A managerial lesson from history - Joe Mercer

[Dave Ewing's Back 'eader]

Nothin' like learnin' the lessons from history, or, as the cliché reports, we are bound to repeat! Hope we've learnt the lesson.

 

[Balti]

None of us (fans, club officials etc.) should let 3 results affect our long term thinking and planning. The media will always focus on the negatives - even Joe suffered with adverse media coverage at times. In fact Joe's very first season saw the papers claim there was a player revolt and his first game (a friendly V Dundee) caused the media to suggest Joe would be on his way after the fans booed and slow-hand clapped after only 65 mins.

It sounds unbelievable but it's true (anyone doubting should check pages 183-184 of my updated "Joe Mercer, OBE: Football With A Smile"). One journalist claimed that City fans had "a notoriously short temper" and added "I can recall no ground in 20 years of sports writing where a 'friendly' curtain raiser has got this sort of crowd treatment."

For both Joe and Malcolm there were other issues before City actually won a trophy (including widespread media coverage suggesting a Mercer-Allison split with Malcolm claiming he'd been offered the Coventry job and was off as Joe was trying to sign Franny Lee in Oct 67), so the message really is for us all to keep the faith, keep calm and to avoid making the situation worse by falling for the negative coverage of splits/problems/arguments and so on.

As far as player power is concerned... don't forget that Swales claimed in 74 that it was player power that forced him to get rid of Saunders (and fan power that got rid of Machin apparently!).

Thanks Gary. Interesting stuff....nothing new under the sun eh? Guess I'll have to buy the book now ;-)