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— Martin O’Neill —
the
manager
WINTER 2011
➽
doubt had moments when he
would have done something and
might have gone back into the room
and spoken with Peter Taylor and
thought ‘wait a minute that might
not have been so clever.’ But overall
most of his decisions were brilliant; he
knew the game inside out. Sometimes
when you are dealing with a group
of players you can’t always give the
individual the amount of time that
he might want. I felt that I needed
more individual attention and
perhaps John Robertson and others
sometimes felt the same. Despite my
arguments with him, overall his man
management was par excellence. The
biggest compliment I think I can pay
him is that he and Peter Taylor (who
was excellent for Brian Clough and
for the club as well) took a team from
the second division to win the League
Championship, a couple of European
Cups and a couple of League Cups to
give us an extraordinary time of our
lives for three or four years. We had
great players that would have graced a
lot of teams but without Brian Clough
I know we wouldn’t have won the
Championship, two European Cups
and two League Cups.
Did you start to think of yourself
as a leader when you became
captain of Northern Ireland?
Billy Bingham made me the Captain
in 1980 just before we started the
1982 World Cup campaign and
that was a great honour for me
and it pleased me greatly. At that
time Nottingham Forest was the
team who were heavily involved in
Europe and we had already won the
European Cup the previous year.
The responsibility of captaincy really
grew on me over a couple of years.
We qualified for the 1982 World Cup
in Spain from a difficult group that
included Sweden, Portugal, Scotland
and Israel; eventually Northern
Ireland and Scotland went through. I
think getting the captaincy gives you
really great confidence both in your
performances and your ability to a
lead a group of players. Obviously
Billy Bingham gave the team talks but
I’d get in a huddle with the players
as it were and be able to converse
with players and hopefully get them
into the right frame of mind. It’s the
role that you are always hoping as a
manager that your club captain will be
able to do for you.
How important were your first
steps into management with
Grantham Town, Shepshed
Charterhouse and Wycombe?
Being Grantham Town manager did
me a lot of good. I treated it as if it
was the best club in the world and
treated the players with great respect.
I felt I learnt a great deal from taking
that route. By the time that I joined
Wycombe a couple of years later I felt
as if I’d had a really decent grounding
and of course the days at Wycombe
were just absolutely splendid. I had
a great group of players and it was a
smashing club which was very well
run, providing an excellent platform
for me to do my job.
Looking at the team you
assembled at Leicester City it is
evident that you create a very
definite culture of camaraderie
when you join a club; would that
be a fair assessment?
I know that lots of people will say
that camaraderie has to be strong
and at Nottingham Forest it was very,
very strong indeed and it wasn’t always
through the manager doing that.
We as a group of players nearly all
went out together and Brian Clough
would never have discouraged that
because he would have felt that this
culture was so, so important. I always
feel at a club that if you can create
it yourself or it happens vicariously,
having a very, very strong spirit is
essential. At Leicester we were
fighting the odds every week so it
was particularly important. However,
that would be a disservice to the
players who came to Leicester with
a point to prove. The likes of Neil
Lennon, Muzzy Izzet, Robbie Savage,
Stevie Claridge, Matt Elliot... you
could go through every single one
on them and they all had something
to prove in the game. I think when
you get that desire collectively with
a group of players, each week having
a point to prove, never feeling that
they had achieved something then the
camaraderie and achievement goes
from strength to strength.
How much does that culture
guide your recruitment policy?
In an ideal world I absolutely look to
do this. However, is there such a thing
as an ideal world now? The chances
were that 15 years ago you were
managing a group predominantly
of British players but nowadays
you are working with an eclectic
bunch and you have to make subtle
changes in your approach. If you are
taking a player from the other side
O’Neill (left) challenges for the ball with another future
manager, Bryan Robson, in a 1979 encounter between
Nottingham Forest and West Bromwich Albion