teaching. Bilic’s background is the pain of Croatia at war.
Mortar board or mortar bomb, their histories could not be much more different.
“Cowley took a different route,” says Bilic. “In football you can find good examples for those who haven’t played at a high level before managing and for those who have.
“There are guys who started from teaching or whatever and made huge careers, Champions Leagues, World Cups, whatever. “The other way round you have Zinedine Zidane who never coached but then he won three Champions Leagues in three years with Real Madrid. “When you are a manager you have to bring something. “Zidane brought his huge experiences from the pitch. He had already been there in every situation. He played for Real Madrid for five years, he won the Champions League, the World Cup, he knew exactly what to do. “He didn’t need a school to teach him how the players feel with two minutes to go and they are winning, or losing, or drawing. Or when the whole crowd is against you. He didn’t have to go to university for that. “The people who don’t know all that, they need the schooling. I am a big fan of education, I am a big fan of school and definitely school cannot harm you. “The manager of Huddersfield, he has spent his time learning and building himself up and that can only help him.” Besides West Brom, Sheffield Wednesday was also a job the Cowleys could have had. As Jim Bowen used to say on Bullseye, look at what you coulda won. West Brom are going for promotion, Wednesday have a chance of being in the fight with them, but Huddersfield, well, just a win would do. They haven’t had a victory this season. Only Stoke have been worse.
The difference is in quality but that should be good for him because he can ask for more from his players Slaven Bilic
We have to be motivated. are dangerous They are in because they a dangerous situation. Slaven Bilic
have lost the last five on the bounce and got one point. Their last win was 1-0 at Wolves in February. They’ve lost 15 of their last 18 games, including a home Carabao Cup defeat to Cowley’s Lincoln.
Of their last 49 league matches, they have won three - Fulham 1-0 and Wolves home and away.
If this was a school report Cowley had written, it would read: Could do lot better. See me.
“What helps me as a player and now a manager is the psychology of being an important part of a team for a season, two seasons, three seasons, 10 seasons,” adds Bilic.
“That you spend, week in and week out, in those seaHuddersfield sons living with 20, 25 other players whose families depended on that, that’s the experience that helps you the most, the disappointments, the happiness.” Cowley lost his first Huddersfield game to one of his suitors, Sheffield Wednesday, now it’s the Baggies. Bilic says in games he suffers. Cowley has a whole club suffering. “If your team is winning 3-0 then you can enjoy. Otherwise, it’s tense,” says Bilic. “It’s a whole road, it’s a journey. But I enjoy, yes… when the crowd comes in, the beginning of the game, especially if we are playing good.
“This is a big game on Sunday. Are Huddersfield on a bad run? Of course they are, we shouldn’t lie about that but they are very dangerous.
“They are a big club and last season they played in the Premier League and they have some players, I don’t know, ten, who got promoted and stayed in the Premier League.
“But something happened there - and it doesn’t need to be a big thing - and it changed.
“We have to be as motivated as we normally are to beat them. Huddersfield are dangerous because they are in a dangerous situation.”