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Post by CheltenhamYellow on Aug 14, 2017 11:41:18 GMT
On page 17 Football section. Good article alongside analysis of Marc's performance.
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Post by oufcyellows on Aug 14, 2017 12:51:51 GMT
Is all mine all mine
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Post by beyondthefourth on Aug 14, 2017 13:16:40 GMT
Pasted from The Times website
Back in May, just as the dust was beginning to settle on a tumultuous season for Leeds United, Garry Monk and Pep Clotet decided it was time they met up for a beer. Leeds, managed by Monk and assisted by Clotet, were reinvigorated last season, but ultimately fell agonisingly short of a play-off place at the Sky Bet Championship season’s denouement. What the future held for the duo remained unclear. But Clotet had something else on his mind.
“We became really good friends, because we went through a lot together, in Swansea and in Leeds,” Clotet says of his relationship with Monk. “We fought a lot of good and bad moments together, and tried to make the best of the positions we were put in.
“So we had a beer, and I said, ‘Should I take a team [as manager], what do you think?’ It was something that I felt inside I wanted to do.” Monk, knowing he would be losing a “top calibre coach”, could not stand in his friend’s way. “He said he thought I should do it,” Clotet says. “I think Garry took the decision of letting me go, as a friend, and I will always respect him for that.
“Then I thought, ‘let’s see if there’s a nice club, a project that inspires me.’ ”
Oxford United, where he was appointed manager at the beginning of July, were the club who piqued his interest. The Catalan’s sterling reputation as a coach and start to life as a manager in his own right suggests that Monk’s loss could turn out to be Oxford’s gain. “It’s a challenging project, the way they are building the club, on a limited budget, sustainably, economically, but an exciting one,” Clotet, 40, says.
The challenge is to continue the upward trajectory fostered by his predecessor, Michael Appleton, who in June left to become assistant manager at Leicester City after winning promotion from League Two in 2016 and guiding the club to eighth place in League One last season, their highest position in 18 years.
“I think Michael did a fantastic job, with the staff, with the people who run the club, put the club in a good place,” Clotet says. “Now it’s the second year in League One, and it’s not an easy competition, but there’s some fundamentals — just as we left at Leeds — a solid background, that can help the club go forward.”
When an injury, aged 20, ended his career as an amateur footballer — “I knew I was not going to be good enough though,” he says — Clotet’s focus shifted to honing his craft as a coach. After studying educational science at university, by the age of 26 he had gained the Uefa Pro Licence and was coaching Espanyol’s under-19s and reserves. One of his five seasons there was spent working in close proximity to Mauricio Pochettino, the Tottenham Hotspur manager, who was then in his first year in management at the Spanish club.
“It was a good time because we were promoting a lot of young talent,” Clotet says. “We promoted 22 players to the first team, who now play in La Liga or elsewhere. Pochettino took them and gave them the edge, very similar to what he’s doing in Tottenham, using the youth, and developing them.”
As his reputation grew, Clotet was appointed director of the Catalonian Football Federation, where he devised education programmes for Pro Licence coaches.
It was during this time that he had a brush with another Catalan called Pep, when Guardiola, then head coach of Barcelona B, presented a seminar to the coaching school. They have a similar touchline sartorial sense, it seems — jeans, hoodie and blazer were also on show at the Kassam Stadium on Saturday.
Two years in Scandinavia followed, during which time Clotet won the Swedish League title in 2010 working under Roland Nilsson, the former Sheffield Wednesday and Coventry City defender, at Malmo. A year in charge of Halmstad, in the same division, led to Viking, in Norway, where he worked under Age Hareide, the former Norwich City and Manchester City defender, now the manager of Denmark.
“They were a big influence and spoke to me about the English game a lot,” Clotet says. “They spoke about the mentality, what the values of the game are here.”
When a call arrived from Michael Laudrup in 2013, he arrived in Wales to oversee the development of Swansea City’s academy.
Within three months Laudrup was sacked and Huw Jenkins, the chairman, had seen enough to ask Clotet to assist Garry Monk with first-team duties — a man he “had never even met”.
“I think Huw Jenkins thought we could work well together: I had a lot of experience as a coach and they thought Garry could be a good manager. And actually, he was right,” Clotet says.
The pair guided Swansea to an eighth-placed finish, their highest in the Premier League. But the following season one win in 12 games led to their departure, two weeks after Clotet had turned down the chance to become Brentford manager through a sense of loyalty to Monk and a desire to rectify Swansea’s plight.
His welcome to Oxford included a tour of the city’s majestic sights by Professor Lionel Tarassenko, who is a fellow at the university’s St John’s College and a club director. A busy summer followed, which has seen the arrival of 12 players, among them the experienced Wolves pair of Mike Williamson and James Henry, and Jack Payne, the highly-rated forward, signed on a season-long loan from Huddersfield Town.
Clotet joins Uwe Rösler, who is at Fleetwood Town, as one of only two foreign managers outside the Championship and the Catalan’s influence has given a more continental sheen to the Oxford team this season.
A Brazilian left back, Ricardinho, who worked with Clotet at Malmo, had an impressive debut against Portsmouth on Saturday; Xemi, a 22-year-old Spaniard signed from Barcelona B, scored in the midweek Carabao Cup defeat by Cheltenham Town; and Gino van Kessel, a second-half substitute during Saturday’s 3-0 win, scored with a wonderful piece of instinctive skill to immediately endear himself to a rapturous home support.
The Curacao forward, signed on a season-long loan from Slavia Prague on Wednesday, collected the ball on the left flank, bamboozled one defender and darted inside another before firing past Luke McGee, the Portsmouth goalkeeper.
Wes Thomas and Josh Ruffels were the other scorers in an impressive second-half display against Portsmouth.
The afternoon had begun with Oxford’s greatest manager, Jim Smith, introduced to warm applause before kick-off.
It was Smith who led the club from Division Three to the top flight in the 1980s, winning consecutive league titles on route, before leaving for Queens Park Rangers, who Oxford defeated 3-0 in the 1986 League Cup final.
Promotion to the Championship is this season’s aim, but Clotet has loftier ambitions for the club from the city of the dreaming spires.
“My ambition is to help this group of players to play football that, maybe in five or ten years, they can look back on and be proud of,” he says. “That’s my ambition, because I know that it’s the love of the game that gets you places.”
Scouting report: Marvin Johnson, left wing
Age: 26
Previous clubs: Solihull Moors, Romulus, Kidderminster Harriers, Motherwell
Report: Johnson is something of a late developer, only first reaching the professional ranks with Motherwell in 2015. He then joined Oxford on deadline day of last summer’s transfer window. Johnson had an impressive debut season for Oxford, scoring six goals and providing 11 assists in all competitions. Those displays have led to significant interest from Championship clubs in this transfer window, with reports last week of a £1 million bid by Hull City.
Against Portsmouth on Saturday, after a subdued first half, Johnson burst into life, demonstrating his considerable power and pace with several surging runs down the left flank.
Like many players who have emerged from non-League football, however, he does appear a little raw and slightly unpredictable. But he is very direct, linked up well with team-mates when driving infield and showed good technique in tight areas on several occasions.
The industrious wide man also made some important defensive blocks and interceptions, and is also comfortable at left back.
He put in one wicked cross with his left foot in the second half, and later sent team-mate James Henry clear through on goal with a beautiful diagonal pass that should have resulted in an Oxford goal.
Otherwise, his final pass and crossing showed signs of a need for improvement.
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Post by charliesghost on Aug 14, 2017 15:34:47 GMT
Really interesting. Though we had pieced together chunks of it before from Wikipedia and interviews, laying out his whole CV demonstrates just how unusually wide his experience is for a "young manager". Basically, he's been training for this moment for 20 years...
The more I think about it, and leaving aside Pep for a moment, it may well be a blessing that MApp left when he did. He had clearly become disillusioned, for whatever reason, and I think that that was communicating itself to players. When you look at the Sercombe situation, Dunkley McAleny and Maguire wanting away and then Lundstram jumping at the first opportunity to leave, that sense of excitement, of being in on a project that was going somewhere had gradually dissipated. Ironically, really, given that the project was proving successful.
Whereas Pep came here with his eyes wide open on budget, and is able to enthuse new players with where he thinks OUFC can go, starting - as he has been graceful enough to note - from a far better place than most new managers start from.
Wilder should have gone 18 months before he eventually did - there were the same warning signs of chippy comments about budget to the media and negativity about what he could be expected to achieve. Sure enough, things started to go downhill thereafter. I think that we all accept that we don't have a promotion-winning budget. So the challenge is to get what is probably a top 10 budget into the top 6. That is a challenge, but hardly un-achievable in the manner of Leicester winning the Prem, or Burton getting to the Championship. Especially when quite a few of those with large budgets are effectively in some degree of turmoil after relegation from the Championship with all that that entails.
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Post by manorrelic on Aug 14, 2017 19:02:07 GMT
Pity they've used our old badge at the top of the article, and on the opposite page after describing van the man's belter as goal of the division they have us down as winning 3-1. I'm sure Gregor Robertson would make more effort it was Man Ure.
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Post by MJB on Aug 14, 2017 19:26:04 GMT
Pity they've used our old badge at the top of the article, and on the opposite page after describing van the man's belter as goal of the division they have us down as winning 3-1. I'm sure Gregor Robertson would make more effort it was Man Ure. Perhaps he still thinks the first goal wasn't disallowed - it took the Skates long enough the realise!
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Post by foley on Aug 14, 2017 20:39:13 GMT
Pity they've used our old badge at the top of the article, and on the opposite page after describing van the man's belter as goal of the division they have us down as winning 3-1. I'm sure Gregor Robertson would make more effort it was Man Ure. Fair enough but it is a pretty decent article these days for a club not in the Premiership. Interesting to see Pep's background in a little more detail
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Post by Denissmithswig on Aug 14, 2017 21:36:17 GMT
It's a lazy article. As Charlie says, they have cut and pasted almost all of it from other interviews and just added a bit about Saturdays game.
I suppose it's still good to get some national coverage. Even C5 on goals rush spent some time talking about us!
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