WHY MANAGING CRAWLEY TOPS SCORING FOR LIVERPOOL
WIN OR LOSE... IT’S ON HARRY’S TERMS
Picture: Steve Bainbridge
But former Leeds, Liverpool and Australia star Harry Kewell, who is 10 months into his first manager’s job after replacing Dermot Drummy at Crawley last May, might just be the exception to the rule.
“I absolutely love it,” said Kewell.
“I thrive on it and I actually enjoy it more than playing.
“When my team do something, it really makes me proud.i explained this to a colleague I used to play against the other day.
“I said, ‘You know when you scored, you got that feeling that was unbelievable and people would say, ‘How do you replicate it, what’s that feeling?’
“I mean, there are always rumours about what it could be, right? And they’re both unbelievable,” he added, laughing. But the feeling when you score a goal is like, ‘Oh my God’, it’s everything… and then you get to celebrate.
“Well, I get that every time my team scores and, honestly, it’s like the same feeling I got when I scored.
“In fact, I probably feel a little bit better.”
Kewell, who started coaching at his own academy in Australia before spending just under two years in charge of Watford Under-23s, has enjoyed that feeling 49 times this season. But his side have conceded 54 and he knows the play-offs will be a real push after yesterday’s 5-3 home defeat to Cheltenham
However, with the help of assistant Warren Feeney, the former Northern Ireland international, Kewell is happy that progress is being made.
The Aussie added: “I love the league. It’s only me and Warren here – he knows the league inside out and that’s vital. But football is football, you play the game on a little bit of green grass, there are 11 men against 11 men. “It’s a fantastic league because you can change it. “At the top level, it’s the one and two per cents you can hopefully get to make a difference. Here you can make maybe a 10 or 20 per cent difference.” Kewell, 39, played under some of the biggest names in English football history – Howard Wilkinson, George Graham, David O’leary, Terry Venables, Gerard Houllier and Rafa Benitez. But asked which one of them he quotes most often, he said: “None. And it’s not a disrespect to those managers, but I have my own ideas, my own strategy.
“If I do have a problem off the field, that’s when I speak to my old managers.
“I will speak to one or two who have helped me on offthe-field incidents I’ve never come across before, which is an eye opener.
“But on-field stuff, I will take control and work through it, and the only way you get to understand it is to go out there and learn it.
“The one thing I know about this job is that it’s about results, and if you are going to get the sack, get the sack your own way.
“Don’t say, ‘I got the sack because of him – he told me to play a 4-4-2 when I should have played a 3-5-2’. That’s childish.
“Be man enough, honest, to go out there and have a go.”