THE BOOK OF LIES

Last updated : 20 December 2004 By editor

Cascarino tells the Times what some players get up to:

'Being a nuisance during training is a tried-and-tested plan for some players to engineer a demand. Players arrive at the training ground seeking to engage in a confrontation with the manager. They might sulk, not train well and affect the other players, and then as soon as the manager ticks them off, they tell the manager where to go, and soon find themselves available for offers. Part of the reason is that the player has been told by an interested club or his agent that he will have to rock the boat so that his present club have no choice but to sell.

Louis Saha was not the first foreign player to use his country’s media to complain that it was unfair that he was not allowed to leave a club, in his instance Fulham. He would have been fully aware that his quotes would be translated back for the English press. Edu has been trying a similar trick recently in claiming that Real Madrid and two other Spanish teams want him, and that he will leave Arsenal unless he receives an improved contract offer. Not only is it the potential loss of the player that a club feels, but as Chris Coleman, the Fulham manager, pointed out recently, it has taken nearly a year to bring in new players and adapt after Saha was sold to Manchester United.

Unless a player is very selfish, in the majority of cases their team-mates will understand why he wants to better himself by a move. Newcastle United players may not want to see Given leave, but they, like him, know of the attractions of Champions League football and that Arsenal and Manchester United both require a goalkeeper. Given is not the type of player to cause trouble, but it is understandable why he might be selfish and cause a ripple. Nottingham Forest players, who have put up with much strife in the past two years, will probably not begrudge Andy Reid performing in the Premiership.

Agitating for an escape route is not the only way that a player can unsettle a club for their own benefit. It is one of the oldest sayings in football that "players sack managers". The use of player power has been shown at Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur in recent seasons when the players turned against the managers.

But even more premeditated is for a player who may have fallen out with his manager to leak details of a game plan and formation to an opposing team. The player anticipates that the information will ensure that his team loses, and possibly some time later, his manager departs. Before a game between two Yorkshire clubs, a player telephoned the manager of the opposing team to inform him of the tactics, set-pieces and what his side had been doing in training. The player told him that he did not get on with his manager. Only it may have backfired on the player, as the opposing manager, while probably grateful for the advice, relayed the story, muddying the player’s reputation.

I once shared a room with a player who, after hearing that he was not in the starting line-up the next day, reeled off our tactics to a player from our opponents. He didn’t flinch when I said that he could not do that, but I never spoke to my manager for fear of appearing a grass.'