I guess the point is that a good manager will make his players perform. If the dressing room was down, or the was discord, that in the end falls at the feet of the manager.
So you can argue that the players haven't been pulling their weight, but if not the manager who should be making them do that?
the owner, wich is the real "boss" in a club.
what' ure saying ryan is absolutely correct. most of the times, the coach is responsible for his players motivations and performances.... but not always (and i believe this is one of those exceptions).
the relationship between a coach and his players is quite a weird one. in almost every other working environment the dynamics are different. u follow your "boss" because he's your employer (the one who actually pays u) or because he occupies a higher place in the power structure (that how it works in the army or in most companies).
but in football clubs hierarchies are much less definite. the coach is an employee, just like any other player.... quite often he's payed even less than most players (wich carries a lot of weight in the players' minds), sometimes he's got less experience than his players and in some rare circumstances, he's even younger than some players.
the coach has to charm his players, he must "conquer" them though his charisma and authority.... and those factors i just mentioned play a big role in this process, making it easier (or much harder) for the coach to win his players over and having them "playing for him".
when some players do not respect the coach, start to question him, or, even worse, start delivering poor performances because they don't have faith in him, it's up to the onwer (the real boss) to step up and bestow some of his own authority upon the coach (by setting the players straight).
milan offers quite a fitting anecdote. milano, 1987: sacchi just joined milan a few months back. arrigo is a young promising coach, who is having his first chance at a top club and that's only his second experience in major football (he's just coming from his first gig in serie a, a glorious 2 years experience in parma).
milan is a top club filled with big stars, while sacchi is by all means a "newbie". as if that wasn't enough, he's treating those top players as if they were a bunch of kids, pretending to "teach them how to play football" and forcing them to endure very stressing training sessions and endless tactical sessions (so they could absorb his "new crazy ideas").
after a few weeks the players stopped following him, they didn't trust him, they didn't like his new stressing methods, and, since he was just a newbie, they thought they could push berlusconi to sack him by showing their distrust on the coach with some poor performances on the pitch.
berlusconi got the message, but his reaction was not what the players expected. one day, just before a serie a match versus Verona, berlusconi waited the players just outside the dressing room. as the players were coming out of the dressing room to reach the pitch, he stopped each one of them on the dressing room's door, and told each one of them the very same phrase: "
arrigo sacchi is milan's coach and he's not going anywhere, so deal with it. i just renewed his contract for 3 more years and if i'll have to kick someone out of this club because of your poor performances, believe me, that someone won't be him".
he repeated this very same phrase to each player. the players got the message; they won that tricky game in verona and that match turned out to be milan's (and sacchi's) turning point. according to berlusconi and arrigo himself, that's when sacchi's legend was born.
