Alex Neil interview including insights into Premium League culture and Farke

Scottish second tier to Anfield away - the whirlwind story of Alex Neil

“Did you ever get involved in something where the feeling is just so good all the time? You move to the next bit and the next bit without any contemplation of it going wrong,” Alex Neil says. “You’ve not a worry in your body, you don’t see the negative in any situation. You just think there’s the solution, boom.”

Has British football management ever seen a trajectory like Neil’s? Consider this: on April 26, 2014, he was a 32-year-old player-coach in the Scottish Championship, with fans demanding he be sacked after losing away to Dumbarton. On May 26, 2015, he was waking up as the youngest manager in the Premier League. Before long, he was drawing at Anfield, winning at Old Trafford. “For two years the way life was incredible,” muses Neil from his home near Preston

Maybe his greatest fear has been staying himself - the same sharp-minded, no-frills, football-in-his-gut guy from Costbridge, near Glasgow, despite the changing weather of his career. He didn’t set out to coach when he started his badges at 28, while undergoing rehabilitation for a hip injury, but in hindsight was made for it. He’s from a family of teachers and from his early twenties had been a captain.

He became Hamilton Academical’s player-manager after his good friend, Billy Reid (now Graham Potter’s assistant at Brighton & Hove Albion), was sacked and in his first full season - 2013/14 - led the modest Lanarkshire club into Scotland’s top flight. A spiky midfielder, he was still combining playing with coaching when Hamilton then tore through the Scottish Premiership with a fearless, high-pressing, attacking style. They won at Celtic Park for the first time since 1938 and were third when Norwich City gambled on him in January 2015. There, he rolled on, with 17 wins in 25 games to sweep the side into the Premier League.

Neil was three weeks shy of his 34th birthday when Norwich defeated Middleborough in the Championship play-off final and suddenly found himself in the world’s richest league - on its lowest budget. He nevertheless beat Manchester United and drew with Liverpool and Arsenal. However Norwich tailed off, went down and Neil was dismissed.

The Premier League was a different world. The first shock was the profile it brought. “I’d walk into a room and see a player or manager I’d been watching on TV since I was a kid and they turned round and say, ‘Alex how are you doing?’ I’d be ‘How do you know me?’ I found that bizarre.”

Then there was the culture. “ I don’t know how you feel about this but the more money there is in the game, the more it poisons things,” he says. “At Hamilton, guys play to feed their kids. I remember fining players at Hamilton a fiver for being late and they’d be gutted. You go from that to somewhere where there’s a squad initiation where you either sing a song or put a grand into a pot. The amount of lads putting a thousand pounds into the pot was incredible. I’m thinking I’d sing a whole album for a grand.”

And that was at the division’s poorest club. “The main difficulty I had - and they still have it, which is why it’s difficult for them to stay up is the gulf in finances. Norwich are self-sustaining, which means (after promotion) there’s no money to put in initially. What they did this year, smartly, was reserve some money from their last time (in the Premier League) so they did have cash to sign players straight away.

“The narrative is you win the play-off final and get handed £200 million. Nah. The money comes in three batches and the other thing to bear in mind is after promotion your players’ wages will go up a third and you pay bonuses. Right away, before the money arrives, £25 million has just walked out the building.”

However, he loved the challenge, forbidding as it was. A 5-4 defeat by Liverpool at Carrow Road encapsulated things. Norwich were 3-1 up when a defensive mistake let in the opposition. “That’s the Premier League. One error can cost you and the minute bigger teams smell blood, you’re in trouble. The Premier League is the only level where you can play well and still lose regularly. Look at Brighton last season, they were good - and almost went down..

“The one I remember is going to Southampton and thinking, ‘We’ve a good chance of winning this.’ They had a young Sadio Mane on one wing and , Duscan Tadic on the other, Graziano Pelle up top and I was unaware how good they were going to be - until the game started.”

Neil remains fond of Norwich, their fans and the owners, Delia Smith and Michael Wynn-Jones. He understands the challenges facing Daniel Farke, the head coach. “Daniel’s style, to get out of the Championship , is ideal because they’ve got the best players and are so difficult to play against: so expansive, they make the pitch big and have real quality in forward areas. The problem is that style relies on confidence, on rhythm, on being in control of the ball every time you play.

“You can’t do that in the Premier League. Impossible. Because you come up against Man City and might have 20% of the ball and have to understand how you’re going to stop them. That’s why the likes of Burnley do so well. Sam Allardyce, Tony Pullis, those guys (who are Premier League survival specialists) - they’re hard to beat, make things difficult, nick something.”

Neil notes how Thomas Frank has tweaked Brentford’s style to something more pragmatic since promotion, whereas Farke has been slower to compromise. Yet Neil recognises Farke’s principled nature (or is it stubbornness?) because “I was the same, I didn’t know anything different to the style I had. I tried width, pace and to keep attacking but one of the hardest things in the Premier League is the fixture list. You’re trying to find something that works but you go to Man City away, Liverpool, Arsenal, - then play Burnley. It’s the difference between having 20% possession one day and 60% the next.”

He left Preston “with frustration and a bit of fire in my belly” after a strange January transfer window in which the club sold three of his key players and the team tumbled from one point off seventh to 16th between mid-February and mid-March. He believes he’s a better manager now than the young guy on a golden roll.

“I’ve mellowed, I have more understanding of high profile players and their different motivations. I’ve done almost 400 games and I’m 40 . So it’s a lot of experience.”

An incredible lesson in how a managerial mind needs to stay fresh came when, after promotion with Norwich, Neil took a call from Sir Alex Ferguson. “I thought it was going to be him saying . ‘You need to do this,’ but it was more him saying, ‘So what do you think about…?’ He was more interested picking my brain and seeing my perspective. Brilliant.”

Posted By: The Gaffer, Nov 3, 19:15:16