Football News: Do managers really know better than fans? (Opinion)

One of the phrases I see most often while editing the sites is that a manager sees his players in training every day so he knows better than the fans. That is always trotted out by fans who back a manager making bizarre selections each week. I just wonder how true that is?

I can remember Middlesbrough opened their training ground in Hurworth, at the time my parents lived in the village, so each time I visited we would walk there to watch training.

One pre-season during the Bryan Robson era I can remember Paul 'Gazza' Gascoigne appearing looking like Jimmy '5-Bellies' had come to training. He looked like a darts player rather than a footballer, but that isn't relevant to this point really.

The player I wanted to discuss is Mark Schwarzer, a man who was excellent for Fulham for a number of years, was then at Boro. He was running through training drills on his own with a couple of the coaches hitting crosses over for him to practice catching them. It was the most inept performance I have ever seen, he literally couldn't catch the easiest ball.

For years afterwards, not getting the chance to see a lot of him, that was my main impression of Schwarzer, a flapper with no idea how to catch the ball. Gradually over his time at Fulham I grew to realise that he wasn't as bad as he seemed those times I watched him train with Boro. In fact he was a safe pair of hands on match day, but I have never been able to completely etch the memories of his flapping in training from my mind.

It makes me wonder, was he just having off days when I saw him? Was he just not able to motivate himself in training and so not really trying? Did the coaching staff just transform him into a much better keeper?

Thinking about it made me realise how many other times I have watched teams training and seen players that looked particularly brilliant, only to watch them play a match and look like donkeys. Other players that looked like donkeys transform into world beaters on a match day.

It has made me realise that fans might not know better than managers, but managers might also get the wrong idea about players by having seen them train each day. When you are wondering why he is still picking that useless donkey, he is thinking that this is the day the shining star of training will finally show itself on the pitch.

Perhaps fans might not be being paid to pick the teams, but they only see what a player does when it matters. So just maybe they actually do know just as much as managers after all.

Written by Tris Burke January 03 2015 10:30:01