Grasp the nettle Kevin Phillips joined us on the most recent episode of the Roker Rapport podcast (full details of how to listen are below) and during the show he discussed Howard Wilkinson’s disastrous reign as Sunderland manager. According to Super Kev, the appointment just never ‘felt right’ with the former striker believing he and Steve Cotterill were never a good fit: My memories was disappointment really. Great man he is, fantastic for the game of football and what he’s done but it just wasn’t right. It wasn’t the right appointment, I think it was like chalk and cheese with him and Steve Cotterill. One of the first UEFA Licensed Coaches in the country, he was young, enthusiastic and he had all good ideas but then you put him alongside Howard, who was quite old school. It just didn’t feel right. Phillips also told an interesting attempt by Wilkinson to motivate his struggling players by telling them to grasp the nettle and trying to prove his point by doing it for real: He comes in with a plastic carrier bag in his hand and straight away all the lads are looking at each other and thinking ‘what’s he doing now?’. He starts walking up and down, doing his team talk and he starts going on about ‘who is going to stand up, who is going to take the reigns, who is going to grasp the nettle?’. Which one of you is going to do that because I tell you what, I’ll grasp the nettle if none of you do it’. So at that point he opens the carrier bag, puts his hand in the carrier bag and brings out a great big bunch of stinging nettles. So he says ‘There you are, I’ve grasped the nettle, I’ve done it, I’ve shown that I’m a man’. He goes round ‘who wants to take them?’ and all the lads are like ‘I’m not taking them’, so he puts them back in his bag and carries on his team talk. While he is doing his team talk, you think I’m not listening any more, I just want to watch his hand and you could see him while he’s doing his team talk, he’s shaking his hand, he stung the hell out of his hand. You have to give him credit for trying everything. Wilkinson himself spoke to the Daily Mail yesterday about his career and said taking the Sunderland job was the worst mistake he ever made and admitted that he never did enough homework before taking the position: I made some good decisions but I made as many mistakes. Sunderland was the worst I ever made because I made it for the wrong reasons, because of a problem that had developed at the FA. I didn’t do my usual homework. I talked to them on Thursday night, said yes and was there on Tuesday morning. I made all the mistakes I hadn’t made before.
The grasp the nettle story has been doing the rounds for ages. Wilko was useless - worse than useless!!
I seem to remember hearing that he had shown them a video of some geese flying in a V formation and said something along the lines of this is how we need to attack
We needed quality players not graft mate, and that is the only way forward but thanks to Mr Murray and Short we are where we are. There are no Brian cloughs these days, just managers wanting a billion pound to spend on players.
Remember the ‘monkey off our backs’ rant when we’d scraped a 1-1 at home to Charlton. He was a ****ing whale of a **** up, we all knew it. Talk about a curveball.
Not sure Wilkinson was worse than Moyes. Both utterly horrendous. That story about the nettles made me giggle.
Pretty funny imagining him standing there yelling at them with his hand stinging like **** and they all know it.
Hard to imagine him seriously picturing in his mind each player grimly gripping the nettle and all his teammates giving him a standing ovation.
I had forgot about him, but my first reaction on hearing of Moyes appointment was lets give him a chance, I could not believe the Wilkinson appointment from the minute it was announced, it came as a shock and shocking it was. A bit like Bain.
