'Stoke City signing can make a big difference but I think he has the hardest role'
Now the international break is over, everybody is looking forward to the EFL resuming normal business with the Championship back in action this weekend.
I always found the international break and what you did in it mildly dependent on the start that you've had to the season. If you've had a tremendous start, it's easier to be a bit more lenient with the players because you feel like that may be they've deserved it as a little bit of a reward in some ways.
I've done it before, perhaps not in the first international break because it comes too soon, but when you get to international break three or four, I've thrown in rewards based on results where the players would get an extra day off for every game they won. I've had it where if there is an extra two or three days off on the table and they can get away somewhere further for long, then you'll be amazed at how well organised and how motivated a team can be.
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Time and money are the usual key motivators for players as well as achievements, but the first international break is a strange one because you're coming off the back of the transfer window.
When the window shuts you play your last game and this season the first break has come after just four games. You don't need to give players too much of a rest but there's always that feeling as a manager that if you can just have three days away from the group with your family, you can maybe use that time for a little bit of a mental reset, but also to review that start of the season and the window.
Sometimes it's hard to review it objectively when you're at work in an office with people knocking on your door all the time so I think that's the first thing that most managers will do. I would normally give the players Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off and then we'd be in the rest of the week before they would usually have the weekend off too. When it comes to fitness, you start to decondition after about four days so you can at least give them three.
But then you've got other players that might be coming back from injury who might be a key player too. There's nothing worse than losing before the international break because you've got two weeks to stew on it and you want the next game to come quickly. And I understand that sometimes when you win a game, there's that momentum and there is confidence. I've got to say it's an amazing feeling when you win going into the international break. You can just relax a bit particularly if you have had a really positive start. But you just want to keep playing at this stage of the season because the last thing you want to do is have four games and then have a break.
If you've had 20 games then maybe you start to think about having a breather and a rest, but four games? You just want to get a rhythm going. But now the window is closed, managers will be reflecting on the window they have had. And if I can pick one signing for Derby that I think could have a real impact, and the one that stands out in a different way would be Nat Phillips. Derby have signed some very good players in the likes of David Ozoh and Kenzo Goudmijn who have stood out in the early games of the season and they have been really impressive.
But Phillips is a big signing for Derby. He is the type of player I felt a team higher up in the Championship or one of the top six, maybe budget-wise would have had a go at. But his experience and his strength from set plays will be key and there will be times that if they're ahead, they're going to have to defend their box late on against possession-based sides. He'll then come into his own in that sense and I think you've seen it with Cardiff with them not having him in their team that it's affected them negatively when it comes to their defensive statistics.
If I look at Stoke and the key signing for them the obvious one is Tom Cannon. To have that sort of main striker to come through and score regular goals, I think will make a make a big difference for them. There is obviously some pressure that comes attached to playing as a striker and I suppose in a slightly different way, when I came into Derby, we had Matěj Vyrdra who I think at the time was training with the under-23s or he was very close to training with the under-23s.
I don't think he was in the squad at Derby at the time and they obviously paid a decent amount of money for him. And you're always looking for those players with that quality and that ability to score goals. For me, it was about helping them to understand what they need to do to get in a team every week and build their confidence.
If you find a confident goalscorer, job done. That's what every team needs, but as a manager, you can't really teach a player to score goals. You can help them with positioning, you can help them with movement, but you know the ability to be calm in those positions is innate. I don't necessarily think you can teach that.
With Vydra, we did something slightly different. We put all his goals at the time around Derby's training ground. There were TVs around the training ground and nobody really used them for different reasons. I just said to the analyst 'look, put Matty's goals up'. Just put a montage of all his goals and it was interesting because he'd gone from having very low confidence to everybody talking to him, saying 'wow, Vyds, what about a goal you scored against so and so.'
He felt like a million dollars. The rest of the team had massive belief in him as a player because they'd seen him scoring goals. I had lots of good chats with him just saying 'look, I know you'll score goals but this is what you need to do to get on the pitch and if you're on there, you will score.' I suppose there was a belief from the manager but I also needed to create a belief within the team. The rest was history. He became the top goalscorer in the Championship that season so Tom Cannon will be no different in some respects.
It's giving him confidence. It's the rest of the team being confident in him because as a number nine, there's always pressure. It's very, very difficult to alleviate it completely. There's always that pressure and a player has to go and deliver. But I always find being a striker is the hardest role.
I started out as one but if you put me or you in that position, when I had a chance, it was almost like everything narrowed and you could feel the pressure. But when strikers explain it they say everything opens up. It feels calm. It feels like they have time. Kevin Phillips used to say it all the time. That's clearly something you just know you have and that's why people talk about being a born goalscorer.
As for Birmingham. They have made some terrific signings again and we spoke about the well-documented one in Stansfield last week. But keeping Krystian Bielik and Paik Seung-ho for me are two huge players to keep in League One. They will be like two massive signings for the club. They would probably be the two key players in my opinion.
Cov will come good
Coventry have probably made a slower start than expected, but sometimes that can happen in the Championship. I think they've done that before on numerous occasions under Mark, and I think what he's shown is an ability to just keep improving as the season goes on.
He's shown an ability to deal with any situation. If I'm being honest, if you look at that club, the amount of situations he's had to deal with as a manager has been quite unusual over a period of time. I've been so impressed with him. In some ways I've been surprised he's not been poached by a different type of club, but at the same time, I think Coventry are in a situation where they are now potentially one of the bigger clubs in the division because they've invested the Gyökeres money.
They've invested in their squad. I think the likes of Haji Wright and Ellis Simms have shown they've got two physical goalscorers in their team. They have got lots of other good players. They've lost Callum O'Hare which always takes a little bit of time to to replace, but I would expect Coventry to be up and around the top six this season again and they were probably one of my tips to finish in the playoffs."