SEVEN KEYS TO GIVE BOSSES EDGE...

THERE was a wonderful article that looked at the job that football managers did.

The conclusion was that most managers do deliver what they ought to deliver. In other words, the biggest budget normally comes top and the smallest budget normally comes bottom.

The calculation was that just 10 per cent of managers overachieve against their budget. So the question has to be, what do these managers do that others don’t? How does the man with the 12th biggest budget win promotion??

The answers will lie in seven key areas; he will instil practices at technical, tactical, teamship, personal, professional, physical and mental levels that enable his team to succeed. So, for instance, Chelsea’s wellrehearsed block to enable John Terry to score at a corner is one of hundreds of tactical details in their armoury. And the linguistic skills of Manuel Pellegrini are a factor that enables a team to form in a multi-lingual environment at Man City.

As the future unfolds, it seems certain that a manager will have an increasing social media burden to control or harness, an ongoing language situation to master and a continuing requirement to only play a pure form of football.

The challenge that the best must address to enable them to differentiate themselves from the rest is vast. The science behind the entire management agenda is becoming more and more extensive, whether in physical matters or in data analytics.

Finding the edges that enable you to be one of the 10 per cent appears to be an increasingly complex task, although the brilliant Brian Clough made it seem easy with his view that you just need a good goalkeeper, centre-half and centreforward. And eight others who will run!