Sean Dyche has often been branded as having a traditional approach and the incoming Everton manager has spoken out over what he calls the ‘trendy phrases’ within football now which have no real meaning.
Everton fans will hope that Dyche’s no-nonsense style will help them climb away from the threat of relegation with their side joint bottom of the Premier League after picking up just 15 points from 20 games and losing eight of their last nine games in all competitions under previous boss Frank Lampard.
Speaking earlier this month to David Jackson on BBC Radio Nottingham’s ‘Shut up and show more football’ podcast, a reference to one of legendary Forest manager Brian Clough’s withering quotes about how the game was being covered during his own time in the dugout during an interview with John Motson, Dyche said: “If you notice now, there are all these trendy phrases. Everyone sort of has to have a trendy phrase.
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“But we all buy into it, not so much myself, but the media love it. ‘Oh we recycled the ball well today’ – oh you mean you kept it and passed it to each other?
“You could have a million of them, I remember one of the managers, because we were always been questioned about playing longer balls, and they said ‘he’s playing vertical passes.’ We were wetting ourselves, me and my staff.
“The game demands more now. The game demands the manager is almost the font of all knowledge and pontificating with all these trendy words and trendy phrases.
“If you don’t play the right tactical formation you’re a dullard and all these things. It’s just bizarre and you’ve got to see through some of it but you’ve got to play the game a bit as well.
“You have to play the game a little bit because if you don’t and you call it too black and white, people almost now think that you don’t know what you’re doing and you don’t know what you’re talking about.
“You have to give it a little bit of that but some managers, they talk in circles and me and myself just wet ourselves laughing and think ‘what are you talking about?’ If I was a fan, I’d go ‘I don’t even know what they’re talking about, there’s that many different lyrics involved in that song, I haven’t got a clue.’”
Dyche, who believes the gap between the Championship and the Premier League is as big as it’s ever been, has been out of the game since his nine-and-a-half year stint in charge of Burnley ended on Good Friday last year. Although the 51-year-old had been using his sabbatical from football to pursue some outside interests, he admitted that as an out-of-work manager, his presence on matchdays at the City Ground close to where his family home is situated, would often cause a stir.
Dyche said: “There’s managers I trust, a lot longer in the tooth than me in what we do and I rang them and they said ‘look, get a break, don’t start obsessing about football, don’t watch every bit of football, get away from it, do all the things that you promised you would do when you’re doing what you’re doing for 10 years and you’re rattling up and down the motorway, go and do all those things.’
“It’s good advice and joking apart I don’t hide the fact I like gigs, I like a night out, I like a couple of beers like anyone else does, I like to see my friends, I like to see my family, I like to socialise but equally I do some media stuff, I go and watch games. Watching games has been awkward because when I turn up at Forest, people think I’m after the job.
“It turns out I actually live here (Nottingham). Loads of people still don’t know I live here you know.
“It’s really strange – not that I promote it – but people go ‘what are you doing here?’ and I say ‘I live here!’ and they go ‘right, oh, ok’, end of conversation, bye.
“You do forget there is a life out there, we are humans, football managers believe it or not. So when you get a break it is nice to do other things.”
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