Unveilinguistics: How to speak like a new Premier League manager

Lock up your ketchup, the new managers are in town.

The gently relentless turnover of head coaches — including the particularly reliable autumn churn — has ensured that the managerial media machine is permanently oiled. Surveillance-like footage of a beleaguered training-ground figure either getting in or out of his car (doesn’t matter which) is one of the official harbingers of sacking doom, followed soon after by the real rubber-stamping: a hyper-capitalised, corner-flagged Club Statement that solemnly offers thanks for efforts, well-wishes for the future and a vague invitation back to the Club whenever the poor guy can face it.

The new man is then primed for what is known in the trade as his “watching brief”, which consists of observing a caretaker (disproportionately frequently called “Keith”) steering an empty shell of a team to a 1-0 defeat, while a Sky Sports camera trains itself on the front row of the expensive seats to confirm that, indeed, the incoming manager understands “the size of the task on his hands”. 

By this point, though, the bullet points of the task on his hands have been handily compiled by the same small army of club correspondents already making notes for the inside story of his sacking 18 months later. The new manager’s “in-tray” (their crisis-easing responsibilities have outgrown the humble “to-do list”) tries its best to reduce football management to a comprehensible art for the layperson: pick any five spinning plates from “shore up the defence” and “get the attack firing again (straightforward enough, quite footbally) to “clear out the deadwood” and “keep hold of [only elite-level player X]” (an HR job, really, but OK) to “make [Stadium Y] a fortress again” and “give the fans something to shout about” (unhelpfully intangible, cheers).

While digesting their simple task of completely transforming their new club’s fortunes, the manager is troubled for a few minutes of his non-existent time to take part in his social-media unveiling (not to be confused with his official press-conference unveiling), which involves either being pictured holding the home shirt (proud to be here), holding a club scarf aloft (very proud to be here), or simply leaning against a wall, arms crossed, at the training ground (yes, quite proud to be here, but there’s a job to do). 

In the case of Antonio Conte, this also required his participation in a video clip that, as one of my colleagues at The Athletic rightly pointed out, made him look like the subject of a mystery guest round on Question of Sport.

Buongiorno Antonio… pic.twitter.com/26wgcdcYED

— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) November 2, 2021

So little is publicly known about what goes on in managers’ actual job interviews (PowerPoint aside) that most of us only have their first press conference to assess their superficial credentials. Luckily, then, managerial unveilings sit just below best man’s speeches as the easiest crowd imaginable. 

The bar for new managers “speaking well” in opening pressers is so mystifyingly low that, historically, they really have had to go out of their way to get a thumbs-down from their audience. There are fond Merseyside memories of Roy Hodgson’s refusal to play ball from the first moment of his Liverpool reign (“Who were your managerial influences, Roy?”, he was asked at Anfield, sitting in front of the gaping open goal that was a picture of Bill Shankly. Answer: “That would be Don Howe.”). In 2006, Iain Dowie’s Charlton unveiling was interrupted by a court official bursting in and shouting, “Mr Dowie, I have a writ to serve on you on behalf of Crystal Palace Football Club… for fraudulent misrepresentation in the terms of leaving Crystal Palace.” Not Dowie’s fault, perhaps, but it was always going to be hard to talk about clean slates and three points after that.

But what does “speaking well” actually mean here? What particular platitudes must a new manager offer to earn the eminently earnable description of “very impressive” on their first appearance in front of the dictaphones? What must they have ticked off in order to have “said all the right things”? In the space of eight days, three new Premier League appointments — Eddie Howe, Dean Smith and Steven Gerrard — gave us a cluster of case studies to explore a groundbreaking new field of research: unveilinguistics.

All three unveilings were in person — press conferences were back, and how we had missed the journalists in the flesh, media gatherings were nothing without them. Each of the managers wore their best suit for the occasion — Smith, controversially, choosing to go without a tie — and the mission statements began, quite literally, in earnest. To describe their feelings at being there, outline their values and half-explain how quickly they had made their decisions to join, they spoke for a combined total of 76 and a half minutes.

For all the invariable talk of “philosophies” (Gerrard, once), “projects” (Smith, once) and “journeys” (all three, actually, twice each), there is only one place to start when it comes to the intense-but-also-relaxed art of the managerial unveiling. To the untrained ear, it’s almost imperceptible. Even to the trained ear, the extra word has no logic. But nothing — nothing — better conveys the quiet determination of a newly appointed manager than the words “football club” and “football matches”. These two phrases are the cornerstones of “speaking well” at an unveiling. Rarely used in combination (that would be too much), they are liberally sprinkled into the manager’s address to remind us — remind himself — of where we are and what this is all about.

Howe, eyes narrowing in that way only football managers’ eyes do when listening to a question about January transfer targets, went first. He spoke for more than four minutes before offering his first “football club” (in this instance, former employers Bournemouth) before effortlessly rattling off three in the next 65 seconds. In all, Howe produced a semi-superfluous “football club” every 157 seconds on his St James’ Park media debut, a solid ratio despite the fact he didn’t utter a single “football matches”.

Tie-less but nonetheless eager to impress, Smith sat down at Norwich’s Colney training centre to outline his vision, only to almost be overshadowed by sporting director Stuart Webber’s deadpan assertion that sacking Daniel Farke had been like breaking up with a girlfriend. “Tell me the right time to do it. February? Oh no, it’s Valentine’s Day. Don’t do it in the summer, you’ve booked that holiday. And then it’s Christmas. There isn’t a right time and a right place.”

Undeterred, Smith opened with a triple salvo; three “football clubs” in his first two minutes (two of them in solemn tribute to Farke’s body of work), on his way to a frankly world-class 14 “football clubs” in under 22 minutes. With a pair of “football matches” thrown in for good measure, Smith signed off with a strike rate of one footballing emphasis every 81.3 seconds.

Howe had set the bar, Smith had smashed it and still to come was Gerrard, a 20-year exponent of quietly determined football chat as a player and manager, steeled even further by three years at Rangers Football Club. It was something of a surprise then, that, despite leading the way in terms of “football matches” (four in total, in keeping with Villa’s urgent need for a result after five defeats in a row under Smith), Gerrard mustered only one footballing emphasis every 268 seconds.

Elsewhere, the unveiling script was largely adhered to. The #classytouch tap-in of “[outgoing Manager X] is someone I have a huge amount of respect for” was granted by Gerrard to Smith, and by Smith to Farke. Howe diplomatically chose to look forward rather than back. 

The 43-year-old Howe declared himself to have “been in football long enough to know…”, as did the 50-year-old Smith (who added an “I’m a big boy” as a bonus), but Gerrard (a sprightly 41 years old) did not, bringing us one important step closer to knowing the cut-off point for being “in football long enough to know” its ugly realities. The new Villa manager instead pressed home the importance of the basics: being “on the grass” with his players (twice) and the vague concept of “the building” (presumably the training ground, which he was also tradition-bound to say he was very impressed with since arriving).

Reassuringly, all three embraced the unveiling custom of referring breezily to their wives when asked about their respective moves to their new clubs, although this is where Smith particularly excelled. “Bit worrying the wife wanted me out the house!” he quipped, having been announced at Norwich just eight days after his Villa sacking, a swift turnaround that still didn’t prevent him referring to “the golf” and “the garden” to complete the holy trinity of out-of-work football managers’ preoccupations.

With their missions duly stated, Howe, Smith and Gerrard were free to move on to the more mundane press-conference posers — “any new injuries, Dean?” — but there remains an unemployed elephant in the room, one who could still usurp Smith’s efforts and take his “football clubs” average under the magic 80-second barrier, if only he can find the right football club to win football matches for.

Frank Lampard’s furrowed brow and famed, patented Q&A technique feel destined to be unveiled somewhere soon but, at 43, he’s been in football long enough to know that he’s only a Club Statement away from his next unveiling.

(Lead pictures: Getty Images)