The assistant manager

Brian Clough and Peter Taylor, immortalised outside Derby County’s Pride Park

By Steve Graves

Assistant managers, what are they good for? Absolutely some things, we reckon.

First we need to define our terms. Assistants come in all shapes and sizes, and often with job titles which can lead to confusion as to their actual place within a management structure.

The term assistant manager is an all-embracing one, covering anything from a largely peripheral figure at a club to de facto manager and driving force behind football strategy - and everything in between.

Then there are jobs such as first-team coach or head coach, which can muddy the waters still further.

Steve Clarke, one of the highest-profile assistants of recent years in the English game, was recently appointed first-team coach by Liverpool. Credited with much of the tactical groundwork on which Kenny Dalglish has built a seemingly reinvigorated side, Clarke fulfilled a similar role (with more modest returns) at West Ham with Gianfranco Zola.

His previous work at Chelsea showed that even under a seeming autocrat like Jose Mourinho, there was a place for an assistant to offer light and shade as required.

It is clear that while Sammy Lee is technically assistant to Dalglish, Clarke has at least an equal standing within the club’s management structure.

In English football it is difficult to think of a manager who’s operated successfully without assistance not just with coaching but with decision making. In fact the real divide seems to be between those who favour a group or committee of assistants, devolving more power and encouraging a plurality of ideas, and those who maintain a duopoly above a group of essentially subservient coaches.

Clough at Leeds - structural defects?

Brian Clough was firmly in the latter camp, and for some the major failure of his career, at Leeds United, was down to the absence of long-term assistant Peter Taylor. It is undeniable that Taylor should be considered one of the great assistant managers and Clough was always likely to feel his loss. That said, perhaps part of the problem was not down to the absence of Taylor himself but to the entirely different structure into which Clough was parachuted.

Antipathy between manager and players, negative response from the fans, poor results and the looming shadow of his predecessor Don Revie are among the many factors at the heart of Clough’s failure at Elland Road. But he may have enjoyed more success, or at least stayed in the job longer, had Clough not been forced in to a totally alien system - Revie’s ‘family’.

To the outside world Revie is considered in much the same way as Richard Nixon - a man of accomplishments undone by his essentially unsavoury character. Those who were around his Leeds United paint a different picture. Revie’s emphasis on treating everyone involved with the club, including catering staff and players’ wives, as part of his project ensured the loyalty and devotion of many.

This was reflected in the coaching staff, with Revie’s assistant manager essentially the first among equals in a formidable team including Syd Owen (head coach) and Les Cocker (trainer). The collegiate atmosphere reflected the Boot Room created by Revie’s friend Bill Shankly, but was anathema to Clough and Taylor’s style.

Clough brought Derby trainer Jimmy Gordon with him to Leeds, dispensing with Cocker’s services, but fostering the atmosphere Owen and Lindley had been used to under Revie was not in Clough’s nature.

Perhaps Clough took something from his ill-fated spell at Leeds, as Gordon was by many accounts to become a far more important figure during the former’s time at Nottingham Forest than he had been previously.

Measuring success

It would be unfair to claim that assistants and other backroom staff have failed to enjoy success as managers in their own right. During the heady days of English football’s heady European golden age around the turn of the 1980s, on four occasions the trophy was won by managers who’d stepped up on the resignation of erstwhile bosses (Liverpool’s Bob Paisley three times and Aston Villa’s Tony Barton in 1981-82).

It is clear, though, that some high-profile assistants have floundered when given the top job. Brian Kidd, so integral to Alex Ferguson’s development of Manchester United and now assisting Roberto Mancini’s cash-rich City, was unable to save a Blackburn Rovers side heading for relegation under Roy Hodgson in 1998.

The jury remains intriguingly out on Kidd’s successor Steve Mclaren’s managerial career, but the fact that his replacement Carlos Queiroz is reportedly in talks over a job managing Iran might suggest that the Portuguese boss, at 57, has had his last big opportunity in club football.

Queiroz was one of the most influential assistants of the last decade in English football, enjoying a portfolio granting him the kind of power many would have thought impossible under a leader as strong-minded as Ferguson.

For persuading Ferguson to adopt a 4-5-1 formation which did not bring immediate results, Queiroz became a divisive figure among United fans during his two spells at Old Trafford. His influence over tactics and club affairs reportedly angered Roy Keane, while he came to be blamed for United’s over-cautious approach to European games in particular.

Doomed periods in charge of Real Madrid and the Portuguese national team have led to the suspicion that Queiroz does not have what it takes to be a manager in his own right at the highest level. That should not detract from his achievements, particularly during his first spell under Ferguson, who some believe still harbours hopes Queiroz will succeed him at Old Trafford.

Assistant manager/head coach/first team coach roles require specialist skills which may or may not be transferable to the manager’s job. It is equally the case that measuring the success of such staff in isolation is virtually impossible. Lee, for example, was found wanting as a manager at Bolton Wanderers, but has been a trusted ally to Sven-Göran Eriksson, Rafa Benítez, Sam Allardyce and Gerard Houllier. Lee even survived the nuclear winter that was Hodgson’s spell at Anfield, emerging blinking into the sunlight alongside Dalglish and Clarke.

Lee must get something right as an assistant, but even dedicated Liverpool fans would be hard pushed to say what beyond a generalised ‘feel’ for the club he served as a player and an obvious enthusiasm for the job.

Pat Rice - the unsung assistant

Few assistants can embody this sense of indefinable efficiency, of success built on undoubted yet seemingly intangible qualities, than Pat Rice.

Rice, a fine right-back over a 20-year career as a player with Arsenal and Watford, has spent the years since 1984 working in various capacities at Highbury and now the Emirates.

Since 1996 and the appointment of Arsène Wenger, the Frenchman has had Rice at his side as assistant.

Rice’s Wikipedia entry describes him as playing a ‘key role’ in Arsenal’s unbeaten 2003-04 season and twin Doubles under Wenger. A cynic might question such an assertion, given that Arsenal’s brand of football and coaching philosophy is very much the product of Wenger’s vision of the game. Given that Rice was youth-team coach under George Graham’s pragmatic regime, it’s hard to imagine he contributed much to developing that vision, at least initially.

Rather than the driving force Queiroz was allowed to be, with questionable results, or the quiet but influential likes of Clarke, Rice is the ultimate team man, implementing his manager’s instructions without ever claiming glory for himself.

Wenger has gone some way to explaining Rice’s success as assistant, attributing it to his winning mentality and affinity with the club. Even to his boss Rice’s qualities err on the side of the un-pindownable. Lee may well see Rice as a model for his own career, and would be wise to do so.

While Pat Rice may not be poached by Real Madrid, as Queiroz was in 2003, or ever attain the semi-mythical status of a Peter Taylor, he can retire (perhaps at the end of this season) having been at the heart of a remarkable project to transform a football club from top to bottom. Arsenal fans should treasure him while they can.