28 Sept 2011

STEVE CLARKE: "Kenny, Kevin and myself are a bit old fashioned..."

Liverpool Assistant Manager Steve Clarke discusses the club's philosophy; the management team's 'old fashioned' approach to assessing the players, and also praises the impact of first team coach Kevin Keen.

In an interview at Melwood, Clarke underlined the importance of the age-old Liverpool philosophy of pass and move football:

"The philosophy is to pass the ball – pass the ball, move, and find different positions, and also to work hard as a team.

"It’s not something that’s unique to us as a management group, I think a lot of people have it, but I think there’s a way to put it across, and at the moment, we seem to be doing a decent job, and I hope we can continue that into the future".


Clarke also revealed that Kevin Keen shares the same philosophy:

"I know Kevin from my time at West Ham. I think he’s very level-headed, and his philosophy on football is the similar to mine and to Kenny’s, so he fits well into the group.

"The players respect him and he has a good manner about him, and I feel he’s been a good addition to the staff".


Despite all the player monitoring technology available to clubs these days, Clarke revealed that he, Dalglish and Keen prefer a different approach:

"I monitor them [the players] with my eyes, and you hope that your judgement is good. We have a fantastic back-up team, and they’ve got all the heart-rate monitors, the prozone, the fitness stats. They’ve got everything.

"Kenny, Kevin and Myself are a bit old fashioned in that we analyse things with our eyes, but it’s nice if they [the back-up team] come in after and show us the data, and it tallies up with what we thought".


Analysing things the old fashioned way never did Bill Shankly or Bob Paisly any harm, nor did it have an adverse impact on Dalglish during his first stint in charge, so long may it continue!

Jaimie Kanwar


2 comments:

  1. When last have we heard comments from our coaching staff like this?

    Mauricio Pellegrino had no clue and clearly will never have a clue how THE LIVERPOOL WAY actually works and his superior at the time never has and never will either :) 

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have 96,000 reasons to say he did and always will. Pride and respect. Hodgson on the otherhand...

    ReplyDelete