Hypnosis, Al Pacino and lies - how I tried to motivate my players

Mikel Arteta is well known for his innovative ideas of man-management with his Arsenal squad, but managers trying something off the wall to motivate their players is nothing new.

Over the many years I spent in management, I always tried to influence situations in and out of the dressing room for the benefit of the team's performance and I was not afraid to surprise my team with the way I did it.

As I've mentioned in previous columns, inviting people in to talk to the team before certain games was always a positive angle I tried.

It was something I believed could be used right through the season, as long as it was the right character who was talking, and I didn't use the same person on too regular a basis.

They didn't have to be involved in football either - I once brought in boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard when I was at Stoke - or even have any sporting connections at all.

A disappearing team

Image caption,

Al Pacino plays Tony D'Amato, head coach of the Miami Sharks, in 1999 film Any Given Sunday. D'Amato is known for his traditional methods and clashes with team owner and general manager Christina Pagniacci, played by Cameron Diaz

In my second season of management, 1993-94, my Bournemouth side of what is now League One, were drawn against Premier League side Blackburn Rovers in a second-round League cup tie.

We travelled up to Blackburn for the first leg on a Tuesday and, after a sleep in the afternoon, we all attended a pre-match meeting. I had a special surprise guest for the lads - a hypnotist.

During his session he asked the team to sit in a circle on chairs, while he sat at the top of the room feeling - he believed - the vibes from the lads.

He switched all the lights off and gave them two minutes in silence in a pitch-black room but then, when he went and turned the lights back on, all their chairs were empty. I was amazed - he had made them all disappear!

It turned out the room had a side-door exit and while the lights were out, our lads had decided to sneak out and leave our man all by himself. He was great about it though, and took it all in good form.

Although the team did not play their part in the exercise in the way I'd intended, it was still fantastic for our preparation because they were all still talking about the hypnotist on the bus to the match, with no pre-match tension at all.

Blackburn had a brilliant side under Kenny Dalglish at that time and they were formidable opponents who were fighting for the Premier League title.

We lost the game, with Alan Shearer getting the winner for Rovers, but only went out 1-0 on aggregate. The lads put in such a great performance and showed no inhibitions whatsoever - I thank the hypnotist for that.

Sometimes though, thinking outside the box just doesn't work. I have no idea why!

During our promotion season at Stoke when we went up to the Premier League in 2007-08, we put together a video that showed all our goals that season to play to the squad before a crucial point of our run-in, an away trip to Coventry in April with four games to go.

Just before kick-off, the lads sat and watched what was a really uplifting take on all the positives so far, from all the matches we had played, and the video ended with a rousing rendition from Al Pacino from the film 'Any Given Sunday', when he inspires his locker room with an incredible speech about teamwork and desire.

I felt after our players heard a speech like that, only a victory could follow, but at half-time Coventry, who were fighting relegation, were 1-0 up and we had been absolutely useless.

My assistant Dave Kemp was waiting for me at the dressing-room door at the break and just said, "Put those toys away and get back to being you!"

In the second half, after a few choice words and a bit of a reset, we went out and managed to win the game 2-1 to go top of the table, with the character that team had coming again to the forefront.

Pacino's words were unbelievable and miles better than anything I could ever muster to try to motivate my players, but it shows there is a time and a place for everything - and that time wasn't then!

Image caption,

D'Amato's [Pacino's] famous 'inch by inch' speech about team unity in Any Given Sunday starts with the lines, 'I don't know what to say really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives all comes down to today'. It works, at least in the film anyway

When to make things up

Motivation, done the right way, is a vital tool for any manager.

You are your players' leader and a leader is only a great leader if they can deal with adversity. If your players still follow you in the most difficult of times, you can really be called a leader.

But how, year after year, do you keep people motivated and performing at their maximum in a sport that is awash with so much money? There is no adversity for them, most of the time, so you have to invent some.

One of the methods I would use was to make up stories that belittled our group or individual players. I would tell the squad on Friday that I'd heard someone was criticising us as a group or, say, that a defender had mentioned he didn't rate our forwards.

There was one particular game, way back, when a young centre-half had not given one of our forwards a kick in a home game we'd lost 1-0.

The opposition manager, quite rightly, praised his player and took a bit of a swipe at us.

It just so happened it was near the halfway stage of the campaign, when return fixtures can sometimes come around again quite quickly.

Only a few weeks later, we faced the same team again. Well, in the days before the game, I made sure my centre-forward heard all the negatives that had been thrown at him by that manager and also ensured he was well-versed in all the positives the young defender had been given.

We won the return game 4-0 and our centre-forward definitely returned the compliments of the first match to the young centre-half and his manager.

For that reason, I never criticised players or managers myself because I knew it just fuelled them and the clubs I managed did not need me helping the other team.

I felt being the underdogs always had its advantages and this is another example - used in a certain way, it helped my teams over the years.

Counting magpies and changing my diet

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One magpie was not enough for Tony

Superstition in football runs very deep, in all positions at a club.

Let's not forget a foreign owner once tried to change the colour of their club's identity, because he believed it would bring them more luck.

Managers are also at it all the time too, though, with the same tie, suit or - in my case, cap! - if they are on a run of good results.

The worst situation I found myself in was when I was travelling to home games in my own car or away games on the team bus - if I saw any magpies, they had to add up to even numbers, otherwise we were going to lose that day.

I would sometimes drive around looking for more to even the numbers up - how ridiculous is that?

As a player, I was the same. I only took a pair of boots to the cobblers on two occasions to get them fixed and both times it was 1987, the year Bournemouth won the old Division Three title.

I had decided that, for good luck, those boots would stick with me through the season even though they were falling apart - and they certainly did that!

Some science always played a part too, though. I would also be really regimented as a player and would always try to stick to a certain routine, for home and away games.

That carried on into my coaching and management days and, even though I am retired now, it has stuck with me to this day - although I am not as superstitious any more.

A player's diet has changed an incredible amount since my early days as an apprentice at Bristol Rovers, but I learned one lesson very quickly that still stands today - don't eat too much before a game!

When I was 16, I travelled to play Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in a Football Combination match.

It was my first trip away and, in those days, both the first team and reserves would play on Saturday afternoons. Senior players would be in the majority in the reserves because the first XI could only have one substitute.

When we arrived at the hotel, at Heathrow Airport, we were ushered into the dining room where three courses of our pre-match meal was served up - soup, steak and rice pudding.

I can't remember ever having steak before then in my life, let alone before a game. Telling my father I had eaten it for lunch was such a proud moment - until he asked how I played.

I recall us being beaten by Chelsea that afternoon and also feeling a little bit weighty while I was running around the Bridge.

It was a reminder of how, if I wanted to succeed in professional football, I could not be blindsided by anything else - including nice food. That always stuck with me and, yes, my diet did improve.

Image caption,

Jim Smith, who died in 2019 aged 79, was known as 'the Bald Eagle'. His managerial career spanned almost 40 years and he was in charge for more than 1,700 games at nine different clubs at every level of English football from the Premier League to non-league

Many moons ago, I read a book from the early 1980s called 'Eat to Win' which had a foreword by Martina Navratilova, the great tennis player.

I read it, and at the back there were pages and pages of different meals she recommended athletes should try.

At that time, as a player, I'd believed my eating habits were OK - I'd stopped having pre-match steak - but after reading what Martina had to say, I took a different view on certain meals and what was appropriate during and after games, as well as rehydration and rest.

While you can always learn something new that might work for you, it's also important to question new ideas that supposedly guarantee success.

So I will balance the story about Martina's book with one about one of the biggest characters in football - the late Jim Smith, who managed QPR, Portsmouth and Derby among others.

Jim's tales are legendary. One year, we were at Lilleshall, the Football Association's old base which housed its Centre of Excellence, on a coaches' week seminar, which was held at the end of every season.

At the time, Italy had the leading league in world football with Serie A and AC Milan had one of the most outstanding teams of that era.

Charles Hughes, who was the FA's director of coaching, was giving a lecture and was discussing how Italians' diets were different from ours in England.

He was saying how much more importance should be given to the way we eat, especially about pasta!

Charles believed, or made it seem he believed, that pasta was one of the fundamental reasons Italian clubs and leagues were so successful.

After he finished, he invited questions. Jim stood up and asked, "Charles, do the teams at the bottom of the Italian league know about pasta? And if so, how are they at the bottom of the league!?"

It was a very good point and it got everyone laughing.

Tony Pulis was speaking to BBC Sport's Chris Bevan.