About Me

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Howden, East Riding of Yorkshire, United Kingdom
I'm a 53 year old senior manager in Local Government. My interests include current affairs, travel, walking, reading, art & culture and sport. The views expressed in this blog are entirely my own and do not represent the views of anyone else or of any organisation.

Tuesday 7 October 2008

A Conversation With Dario


Last Saturday (4 October), I was at Gresty Road to watch Crewe Alexandra lose 3-1 at home to Northampton Town in Coca Cola League One. About 30 minutes before kick-off, the legendary Dario Gradi was standing near the area where the players come out onto the pitch. Dario was Crewe manager for 24 years, stepping down in 2007 to become the club's Technical Director. As manager of Crewe, he got the team punching above its weight, spending many years in the second tier of English football. He developed a fantastic reputation for developing young talent such as Nicky Maynard who recently went to Bristol City and Dean Ashton who now plays in the Premier League for West Ham. He also encouraged his team to play intelligent, technically sound football and instilled into his players excellent values such as not arguing with referees - for example, unlike so many managers, when one of his players conceded a penalty, he almost never criticised the referee's decision but instead preferred to concentrate on why one of his players had mistimed a tackle or dived in risking the possibility that the referee might give a penalty. I thought that I would take the opportunity to talk to Dario, as he is one of the men that I most admire in football. After signing my match programme, Dario told me the following -

  • I asked him if he was going to produce an autobiography. He said that he wasn't because he didn't like autobiographies. I said that he should because he had such a fantastic story to tell and that unlike some of the nonsensical (and frankly unreadable) autobiographies that get produced by players just starting their lives and careers in their 20s, he had a genuine autobiography to write. He agreed with that, but sadly I got the impression that there is no autobiography in the offing.
  • He did say however, that he was writing another type of book on The Pursuit of Excellence which will be a book about player development, coaching and performance - this is one to watch out for in all good book shops!
  • I asked him how involved he was now with the first team at Crewe. He said that he still takes some of the coaching and that in the last few days, he had taken a session with the goalkeepers and a session with the forwards. He said that he was trying to give Crewe's newish signing from Leeds, Anthony Elding, "a trick" to make him less predictable for opposing defenders. He said he was also trying to do something similar with Calvin Zola who used to be a Newcastle player. I also asked him how he thought that Crewe's new goalkeeper, Steve Collis was doing following his signing from Yeovil Town and Dario said that he was doing fine and that he was probably on par with Ben Williams, Crewe's previous goalkeeper who moved on in the summer. Dario said that he goes to most of the away games but not all the Saturday ones which involve an overnight stay because he likes to take the Friday night training with the youth teams - you certainly get the impression that coaching and player development is Dario's main interest and passion. It's incredible really, that into his 60s, he still trains the youth teams on a Friday night. As Dario said to me, "I don't need to work any more, I do it because I love it".
  • I then asked Dario how he thought that Crewe would fare this season. He said that it was a "team building year" and although they might get close to the play-off spots (a bit optimistic I think), it is very unlikely that they would be promoted. I followed up by asking Dario why Crewe were now apparently struggling to stay up in League One, when it was only a couple of seasons ago that they were a Championship team. Dario said that this was because the quality in the Championship and lower leagues had risen because so few British players now played in the Premier League which meant that they played in the lower leagues thus pushing the quality up in the leagues below the top flight. He asked me to think about the teams in the Championship now and to recognise that they were all strong teams - this contrasted to the years when Crewe survived in the Championship when there were other small clubs to compete with such as Gillingham, Rotherham, Grimsby and Stockport. Rather sadly, he predicted that Crewe would never be able to hold their own again in the Championship and that League One was probably the level that they would have to play at. I have heard Dario say this before and it is possibly the only thing that I don't particularly like about his approach - it may be realistic but does it send out the right signal to the players and others?
  • He said that the business model for the club was sound and that it had no debt. It is worth noting that Crewe have some of the best training and academy facilities in the whole country (including the Premier League) and they also built a new multi-million pound stand in 1999 which offers excellent views of the pitch. He said that Crewe budget to lose £1million per year and that this shortfall is made up from the sale of players (such as the £2.25million sale of Maynard in July) and from cup matches like the recent one at Liverpool which he estimated would have generated £150,000. Interestingly, he said that because of the way that Crewe bring players up through the ranks, they often have great loyalty to the club and sometimes sign longer contracts than they might otherwise do which helps Crewe to maximise the transfer fee generated - such as the £3million that Norwich City paid for Ashton, a deal that generated a further £1.5million for Crewe when Norwich sold Ashton on to West Ham. Dario also said that there was no prospect of a rich benefactor buying Crewe because there would be nothing in it for them, "unless they wanted to run it down and sell the ground for housing!".
  • I asked him what a typical player in League One would be paid. Dario said about £1,000 per week at Crewe, which was possibly a bit lower than the league average. Dario said that he still thought that this was a bit too much - it doesn't seem too much when you think about how many years a typical player would have in a career and I would think that for a lot of the players, they would not be in a position to earn more than this in the years after they hang their boots up.
  • Finally and perhaps most intriguingly, I asked Dario if he had ever been tempted to take a manager's job in the Premier League or with a bigger club. He said, "yes, twice - both times with Wimbledon", where of course he was manager between 1978 and 1981, when they were in the third and fourth divisions. Dario said that once was when Dave Bassett was manager in the mid-1980s and the other time was in the latter part of the 1988/89 season when Bobby Gould was Wimbledon's manager but despite being well progressed in the discussions about taking over with Wimbledon's owner, Sam Hammam, it was scuppered because Crewe successfully got promoted from the then fourth division that year which caused Dario to hesitate and in the end Hammam decided to keep Gould as the manager.

It was a very enjoyable conversation with one of English football's legendary figures (no, not an exaggeration). As the Crewe fans used to sing, "Dario Gradi, Football Genius".

Sunday 5 October 2008

Journalistic Tricks Of The Trade


You may have read in my earlier post entitled, An Encounter With Kinnear & Llambias that whilst in the departure lounge at Newcastle airport on 27 September, I had retold the details of my "encounter" to Shaun Custis, a journalist on The Sun who also happens to be a Newcastle fan. Whilst I was sitting next to Custis at the airport, he was tapping away on his laptop writing up his match report for publication in Monday's paper. Because of this, I decided to buy The Sun on Monday 29 September and imagine my surprise when I turned to the Newcastle v Blackburn match report and discovered that Custis had written the following -
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"Joe Kinnear sat in the airport departure lounge heading for London, otherwise known as Newcastle's head office. Alongside him was managing director Derek Llambias, who offered some words of wisdom to the Toon's new caretaker boss after they had witnessed a fifth defeat in a row. Llambias said, 'it will quieten down off the pitch, Joe. You just have to get it right on the pitch'".
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I say that I was surprised to read this because I know for a fact that Custis did not hear Llambias use those words and that he only got it from me. I know this, because when I arrived in the airport departure lounge at the gate designated for our flight, I sat down next to Custis, who was talking on his mobile phone. Kinnear walked in alone, without Llambias at that point. Custis saw Kinnear and said to the person he was talking to on the phone that he had just seen Kinnear walk in and that two weeks previously Llambias had been on the equivalent flight back to London Stansted after the Hull City match. Custis remarked that he was surprised that they were "slumming it" by using easyJet so often. When Custis finished his phone call, I recounted my story to him and as we were talking we made our way towards the gate to board the plane. Until I told him, Custis did not know that Llambias was on the flight. Custis and I boarded the plane through the rear door and Custis sat in an aisle seat very near the back of the plane. I sat a few rows further forward. Llambias and Kinnear sat in the middle of the plane. This is how I know that I was the source for Custis's opening paragraphs in his report.
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This episode provides an interesting insight into the way in which (some) journalists work and it is interesting that Custis assumed that I was a reliable source, even though he had never met me before. It is also the case that the use of quotation marks implies the verbatim reporting of what Llambias said but given that I actually heard what he said, I can tell you that it was not exactly as Custis reports. Custis also inaccurately says that Kinnear and Llambias were sitting in the departure lounge when they had this conversation but in fact they were not - they were actually standing in the queue to get through security.
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Despite the inaccuracies, I still enjoyed being responsible for the opening paragraph or two in the match report published in Britain's most widely read daily newspaper!