STAN COLLYMORE How can Pep manage if I TAKE LUK OVER KANE he can’t man-manage?
COLLY
Follow us on Twitter: @peoplesport JOHN GREGORY wrote a newspaper article last week saying he wishes he’d dealt with me differently when we were at Aston Villa together.
Most of you will know the history – he asked publicly what I had to be depressed about, unaware back then that depression is an illness.
Nice as it was for him to write that, John and I made our peace 10 years ago when we filmed a documentary together.
And, funnily enough, I have been thinking about something we discussed back then.
John was talking about the difference in the dressing room between low- maintenance and high-maintenance players.
Sir Alex Ferguson always had players who l ooked after themselves – Gary and Phil Neville would have been ultra- l ow maintenance – but he also had men such as Eric Cantona and Cristiano Ronaldo, men who were very highmaintenance but who ultimately made the difference.
Inherited
To be a top gaffer you have to be able to man-manage every type of personality.
And when I look at three of the biggest names in Premier League management – Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino – I wonder if those three can.
Take Guardiola. He inherited three huge personalities at Manchester City – he blew out Joe Hart, fell out with Yaya Toure and clearly has issues with Sergio Aguero.
He always wants more, more, more from Aguero – it isn’t enough that the forward is one of the few world-class players in the Premier League.
If you asked every other top-flight manager how they’d treat Aguero, almost all would tell you they’d build their team around him.
Yet he can never do enough for Guardiola.
Then you have City keeper Claudio Bravo, who makes mistake after mistake yet Guardiola praises him to the hilt. In the end Aguero will just give up because whatever he does will never be enough.
I felt like that under Gregory. I remember scoring two goals in a game and he moaned I had not got three. He always focused on what I wasn’t doing rather than what I was doing and, long term, that’s never going to work.
Guardiola ought to have scoured the market in the summer for an N’Golo Kante-type who’d do Aguero’s running for him and let the Argentinian worry about scoring the goals that win titles.
At Liverpool, Klopp doesn’t seem to want to deal with Daniel Sturridge, another big personality, despite his undoubted talent.
And at Tottenham, Pochettino favours young pliable players rather than more demanding characters like Moussa Sissoko.
As players, all three managers would have fallen into the low- maintenance category and it’s almost as if they want a squad of players just like themselves.
But you have to know how to deal with every personality if you want to be a serial winner.
I’ve no doubt that Guardiola will win the Premier League in the next couple of years, but only because City will buy the players to help him do that. But great manager? I’d go as far as to say his man-management skills are rotten.
The sneering you see from him in press conferences gives you an insight into what he’ll be like in the dressing room and I don’t know how easy he’d be to play for.
Remind me who Guardiola fell out with at Barcelona…
That’s right: Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
He has previous and it doesn’t bode well for Aguero. LEYTON ORIENT’S plight once sceceagainsendsagaing again sensends sends the mess message sagageetthathatsagage ththat that the FooFoFo Footballotb League gue andnd and Fo Footballtb ll AAs As AssociationAssoci don’t t care – or care enough whatt – about happensp to theirheir rc clubs. wish I just there e wa was a Distressedistressede Panel el Clubs’ with the s sole ea aim of medi mediating between tween owne owners nerss anersersan anand andnd fans. flags s Any red thatha gett turnedturnedtd tturneddt turnedd up, theyh go c could to thehe theheeth the FAFA...AA... FA...A...FA... whwhoho who wouwouwowwo wouldould t then look k ktto to taktake take emer ememer emergency measures to protect clubs. HARRY KANE and Romelu Lukaku go head-to-head at White Hart Lane this afternoon – and I know which one I would rather have in my team.
If you are talking goal numbers alone you would go for Kane.
But I would take Lukaku. I cannot speak highly enough of him.
He’s a man-mountain – and once he realises just how much damage he could do with all that physicality then he can really go on to be a beast of a footballer.
Kane is a reliable operator – and I do want to see Lukaku add that to his game too.
But while Kane will always be a very good 20 to 25-goals a season striker, I reckon that Lukaku has the ability to go on and be something more. I see him as another Didier Drogba: someone who not only scores the goals but also dominates defences at the highest level.