"The old tea cup-throwing routine is going out of fashion ..."
As football modernises, so does the role and philosophy of the modern manager.
Tonight on Off The Ball, we were joined by football journalist Michael Calvin, who has authored new book Living On The Volcano: The Secrets of Surviving which looks at what makes the modern manager tick under the immense pressure they are under.
One of the anecdotes he shared concerned former Ireland manager Mick McCarthy and his relationship with the media.
"The media, because access is so limited, are looking for bits of meat. The managers, people try to train them in denying the media that meat. There's a lovely line from Mick McCarthy where he talks about his PR girl when he was at Sunderland and he used a good old Irish phrase when she used to come up to him before press conferences with a list of 'these are the questions you're going to get asked, these are the answers you deliver'. He told her to 'shove it up their hole' because he thought it was going to come from the directors. Typical Mick that," said Calvin.
He also spoke about Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers who is lampooned as a "walking soundbite" despite appearing to be a far more regular character in private and on the training ground.
But Calvin shared a revealing comment made by Rodgers about himself.
"He said to me, 'look, I've probably been through the most traumatic four years of my life. I lost my Mum, I lost my Dad and I split up from the woman that I loved for 23 years, went through a court case, two Old Bailey trials with my son who was acquitted of sexual assault, yet professionally in those four years both at Liverpool and Swansea before that, they were the best years of my life'. So he said, 'look, something's got to come from within and you've got to put the personal and professional to each side.'"
Calvin also told the story of a former Scottish manager called Jimmy Sirrel, whose tale touched Rodgers and other managers greatly.
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