The Football Managers

There are few posts more dramatic, more controversial, or more public than a football Manager’s. The pressures of success, and failure; the problems of finance and business management; the challenge of tactics and training: these are just some of the issues which Tony Pawson examines in this book, originally published in 1973.

He not only traces the development of the Manager from a minor figure to a dominating status – with portraits of those who had most strongly influenced the managerial revolution, from Chapman to Cullis and Busby – but also draws vividly the personalities and methods, the aims and achievements, of the leading Managers of the time, including giants like Stein and Shanky, Revie, Mercer, Nicholson and Clough. He discusses too the role of our National Team Managers, new developments in medical treatment, scouting and transfers, the strategies and techniques of the Managers not only of all the most powerful clubs in Great Britain but of those struggling for survival or recognition.

In this entertaining book, Tony Pawson, who had written on the game for twenty years, and had himself played to First Division standard, presented an acutely observed, highly literate, and absorbing account of football management in all its aspects.

With football managers still a topic of public interest today, this is a great opportunity to look back at the history of the role.