Originally Posted by
EalingGreen
That's all very well, but if you give into the player now and pick him for the next game, then what's to stop him booting you in the balls again and letting you down at the last minute before some other, more important future game?
Worse still, if other, less talented players see that they can jerk the manager around, then they'll start the same carry on and not even Stephen Ireland is good enough to beat the other team on his own.
A good comparison is to be found recently between ROI and NI. Under Staunton, ROI had better players, but underperformed, whereas under Sanchez, NI had lesser players but overperformed.
The key difference (imo) was the quality of the management and in particular, Sanchez's authority and willingness to take a hard line on player discipline, compared with Staunton's inexperience and unwillingness (inability?) to do so.
For as the doyen of managers, Sir Alex Ferguson, always says: "What people should never forget is that I'm not here to please the players, they're here to please me!" And I'm sure Trapattoni would be in complete agreement.