| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... 14:04 - Mar 29 with 1974 views | YorkRanger |
THE Oscar Wilde Bar, London’s Café Royal. Steve Black sits at a piano. Sweet, beatific smile; he hits random notes but hams it up, making you almost think he can play. “Gershwin!” he grins, so sincere and corny in humour only statues would not grin back.
“Bad news,” said Joey Barton to Eddy, the friend who introduced them, after his first encounter with ‘Blackie’. “I looked: no wings, no halo. Nice fella but he’s no angel.”
Joe, as his friends call him, began to change his mind at their second meeting, when they talked, and talked… four hours at Carluccio’s, Twickenham. Blackie’s words burrowed into his head and under his skin.
Meet an odd couple: Black, mentor to Jonny Wilkinson, former British Lions coach, in corporate demand, of international renown. And Joe, football’s rebel without – often – applause.
That first meeting was in a book shop. Coffee, chat, a connection. “But Ed had told me Blackie was this angel, this uplifting figure and I didn’t get that,” Joe recalls.
The second, four-hour, powwow, ended only because Blackie had to rush off to see Danny Cipriani, a client, and Joe was meeting Sir Clive Woodward for a radio interview. He phoned Eddy again. “The light you talked about – it’s gone on,” he said.
SB: “We could have sat talking for another four or five hours. It was just a flow.”
JB: “You see, I didn’t get that from the first meeting. I just liked you.”
SB: “Well, I did. But I didn’t like you.”
Both giggle at Blackie’s gag. His approach to motivating sportsmen has never been scientific; it is always people-centred. He finds what makes you tick then oils the mechanism. “I saw in Joe something special. And a lot of myself,” he says.
Blackie began working life as a bouncer, the most feared in Newcastle, they say. Like Joe, who is taking a philosophy degree and his coaching ‘A’ Licence, self-improvement is his journey.
“The second time, we spoke about improvement,” recalls Joe. “He massively challenged me. The gambit was, ‘do you think you can get better as a player?’. I said, ‘well, I’m 31, blah blah’. And he looked me in the eye and said, ‘Well you might as well f****** give up then, mightn’t you?’ I was taken aback: ‘I suppose you’ve got a point.’
“I’d bought into the old football thing that you peak at 28. Blackie said, ‘No, you peak when you say you’ve peaked’.”
That talk was midway through last season. New heights followed: herculean performances in Queens Park Rangers’ Championship play-off games; consistent impact in QPR’s Premier League matches, despite their toils. A new fitness regime, focused on core work, has Joe posting the best high-intensity stats of his career. His technical data has also never been better. Soon out of contract, his target is to continue to play in the Premier League for as long as he can.
SB: “You’ve at least two or three seasons left when you could get better and better and there’s no reason why there should be many better midfielders in the country. You’ve the tools, desire, experience. You can influence players around you.”
JB: “I’m mindful of how people will take this. There’ll be ridicule. But, if I’d worked with Blackie sooner I can’t see how I wouldn’t have got a lot higher in my profession. I’d certainly have more England caps. But you can get caught up in the past. I did for many years, thinking I’d overachieved given my ability. Blackie has held up a mirror and said ‘Nah, you’ve underachieved.’ At 32 I’m a better player now than at any stage of my career, with unfinished business.”
This time last season, when QPR’s promotion campaign was collapsing and Harry Redknapp was at a loss, Joe spoke to Redknapp and Phil Beard, QPR’s chief executive, and said: “I know who can help us.” They asked, “What does he do?” Joe said, “I don’t know… but here’s his number, if you get it you’ll get it, if you don’t fair enough.”
Their lights went on when they met Blackie, who agreed a deal to work with QPR. “Blackie was Phil’s best ever transfer,” says Joe, “and credit to Harry. He bought into it. The last week of last season was the best I ever saw him.”
Google the images of QPR’s huddle at half-time of extra-time while beating Wigan in the playoffs. Joe, Clint Hill and Blackie address the group. Rain is bucketing down, his suit is drenched, but Redknapp is also there, arm round Joe. Subs, kit men, physios, everyone joins in.
SB: “We’d spoken about ‘We are together’ and ‘Find a way to win’.”
JB: “‘Band of brothers’ was the phrase. A cliché but powerful when you make it feel true.”
SB: “The night before the final I spoke at the hotel and included medical staff, this staff, that staff, people who said ‘We’re never asked into these meetings.’ Every person counts. In a team, the first thing you must do is buy into the cause. You paint the vision, then when you paint the vision you see yourself in it, and you see yourself in a better state than you are now.”
Blackie gave every player ‘core principles’ cards. Bullet points: ‘I play to play superbly,’ ‘I cultivate good habits. I am habit’, and his key motto, ‘I care about what I do… and who I do it with.’ There were individually tailored messages; Blackie would surprise players by sidling up and wordlessly slipping a postcard into their hand – “usually some castle in Northumberland,” Joe laughs.
“Before Blackie, it wasn’t harmonious. The pressure of getting over the line, getting back in the Premier League, started interfering with personal relationships. The camaraderie and focus had gone,” says Joe. “He gelled us again. We were heading for outside the playoffs before him.” Now QPR are in trouble again. To escape, Joe says, Blackie must be made central to the club once more: amid all the changes since promotion was achieved, he has been sidelined.
Joe will want Blackie involved when he eventually becomes a manager.
SB: “I’ve worked with some of the greatest sportsmen and teams and know when someone’s special. I see something, strange as it sounds, of Jonny in Joe. His standards are excellent. His daily agenda is strong. He’s got a good heart, is fantastically loyal, asks questions, wants to get better. Arriving at QPR I noticed that, all over the building, you’d see Joe in the middle of groups of people, them listening to him. He has great knowledge of the game and subscribes to putting knowledge into action, testing it and moving forward. Very few coaches have that. I believe he’ll go on and become a great manager.”
JB: “I’m going to be so much better as a head coach, manager, director of football, wherever I end up, than as a player. Why? I’m on an educational journey. Philosophy? That’ll make me a better manager when the time comes. I know I talk an awful lot but why? Because I love talking to humans, hearing about different things. One thing I took from jail is I can have a conversation with anyone and at university I talk to people who didn’t even know I played football, about everything, life, religion… To help people, fundamentally, as a coach, you need to be a good teacher, good mentor, tactically and emotionally smart. I can. I can’t see why I shouldn’t be one of the best English managers.”
There is one obstacle. Annie Hall. “As you do philosophy, you think ‘What’s the point?’ You win a trophy, but in the scheme of things what does it mean?” Joe says. He’s laughing.
“I got into Woody Allen recently and went through an Annie Hall phase, you know, that bit where Alvy’s sitting on the doctor’s couch and he won’t do his homework, because the universe is expanding and some day it’ll explode, so what’s the point?”
“People ridicule me: pseudo-intellectual, he’s reading Plato, it’s all bollocks. But my standpoint is, I’m doing it because I want to. There’s none of what Sartre calls ‘bad faith’. I’m taking part in life. And being a great father to my two kids is the biggest quest.”
The odd couple move on to another subject, and debate winning. Blackie thinks – and QPR are his sixth football club – that a difference between football and rugby is that in rugby, winning is pursued with greater clarity.
“We’ve 92 teams and I’m not sure how many want to win in a conventional sense; they want to survive. But everybody could do with a course in philosophy. Because what happens is people go, ‘What do you think… 12th? Let’s go for that.’ 12th?!”
Joe says he is not ‘a winner’ because “realistically, I’m not synonymous with trophies. I haven’t played for sides that win things.”
SB: “No, but your performances are synonymous with winning. When the whistle goes, you play properly, you play to win.
JB: “I thought you said ‘pray properly’.”
SB: “Well, last week we went to St Paul’s and when he walked in the light shone down on him. I’ve a photo.”
JB: “Yeah, with me it was Book of Revelations…”
SB: “A winner? Before Wigan his self-talk was fantastic. You’ve heard about the two wolves situation? The American Indian who says we’ve all got two wolves fighting inside us – good and bad. The good wolf, you get everything you want, loads of energy, impetus. And the bad wolf says you’re hopeless, no good. They ask the Indian, ‘which wins out, the good wolf or bad wolf?’. And he says, ‘the one I feed’.”
The Joey Barton guide to English football
The Premier League
The standard has definitely dipped. We’ve become more physically and less technically orientated. When I started, you had the likes of Patrick Vieira and Papa Bouba Dioup – huge, huge, mobile runners. Every team had one. Physicality was a big element but that’s also why we struggled in Europe. Then Barcelona became prominent and you had the David Silvas, Nasris, Coutinhos coming in. I just feel we’re moving back to the physical. Look at Chelsea, Man City…Land of the Giants.
Modern coaching
There are a lot of people professing to know what they’re doing, when they don’t. Philosophically, you’d call them Sophists – which basically means bullshitters. They’re doing jobs because once they were very good at playing. What happens is they say ‘if Man City are doing it, that’s how we’ll do it’. I like coaches who challenge convention. Mourinho’s great but the coach everyone should pay attention to is Sean Dyche. Why? Because Burnley are punching far above their weight. |  | | |  |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 14:09 - Mar 29 with 1956 views | TheBlob |
Jesus H Christ.
On a bike
with no pedals. |  |
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| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 14:26 - Mar 29 with 1924 views | daveB |
certainly worked for us last season, good luck to them both |  | | |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 14:29 - Mar 29 with 1917 views | JonDoeman |
Good read, cheers for posting  |  |
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| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 14:37 - Mar 29 with 1899 views | Lblock |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 14:09 - Mar 29 by TheBlob |
Jesus H Christ.
On a bike
with no pedals. |
Blob I'm with you
And the bike is going downhill
to a cliff |  |
| Cherish and enjoy life.... this ain't no dress rehearsal |
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| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 21:25 - Mar 29 with 1677 views | BrazilNutR |
Why didn't they stick with him after promotion if it worked wonders for promotion... seems a bit silly, surely can't cost much relatively compared to players wages etc.. |  | | |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 21:56 - Mar 29 with 1650 views | daveB |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 21:25 - Mar 29 by BrazilNutR |
Why didn't they stick with him after promotion if it worked wonders for promotion... seems a bit silly, surely can't cost much relatively compared to players wages etc.. |
he's still at the club | | | |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 22:00 - Mar 29 with 1642 views | TacticalR |
I wish Blackie had told Joey not to touch other players' nuts. |  |
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| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 22:17 - Mar 29 with 1614 views | RfromItaly |
I have nothing against Black personally, yet his identification as a positive & then a negative in our fortunes is a symptom of failing to understand that football is not principally about psychology. It's about good players, scouting, training, preparation, fitness & tactics. These are the factors we have been missing for the last few years, not a guru. His involvement in our club & endorsement by JB is recognition of our & his weaknesses, not strengths. |  |
| Author of book about Venice, and football articles including personal QPR interviews with Bowles and Marsh. See website: www.dstandish.com |
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| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 22:30 - Mar 29 with 1601 views | BrianMcCarthy |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 21:56 - Mar 29 by daveB |
he's still at the club |
Is that definite, Dave? I've been wondering that all season. |  |
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| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 12:07 - Mar 30 with 1371 views | francisbowles |
My gut feeling is that motivation is a short term thing. If it's good it gees you up for a while.
However, after a while it wears off and you begin to think you've heard it all before!
Nothing to lose by letting him at the players again with new messages and reminding those from last year just what they achieved 'when they were all in it together' |  | | |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 12:10 - Mar 30 with 1359 views | JonDoeman |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 22:30 - Mar 29 by BrianMcCarthy |
Is that definite, Dave? I've been wondering that all season. |
I see him at every home game sat behind the dugout. | |
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| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 13:45 - Mar 30 with 1277 views | simmo |
'I’m going to be so much better as a head coach, manager, director of football, wherever I end up, than as a player. Why? I’m on an educational journey. Philosophy? That’ll make me a better manager when the time comes. I know I talk an awful lot but why? Because I love talking to humans, hearing about different things. One thing I took from jail is I can have a conversation with anyone and at university I talk to people who didn’t even know I played football, about everything, life, religion… To help people, fundamentally, as a coach, you need to be a good teacher, good mentor, tactically and emotionally smart. I can. I can’t see why I shouldn’t be one of the best English managers.'
What a monstrously egotistical cnt. |  |
| ask Beavis I get nothing Butthead |
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| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 14:59 - Mar 30 with 1240 views | francisbowles |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 13:45 - Mar 30 by simmo |
'I’m going to be so much better as a head coach, manager, director of football, wherever I end up, than as a player. Why? I’m on an educational journey. Philosophy? That’ll make me a better manager when the time comes. I know I talk an awful lot but why? Because I love talking to humans, hearing about different things. One thing I took from jail is I can have a conversation with anyone and at university I talk to people who didn’t even know I played football, about everything, life, religion… To help people, fundamentally, as a coach, you need to be a good teacher, good mentor, tactically and emotionally smart. I can. I can’t see why I shouldn’t be one of the best English managers.'
What a monstrously egotistical cnt. |
Plenty of talk but Is the word listen in there anywhere? Just asking Joey? | | | |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 16:02 - Mar 30 with 1203 views | daveB |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 22:30 - Mar 29 by BrianMcCarthy |
Is that definite, Dave? I've been wondering that all season. |
Yeah he's always out doing the warm ups and in those tunnel cam videos he is shaking hands with players and joking with Austin.
He's only going to help with team spirit etc which was great at the end of last season and hasn't really been the problem this year | | | |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 21:11 - Mar 30 with 1108 views | BrianMcCarthy |
| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 16:02 - Mar 30 by daveB |
Yeah he's always out doing the warm ups and in those tunnel cam videos he is shaking hands with players and joking with Austin.
He's only going to help with team spirit etc which was great at the end of last season and hasn't really been the problem this year |
Good to hear. Thanks lads. | |
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| Barton/Black love in from today's Sunday Times for anyone who cares.... on 22:09 - Mar 30 with 1076 views | BklynRanger |
I'd have more enthusiasm about Steve Black if he didn't align himself so fervently with Barton. Ok it's obviously his job to maximise players' confidence but qhy constantly stroke the ego of a player who doesn't seem to need it at all. It's supposed to be about improvement I thought, not mislabelling ordinary or sub-par performances as one man channeling all the forces of nature.
By all means give hima chance. Confidence is bound to be low, but there's a difference between getting the most out of below average Premier League players and what he did in 2 Championship weeks last year with many of the same below average players. |  | | |
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