Micky Adams in The Times

[Jacko51]

Quite an interesting piece in yesterday's.

 

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/football/article4535926.ece

[Rampant Zebra]

Can't read it because I don't have a subscription! First paragraph is interesting though. Bold move for Micky, I hope he does well there.

[Jacko51]

Can't read it because I don't have a subscription! First paragraph is interesting though. Bold move for Micky, I hope he does well there.

 

Sorry, it's behind a pay wall, I forgot. Here it is:

 

 

 

 

Sligo Rovers offer a lifeline to the manager who feared that his career could be over

 

This summer, when the telephone stopped ringing and there was no more potting or trimming to be done in the garden, Micky Adams sat down with Claire, his wife, and discussed his options. In April, he had left Tranmere Rovers, who would be relegated from the Football League and, after 19 years in management, he wondered if something had shifted, perhaps for ever.

 

“When things like Tranmere happen, you think, ‘Wow, this is the end of my career’, ” Adams said. “For the first time, I thought about what I could do outside of football. Scary. For a couple of weeks after you leave a club, your phone is red hot, then it goes quiet. It’s only your family and friends who call.

 

“What if I’d had the last club I was ever going to get? What else can I do? I looked at all sorts; coaching abroad, coaching in schools — trying to put something back — after-dinner speaking. I looked at shops, chip shops, pubs. To see if there was a worthwhile proposition somewhere.

 

“I talked to Claire about it. ‘Don’t be daft, you’re a good manager, look at your CV. It’s a blip. You’ll be back.’ It’s a load of b*****ks, but at least she was saying the right things.”

 

It was not “b*****ks”, though. Adams has managed at Fulham, Swansea City, Brentford, Brighton & Hove Albion, Leicester City, Coventry City, Port Vale, Sheffield United and Tranmere.“Yeah, but sometimes you’re defined by your last job,” he said. Yet here Adams was, a football man again, laughing with his staff over a cuppa (the source of hilarity: Colin Feehily, the kit man, is the brother of Mark, once a member of Westlife).

 

Here means The Showgrounds, home to Sligo Rovers, of the League of Ireland Premier Division. It is a picturesque stadium, with a backdrop of rolling hills, where the night before, Adams had overseen the team’s second consecutive victory, a significant result given the club’s precarious position. He and Alan Rogers, his assistant, are on short-term contracts, charged with securing their status and progressing in the cup.

 

The challenge is recognisable, the environment less so. Sligo, who won the league as recently as three years ago, are a co-operative, asking supporters to contribute €100 each to “Rally Around Rovers”. Decisions are taken by committee. After their 1-0 win over Derry City, Adams was invited into the sponsors’ pub across the road for a pint.

 

“Some cynics will say I don’t know anything about the Irish league and I’ve got to be honest — I don’t,” Adams said. But he knows players and he knows coaching. Sligo’s facilities are “first class” and although being away from Claire and home is difficult, when the call came, he answered. The chip shop has been shelved.

 

“If nothing else, I could have done the garden, watched games and looked at the league tables to see who is struggling,” he said. “The alternative was to work. That’s just me and my background. My dad was a pattern maker in the steelworks in Sheffield. I’m a working-class lad from a working-class area. I’ve never had any pretences about myself. I want to get my hands dirty.”

 

That compulsion has not always served him well. “There are times I’ve been wrong in my choice of clubs,” Adams said. “I’ve liked them wanting to employ me and nine times out of ten, I’ve fallen for it.” Not all of it is him. He started at Craven Cottage, where a director told him that he would be Fulham’s Sir Alex Ferguson: Mohamed Al-Fayed arrived and he was gone. At Brentford, Ron Noades bought the club and installed himself as manager.

 

There have been four promotions, including at Leicester City, who he guided into the Barclays Premier League, but success was clouded when three players were charged with sexual assault (later dropped), while at a training camp in La Manga. “Front-page news, every avenue of news; I think it had a profound effect on my career,” Adams said. He has since lectured on crisis management for the Welsh FA.

 

Last October, he was appointed by Tranmere, who were already bottom of Sky Bet League Two. “It’s the first time really that I’ve failed at that level and that hurt me,” he said. “Hurt my professional pride.

 

“There has to be a collective responsibility, but it seems to have fallen on my shoulders. Things happened that supporters don’t know about and which you could never release, but the majority of footballers there last season need to have a look at themselves. The staff as well.”

 

Adams laments the loss of personal responsibility. “You’ve got to find that energy from within,” he said. “It’s what drives me mad about modern footballers — they want smoke blown up their backsides. When I was a player at Southampton, we all knew how we’d done before we left the dressing-room on a Saturday because Chris Nicholl told us.

 

“He’d go around the room and tell us, one by one: ‘not bad’, ‘did all right’, ’s***’, ‘w*****’. You’d sit there and think, ‘Please don’t give me a w***** — a s*** will do today because I know I’ve not played well’. But it was great, because if he called you s*** or a w***** you’d be desperate to prove him wrong. I’d come out on the training ground like a raging bull. You can’t do that now, because players would down tools.”

 

He is not wallowing in self-pity. “I’m not looking for sympathy,” he said. “I’m a tough northern lad and I say it how it is. Sometimes that doesn’t go down too well.”

 

Adams has found honesty at Sligo. In the match against Derry, Tim Clancy, the centre half, dislocated a shoulder and popped it back in himself; the crack was audible from the stands. Adams said: “If that had happened at Tranmere last season, he’d have been out for six weeks. It’s great that,

isn’t it?

 

“It’s a blank canvas for me, start again, back to basics. This job has given me the chance to coach rather than all the other rubbish that goes with being a manager.”

 

Three league games in, Adams has won two, lifting Sligo from immediate peril. “It’s different here,” he said. “Managers tend not to socialise after games, I’ve been abused a couple of times. Been called an ‘English . . .’ I’ve not had that before. I just laughed. Generally, the welcome has been fantastic.”

 

The Irish league ends in October and there will be talks with Sligo, or “The Bit O’Red” as they are known, but the timing “ties in with the sacking season”, Adams said. “If I do a decent job here, you never know. My next

club in England has to be right.” At 53, he is younger than Steve McClaren and Alan Pardew and his ultimate ambition is “to become a Premier League manager again. That’s the pinnacle”.

 

Sligo, he said, “is not a money-making exercise”. It is also “not a holiday” and Adams disciplined a player for attending the Fleadh Cheoil, the traditional Irish music festival, the night before a game. “You can get carried away on that, get into the boozers and drink . . . No. This is work.”

 

Still, victory afforded Adams and his squad a day off last week and he and

Rogers took the opportunity to explore, walking through the mist up nearby Knocknarea. It serves as a decent metaphor, one that reduces his story to its footballing essence. Micky Adams had a mountain to climb. He climbed it.

 

Nine games to save the season

 

With nine league matches to play, Sligo Rovers are 11th of 12 clubs in the SSE Airtricity League Premier Division. Last place is relegated, while second-bottom is involved in a play-off with the runners-up in the First Division. Whether Micky Adams succeeds in his task, he is not the only English manager to work for Sligo recently.

 

John Coleman had three months at The Showgrounds last year before leaving for Accrington Stanley.

[Yukon]

Interesting system. Bet that game is phucking electric.

 

They do it in Scotland too

[Rampant Zebra]

Play football? Are you sure, lol

[Trentham Lakes Valiant]

They do it in Scotland too

 

We used to. Charlton stayed up a couple of times under that system

[Mario]

Millionaire Micky running a chip shop you have to laugh.......

[CAVALIER]

Interesting about Tranmere though and it's true what he says

Good luck to him

[Santa]

With the number of pay offs Micky has had down the years I can't imagine him ever worrying about his next job.

 

It was well over half a mil when Blades sacked him wasn't it?

[Bycarsbill]

Despite a two page feature, disappointingly it makes no reference to MA's time at Vale Park!! What does that say about his feelings for the Vale?

[Little_Al]

Very revealing in that his ideal is to abuse players at the end of matches and at other times on a purely haphazard basis. That is not the way to improve players or team performance.

[JOHNNYAITCH]

If that's how he goes about his business he's had some success..and obviously some failures

[carl]

We used to. Charlton stayed up a couple of times under that system

 

That system, if I remember rightly, was last used in England in 1987. Gillingham sent Sunderland down to the then Third tier via a Playoff semi final between Gillingham who had finished fifth or fourth in the Third division and Sunderland who finished third from bottom of the Second Division. Neither club went on to play in the Second Division the following season. If I remember rightly, Swindon were promoted via the play offs

[old sage]

Despite a two page feature, disappointingly it makes no reference to MA's time at Vale Park!! What does that say about his feelings for the Vale?

To be quite honest Bill as that bloke with tache in 'gone with the wind' said ''quite frankly my dear I don't give a damn''. We had some good times under his leadership but also plenty of bad ones.

 

I wish him well but he is like all of the other old managers I'm afraid 'history'. Some you remember with affection like Rudgey, McGrath and Gordon Lee most of the others you just wish to forget.

[Valiant62]

I remember Adams with affection.