The Wisdom of Gaffers

As a football man you want to concentrate on football matters, as anyone would want to do.

Brian McDermott, Leeds United, February 2014.

First half I had too many regrets.

Lee Clark, Birmingham City, February 2014.

The mind games were there from four o'clock onwards - was the game going to go ahead? The referee probably had more mind games than the rest of us.

John Ward, Bristol Rovers, February 2014.

We couldn't have scored if we'd used a rainbow as the goalposts.

Juande Ramos, Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk, February 2014.

lovely image. Sid Lowe tweeted that it is something of a common phrase in Spain.

i keep picturing this
http://chaosjeff.tripod.com/europe72-01.JPG

We try to convince ourselves about total football but that's not the British way. The fans want to see excitement.

Lee Clark, Birmingham City, February 2014.

I made the decision not to play and stay on the sidelines, and the squad is becoming strong enough to cope.

Barry Ferguson, Blackpool (interim), February 2014.

What I did like was all the game, not part of the game, because my team were able to suffer.

Giuseppe Sannino, Watford, February 2014.

We're not going to look for excuses for ourselves but the goalkeeper's got the ball in his hands, Revell makes no contact with the ball, a lot of contact with our goalkeeper and the ball runs loose: 99 times out 100 I think you'd see a free-kick in that situation.

Deano in the middle of the park, trying to roll his foot over the ball and drag it one way when you think, 'look, we've just got ourselves level, let's keep the ball in good areas at that stage'.

Graham Westley, Stevenage, February 2014.

If John Nutter's going to score, it's going to be scored in the second minute not the 88th.

Garry Hill, Woking, February 2014.

Sean Dyche has taken the Claridge role on this week's football league show. Very much protecting from deletion on my BT infinity box.

As I said, no one has been sacked. We had a discussion. And, as you know in employment, once that happens, it has to go down the legal route and that is where we are at the moment.

Lee Clark, Birmingham City, February 2014.

One-nil is a bit hairy-scary

Gary Johnson, Yeovil Town, February 2014.

sometimes you have to dog-out wins like that.

Lee Johnson, Oldham Athletic, February 2014.

I'll never stop learning and improving and I'll do that again on Monday.

Barry Ferguson, Blackpool (interim), February 2014.

Hopefully this reputation I've got where I can do not-too-bad things with these big clubs' young players is helping us get the edge over some of my rivals, in terms of trying to help them on in their development.

Lee Clark, Birmingham City, February 2014.

If you start looking at the table mathematically then we don't get beat at Charlton.

Kevin Bond, Queen's Park Rangers (assistant), February 2014.

We feel hard done by with the goal and how it came about but that's life for us today I'm afraid.

Eddie Howe, Bournemouth, February 2014.

deliberately left u to do the honours on that one just fyi xp

A good defender has a good habit of getting hit by the ball

Stuart Gray, Sheffield Wednesday, February 2014.

Possession is vanity if you don't do anything with it.

Mark Robins, Huddersfield Town, February 2014.

There was talk that Leicester might be tired after the midweek match at Forest. But you can't tell me that Vardy and Nugent were tired. That's all psychological babble that they might be tired.

Mick McCarthy, Ipswich Town, February 2014.

To be fair to the players, I said to them "go out and some of you prove me wrong"

Steve Evans, Rotherham United, February 2014.

It probably means now that Peter Taylor has picked the wrong team because we lost the match but I don't think that was the case.

Peter Taylor, Gillingham, February 2014.

I don't like defeat at the best of times.

Steve Cotterill, Bristol City, February 2014.

We're splitting hairs again on a decision and the split of the hair went against us.

Graham Westley, Stevenage, February 2014.

Not good enough. That's my assessment.

I can't accept that and I'll not accept that and the players have been left in no uncertain terms that I'll not accept that.

Steven Pressley, Coventry City, February 2014.

I know it's a results-based industry

We have to find a way of winning a game and scoring a goal.

Neal Ardley, Wimbledon, February 2014.

It's not New Year's Eve, I'm not going to be partying at home until two in the morning

Chris Wilder, Northampton Town, February 2014.

We said to the lads afterwards 'what do you feel?', and they said we feel we've lost two points today because we should have gone on to win that game.

Terry Butcher, Hibernian, February 2014.

There's something in the water up in Inverness, I'm serious. With this bunch of boys in that dressing room, there are no egos, no 'Billy-big-times'.

If they play good, indifferent or bad, you know you're getting 100 per cent. They train like that, they play like that, they live their lives like that.

John Hughes, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, February 2014.

It would be easy to just crumble and roll over and let United come down the hill and beat us by four or five.

Stuart McCall, Motherwell, February 2014.

Was considering starting Scariest Manager in League One poll, but the top three was so clearly Pressley-Clough-Kavanagh, and Pressley was so clearly in front, that it just seemed pointless.

Steve Evans seems like an archetypal small town crook whose hired muscle might accidentally go too far with a warning beating.

I'd imagine it takes a lot to get on the wrong side of Kenny Jackett, but once you got there you'd find it was a fucking terrifying place.

Westly kind of has a "YOU'LL NEVER FIT KITCHENS IN DIDCOT AGAIN!" sort of vibe.

There's an old saying that a good horse only jumps as high as he has to. Well I hate this saying more than anything. I think a horse should jump as high as it can.

We looked at how high we had to jump today and, when we realised that it wasn't so high, we had already fallen behind.

Jurgen Klopp, Borussia Dortmund, February 2014.

Our keeper Ben Hamer made some cracking saves but that's cup football.

Chris Powell, Charlton Athletic, February 2014.

We have to go backwards at times to go forwards, but you're only as good as your front men.

Mark Cooper, Swindon Town, February 2014.

The first 45 minutes were unacceptable, disappointing, poor and we didn't pass it well enough.

Lee Johnson, Oldham Athletic, February 2014.

will be sitting here for some time trying to work out who yr front men are when you are going backwards to go forwards. thanks wbs.

I'm a realist and a professional, and getting beaten 4-0 isn't good enough.

There's a difference between playing and competing. We played, but I don't think we competed - when you're right on the line and on the verge of going over the line.

I'm really disappointed - I'm not clever enough to come up with a better word than 'disappointed' that isn't a swear word.

Graham Alexander, Fleetwood Town, February 2014.

In the second half, the quality that we've got in the team went into overdrive.

David Flitcroft, Bury, February 2014.

(My browser's spellcheck refuses to recognise Flitcroft. It will learn.)

sounds like a Deighton novel. The Flitcroft Algorithm.

My job is to make sure people concentrate on things that are important.

John Still, Luton Town, February 2014.

I've seen it so many times - teams in this position can drift away. Listen to my words: they can drift away.

If I'm lying on the beach in the summer and we haven't played in the play-offs and given ourselves a chance of promotion I am not going to be a happy man.

Richard Money, Cambridge United, February 2014.

I need 11 players to pick themselves and I've said that to the squad. Otherwise you're juggling balls or spinning plates.

Chris Hargreaves, Torquay United, February 2014.

I'm hard on them on the sidelines because I expect high standards. At 4-0 Tope Obadeyi gave the ball away three times in the last few minutes and I'm trying to tell him 'don't do it because I don't like it'.

John Sheridan, Plymouth Argyle, February 2014.

I tried to push him away with my head

Alan Pardew, Newcastle United, February 2014.

The big danger is that you get side-tracked into losing focus on what we are able to do ourselves.

Nigel Pearson, Leicester City, March 2014.