For all the talk about tactics, training sessions, and transfer budgets, football management is often just as much about diplomacy as it is about decision-making.
You can spend your week perfecting your shape and pressing drills, but lose the dressing room in a few careless sentences.
That’s why, when you look at the modern game, managers are paid as much for what they don’t say as what they do.
The best of them understand that a calm word carries more weight than a cutting one.
Managing the odds
Take Mikel Arteta. His monotone delivery in press conferences might appear dull to some, but that composure is the reason he’s been able to guide one of the most emotional clubs in the Premier League into genuine title contention.
Right now, the football odds tell their own story as Arsenal sit as 10/11 favourites to win the top flight.
The latest outright Premier League 2025/26 betting odds show just how much Arsenal are in the driving seat with Liverpool priced at 11/4 and Manchester City at 4/1.
It’s tight at the top, but those numbers back up what you can already see on the pitch: composure counts.
Yes, it helps to have an expensively assembled squad, but if your temperament is fiery or unpredictable, you’ll likely never achieve what you set out to do.
Antonio Conte learned that the hard way. After Tottenham’s 3–3 draw with Southampton in 2023, he vented publicly at his players and board and was gone within days.
Even Kevin Keegan’s famous “I’ll love it if we beat them” outburst in 1996 showed how emotion, once unleashed, can spread through a team like static.
As sure as night follows day, Newcastle quickly crumbled in a title race they had once looked certain to win.
From the top flight to the grassroots
That same emotional balancing act applies all the way down the pyramid. Just ask Bracknell Town boss Matt Saunders.
After a 2-0 defeat to second in the table Gloucester City this week, his four-minute post-match diatribe went viral for its brutal honesty.
At the time of writing, the clip has racked up 7.2 million views while the club has a following on X of just over 14,000.
Saunders accused senior players of lacking professionalism and leadership, praising his younger players for their effort and attitude. It was raw, unfiltered and, to many fans, unwise.
Reactions online came quickly. Some supported his demand for higher standards, while others thought he’d thrown his own dressing room under the bus.
It’s easy to see why emotions ran high. Bracknell are rooted to the bottom of the Southern League, Premier South with five points from ten games and just one win so far.
The inescapable reality is that it’s been a rough start to the season and these are turbulent times at Bottom Meadow.
Knowing when to bite your tongue
At any level of football, emotion drives everything, but once a manager’s volatility is exposed, it’s hard to win back trust.
Fans can sense it, players can feel it, and boards rarely wait around to see how it ends.
Saunders may have been speaking from the heart, and to a degree, that transparency makes non-league so compelling, but history suggests he might have done better to pause before speaking into the microphone.
As every well-paid Premier League manager knows, and every non-league one learns quickly, the hardest part of the job isn’t always the tactics board.
It’s keeping your cool when all around you are losing theirs.
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