Speaking to the manager after a disappointing result

Checks and balances

I didn’t study journalism and never really saw myself as a journalist but, as interest in Arsenal Women has grown, I have had to, almost grudgingly, accept that this is what I am doing in this role. Though I didn’t study to be a journalist, I did actually train to be a fraud investigator in a previous life, many years ago.

It wasn’t for me, I wasn’t great at it and I wasn’t hugely interested in it. But it taught me one incredibly valuable transferrable skill for this role. The skill of asking the right questions. In investigation, you are talking to people who don’t want to open up. Either because they are victims experiencing their own traumas, or because they are a suspect and definitely don’t want to say anything incriminating.

There are differences when it comes to football, of course. Nobody is committing any crimes here (well…), there is no sense that justice needs to be served in the literal way. It’s just football after all. And in this role, I essentially have a continuous dialogue with the manager, which makes it easier to establish a rapport and establishing a rapport is vital when it comes to getting them to open up.

I pretty much always ask the manager tactical questions of some kind, whether that be about the game plan, the line up, the substitutions or similar. This is because this is what the manager is accountable for. I get two questions to try to get to the nub of the matter and, in my view, that time is far better spent asking questions about things the manager actually controls. Why that line-up? Why those substitutions? What was the game plan? What was the teamtalk? That’s the line I broadly try to follow.

There are other journalists in the room who have a more general remit and I trust they will ask questions about wider issues because that is the audience they serve. Our audience, and therefore my remit, is to get to the answers for Arsenal fans, for people emotionally invested in the results and the methodology of getting them.

That can be more difficult after a disappointing result and performance like we saw on Sunday. Naturally, after a disappointment, managers are disappointed and less likely to be expressive. I don’t usually speak to opposition managers but I want to try to do more of it this season to get some more revealing insights.

Another one of the reasons I like to ask broadly tactical questions (though there are times when you have to diverge from that) is because this is what managers are really interested in, it’s the meat of their job, it’s why they do their job and why they are good at it. When you show genuine interest in what a coach has done to prepare for a given game, I think somewhere inside they appreciate that and are more likely to expand, especially in the less paranoid world of women’s football.

When I asked Matt Beard about his approach to Sunday’s game, of course the endorphins were still flowing and he was very happy to be expansive. My first question to Jonas Eidevall revolved around Arsenal changing their system to three at the back, I asked whether he played the system because he felt it was the best one for the opponent or because he just didn’t feel he had another right-back with Noelle Maritz unavailable.

It was the first question of the conference so the answer was pretty short. This is entirely natural, managers usually require a bit of warming up after a disappointment. The second question was met with a lot more detail about the game and how it unfolded, how Liverpool tweaked and how Arsenal responded (or, in this case, didn’t really respond in a visible way).

I broadly anticipated that the first question would get a short answer but the second, which was a broader question at a time when the manager’s brain is still ticking over, would get a longer response. This is where it pays to have a good rapport with the person you are speaking to. I know there is a thin line between being overly chummy and having a mutual respect but having a mutual respect is critical because that’s how you get good answers. That’s how you get detail.

Given the audience we have on Arseblog News- of committed Arsenal fans- I think it pays to be specific and focused because you are more likely to get answers that are focused and specific. Ultimately you are showing the person a genuine interest in the detail of their work and, over time, I think that earns the respect of the person you are talking to and you see that come back at you in the answers.

That is tested to its fullest after a day like Sunday, when the result and the performance are far short of the team’s capabilities and the manager is likely to feel taciturn and prickly. Few of us would make good interviewees after a big professional disappointment. It’s the time when fans want and need answers the most and when it is the hardest to get them.

That is where being a regular correspondent has its advantages, you are writing for a specific audience, so you can be specific and you speak to the coach all the time so, hopefully, you have a good rapport. Maintaining that is vital because ultimately, what I have to be is a conduit from the coach to the supporters and the challenge is to strike that balance between mutual respect without shying away from issues and that is where, for me, it really pays to be specific and focused because, ultimately, that is how you get the best detail in the shortest timeframe.