Premier League Managers Quotes

With all my demons, and my mum away, and dad away, and the drink and drugs, the kids, the maintenance, the keeping fit, the obsessions, the depressions, in between all that I’ve managed to win four world titles, four UKs and four Masters. I don’t know how. I’ve won 24 ranking events, 10 Premier Leagues, more than 50 tournaments altogether. It’s not bad going for such a fuck-up!

A year before Wenger’s appointment, Leyton Orient manager John Sitton had been the subject of a Channel 4 documentary that recorded him threatening to fight his own players in a famously bizarre dressing-room outburst. ‘When I tell you to do something, do it, and if you come back at me, we’ll have a fucking right sort-out in here,’ he roared at two players. ‘All right? And you can pair up if you like, and you can fucking pick someone else to help you, and you can bring your fucking dinner, ’coz by the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll fucking need it.’ That was the 1990s football manager.

[I]f Modi is toast, it will in one sense be a tremendous pity. In his way, he represents a third generation in cricket's governance. For a hundred years and more, cricket was run by administrators, who essentially maintained the game without going out of their way to develop it. More recently it has been run by managers, with just an ounce or two of strategic thought. Modi was neither; he was instead a genuine entrepreneur. He has as much feeling for cricket as Madonna has for madrigals, but perhaps, because he came from outside cricket's traditional bureaucratic circles, he brought a vision and a common touch unexampled since Kerry Packer.

This is where the music starts to slow. Because, let’s face it, the fact remains that in two decades since his arrival Wenger has had a greater, more visible – albeit rather tenuous – influence on Germany’s world champions than he has on the current England team. Despite being the only long-serving Premier League-era manager with any real sway or heft in the wider world – coach of five of France’s world champions in 1998 – he will leave no real mark on English football development or theory. Rather than cherished, brain selectively picked, Wenger is instead quietly mocked these days, cast as a cobwebbed crank, some doomed, sad stone knight still tending the hearth, a little creaky and mad, friends only with the flies and the beetles and the spiders.

Since Modi's Mumbai sign-off, much commentary has been focused on the brand-dilution potential inherent in its scandals. MS Dhoni doesn't think we should worry: 'IPL as a brand can survive on its own.' Shilpa Shetty, 'brand ambassador' of the Rajasthan Royals, tweets that we should: 'Custodians of Cricket must not hamper d Brandvalue of this viable sport.' Hampering d Brandvalue, insists new IPL boss Chirayu Amin, is the furthest thing from his mind: 'IPL's brand image is strong and nobody can touch that.' Harsha Bhogle, however, frets for the nation: 'Within the cricket world, Brand India will take a hit.' Not much more than a week after Modi's first tell-all tweets, the media was anxiously consulting Brand Finance's managing director, Unni Krishnan. Had there been any brand dilution yet? It was, said the soothsayer gravely, 'too early to say'. He could, however, confirm the following: 'The wealth that can be created by the brand is going to be substantially significant for many stakeholders. A conducive ecosystem has to be created to move the brand to the next level… We have to build the requisite bandwidth to monetise these opportunities.' Er, yeah… what he said. Anyway, placing a value on the IPL brand has clearly been quite beneficial to Brand Finance's brand.

One particular game sticks in my mind: in March 2007 we went to Middlesbrough during a three-month period when we had the Swedish striker, Henrik Larsson, on loan from Helsingborgs. I could not have asked more from him when, under real pressure, he abandoned his attacking position and fell back into midfield just to help dig out the result. When Henrik appeared in the dressing room at the end of the game, all the players and staff stood up and spontaneously broke into applause for the immense effort he had made in his unaccustomed role. At the end of the season we requested an extra Premier League winners’ medal for Henrik, even though he had not played the ten games that at the time were required to obtain the award.

A housefly has a longer life expectancy than the manager of a Premier League team.

and that The Manager is always talking about how this has been a season of transition, but it’s no consolation for me. I’ve

It didn’t take long for other clubs to follow them across the pond. In 2005, Fulham accepted an invitation from Major League Soccer to play in the league’s annual All-Star Game. Chelsea made the trip the next year, and West Ham took its turn in 2008. If the matches themselves weren’t always thrilling spectacles, there was at least evidence that English clubs were treating them more seriously. West Ham’s supporters lent a sheen of authenticity to the whole thing when they engaged in a brawl with fans of the Columbus Crew, an unlikely outbreak of violence at a so-called friendly game that ended only when police administered pepper spray to both sets of fans. “We wanted to show people what we’re about,” West Ham manager Alan Curbishley remarked after the game.

1892 is not only an ordinary date, but it is the time of existence of a football giant, a rare legend of the 21st century that does not smell of blood and tears. It is the date of birth of a team which wrote a history that not only must be read, but must also be memorized. A little after its foundation, it became the nightmare of first the Premier League clubs and then other clubs around the World. There was no team it didn’t defeat and no fun group it didn’t upset. Within 125 years, it won 18 league championships, 5 European cups, 7 FA cups, 8 league cups, 3 UEFA Super Cups, 15 Charity Shield Cups, ve 3 FA Youth Cups. As the club began to win cups, it got richer and its support group expanded. It conquered the hearts of about 600 million people around the World, its name and its song was chanted everyday by its supporters. Joy and sorrow, night and day, death and life always follow each other like victory and defeat. By the early 1990s the ship began to leak. Its popularity diminished around the World as it weakened and its opponents strengthened. That made its management hopeless, its supporters sad and its players pressured. Infrequent derby victories became only a consolation and past memories and childish dreams became the only sanctuary for its supporters. However its love has never ceased and will not. Because it is not only a football team, it is an excitement, a desire for victory, a passion, a love. Yes, it is a love, a red-white love. And this book is a message thrown into the ocean of the future within a bottle to highlight the expectations and dreams of lovers of red-white colors. Will the bottle reach the shore, will anyone read its message, will the message mean anything for the people? No one can predict this.

While other London clubs in fancier neighborhoods—Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea—have all enjoyed long periods as the capital’s preeminent team with championships and trophies to their name, glory has always remained tantalizingly out of West Ham’s grasp. Not that their fans are unduly concerned; they embrace their status as the city’s gruff, blue-collar underdogs with a healthy slice of gallows humor. When Harry Redknapp, a former player at the club, went to inspect the club’s trophy cabinet after taking over as manager, “Lord Lucan, Shergar, and two Japanese prisoners of war fell out,” he wrote. Even the club’s anthem, “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” is an old Broadway tune about shattered dreams and disappointment, and it’s bellowed by thousands of supporters wearing the team’s claret and blue jerseys before every game.