Like Father, Like Son

[tenthreeleader]

I suppose it does, at that .... who knew?

___

“Why is Dad always so aggressive?”

Ryan sat next to his mother at the kitchen table on the night before the Watford match. The team was going to take an early matchday coach the next morning – ownership had decided against lodging the players in a hotel the night before the match.

It wasn’t necessarily a deal-breaker for the team’s chances, but Ryan still would have preferred a relaxed buildup to the match rather than scrambling to get everyone on a coach at 8 a.m.

But for now, Ryan sat with Patty and they talked about the person to whom they were related by marriage.

“Remember what your father went through to keep the job you have,” she said. “All the fights he had to endure. It put an edge on him and he kept it in things that had to do with football.”

“Well, yes, but there’s a lot of conflict in him.”

“Yes, but he also had the sense to understand where his position was strongest,” she answered. “He inherited a team that was on the up, and he knew it. He knew that getting over with the fans was going to be the biggest factor in his success, so he became their defender. You don’t have that luxury, but you do have the relationships he built with them. That’s how we won his battles, and you have his legacy with them to win yours.”

“At least that’s what he thinks,” Ryan answered, taking a sip from a cup of tea.

“Well, he’s always said it’s your team,” she replied patiently. She had spent many years defending her husband’s behavior which could at times be quite fiery, but she also knew that much of that fire was directed at protecting her and their family.

“It’s just funny,” Ryan said. “Just once it would be interesting if he said something like ‘you should get a gift for Dai and get on his good side.’”

“I think he’d rather scratch his eyeballs with a fork,” Patty smiled.

“He’s fought for everything he gained in the game,” she added. “It’s not in his nature to sit down and shut up when there’s a principle to fight for.”

“Or a person to fight,” Ryan smiled.

It wasn’t exactly a fair characterization, but for the time being, it would do. Rob was not a fighter by nature but if you got into his business, he could make you regret it. And everything he did was for his family, even though sometimes the added bonus of an ego stroke could make the fight sweeter to win.

He did have an ego. Most great managers do. They don’t get their jobs unless they think they can do them better than anyone else, and once Rob showed he actually could do it better than anyone else, he wasn’t shy in telling people about it.

But Ryan was different. Though he had his mother’s red hair, he didn’t have the redhead’s famed fiery temper. He was a different person, and didn’t always like to mix it up with the press, board members, media types or any of the other hangers-on that dog a professional football club.

Winning on the pitch was the most important thing for him, and he figured that once he showed he could do that, the other battles would take care of themselves.

While Rob slept in the next room, Ryan realized that he faced a decision he was eventually going to have to make; whether to fall into his father’s orbit or break away into deep, uncharted space.

Just then Annie, who had overheard the conversation, entered the kitchen and crossed behind her husband to rub his shoulders.

“You can do anything you want,” she reminded him. “You can do anything you set your mind to. Whether or not your father is a brilliant manager – which he was and probably still is – you can carve your own pathway.”

Patty smiled at her daughter-in-law and spoke with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

“Maybe one Rob Ridgway is enough,” she said playfully.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

10 September 2022
Watford v Reading, Championship Match Day #9

Ryan stepped off the coach at Vicarage Road at the head of his team and then stepped aside to watch his players pass, one by one, into Watford’s home ground.

He was watching for any signs that the ride from Berkshire had had any negative effect on anyone – limps, tight muscles, sore joints, anything that might affect his decisions on how the team should play on the day.

Seeing nothing amiss, he proceeded to the visiting manager’s office and finished filling out his team sheet. There wouldn’t be a lot of change from Stoke, but some players needed to get back into the lineup after coming back from international duty.

One of those players was Casadei, who had looked very good for Italy’s u-19s and appeared to be riding a good streak of form. So as Ryan briefed the team on the day’s tactics, he had the young midfielder in mind.

“We’re going with 4-3-3 today,” he said, in a tone of voice that would have made his father proud. “We’re flipping both attacking forwards to the middle, and we’re going to play a little tiki-taka today.”

That brought some smiles from the players, who had something new to talk about. This was a new look for Reading and for Ryan as well, having not used the tactic in a Championship match to date, so unveiling it playing away to the sixth-placed team was a real risk.

But the players loved it. Casadei liked it even more when Ryan used an Italian word to describe his role for the day.

“Play a mezzala style,” Ryan said, in a tone that would have raised his father’s eyebrows. Rob had managed in Italy before coming to Reading, and he would have no more started a mezzala player in midfield than he would have stood on the touchline without his pants.

“We want possession today and that means Cesare has a role to fill,” Ryan said. A player in the half-spaces could link midfield to forwards in a narrow attack, and that was just what Ryan had in mind.

“They are weak up the middle,” Ryan said. “Focus play through the middle, let’s move the ball among these gentlemen and when we wear them out, we’ll pip a goal and head back home. What do you say, lads?”

Loud agreement greeted the manager which was gratifying for more than one reason. Buy-in is always good to see from players, but enthusiasm was something quite different.

The team went through its warmups in high spirits and punctually at 3:00, the match kicked off.

Ryan expected a strong start from the home team, which had crashed 4-0 against Huddersfield in its prior match. Stung to the quick and challenged by their manager, Watford started out on the front foot, while Ryan’s tiki-taka was able to deny Watford what it most wanted, which was possession.

Reading picked up some unfortunate good fortune twelve minutes into the match, when Watford’s Udinese loanee, Hassane Kamara, hobbled off injured rubbing his right calf, taking a pretty good wing player right out of the equation for the rest of the day.

Unfortunately, once again the Royals had a hard time producing quality attacks with the possession they had, which was the lion’s share over the first half hour. Watford had the only two good chances of that time period and it took a full 35 minutes before Ince came close with a rasping drive from eighteen yards that barely missed the crossbar, which wouldn’t have helped but which would have made a much better sound.

Still and all, they got to halftime scoreless and that was a victory of sorts for a team being asked to tinker with its engine while the motor was running. Casadei hadn’t played badly but there was a general staleness to the Royals that came with a lot of matches in a short period of time, and that would simply take time to overcome.

The need became more urgent when Ismalia Sarr opened the scoring for Watford four minutes after the restart. The Senegalese beat Lumley with some ease with some help from the Brazilian João Pedro, who at age twenty was evidently not old enough to have only one name.

Ryan decided to stick with Casadei in his role and was rewarded when he found Yiadom with a seeing-eye ball down the flank for the overlapping fullback. His cutback found Junior Hoilett right where he was supposed to be, and the ball was right where it was supposed to be soon after, which is to say in the back of the net.

It was another battling performance away from home. Three points were probably not on the cards, but the one Reading got would have to be enough.

Watford 1-1 Reading
Sarr 49; Hoilett 72
A – 19,348 (1,110 away)

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Some rest was good, but Ryan, of course, never stopped working.

All he wanted was for his team to get into some sort of rhythm. They were performing above expectations, to be certain, but this business of playing twice a week for a month and then once in ten days was playing hell both with training as well as fitness.

The squad was small, yes, but they were all getting chances to play and that much was fine. But Ryan was still learning the art of how to balance a squad and the various needs of each of its players.

He managed men differently than a lot of managers did – he gave them credit for being men until they gave him a reason not to. That seemed fair to everyone.

That meant the players were on their best behavior until they messed up and drew Ryan’s ire. He had made it plain that if he ever called a player by his first and last name, that player was in trouble he didn’t want to be in.

Which was why Dean Bouzanis had been called, by name, to the manager’s office on the Monday following the Watford match.

Now the team’s third-choice keeper after the promotion of the precociously talented Coniah Boyce-Clarke to the senior squad, Bouzanis hadn’t been taking his training with a sufficient level of seriousness in recent days.

He sat across the manager’s desk from Ryan, who motioned to a television screen on the wall to his left and took a remote from his desk.

“Dean, watch this,” Ryan said, hitting the play button for an obviously pre-recorded sequence of video.

The video was from the last few training sessions and showed, in the main, Bouzanis standing around. Or sitting, a cardinal sin in most managers’ training sessions. To be fair to the player, Ryan also included some decent work done by the Australian in training, but after a minute or so, his point had been made.

“What’s up with that?” Ryan asked.

“Well, I went down the pecking order a bit, and I reckon I didn’t handle that as well as I should have,” the keeper admitted.

“That’s an understatement,” Ryan said, trying not to sound severe but knowing he needed to say what had to be said next.

“It isn’t professional,” Ryan said, and Bouzanis looked up at him with a wounded expression.

“I’ve played two hundred senior matches, gaffer,” he replied. “I think that deserves a bit of consideration.”

“Which is why I’m talking with you here, behind a closed door, instead of out on the ground in front of your teammates,” Ryan said, with just enough of a knife edge in his voice to cut the skin but not cause bleeding. “That’s out of respect for you. Can I see better in training, please?”

Bouzanis nodded. There was really nothing he could say, and both men knew it.

It was once said of the American baseball manager Frank Robinson that he could “step on your shoes but not mess up your shine.” It was precisely this effect Ryan was trying to have on Bouzanis, who as a new arrival at the club prior to Ryan’s taking charge, should have known better than to challenge the manager in the first place.

“Look, Dean,” Ryan finally said in an effort to break the silence, “anyone can make a mistake. Let’s consider this one yours and move on from it. You want to play, I’d like to have you available for selection, but I can’t pick you when you behave like that in training.”

“Understood,” Bouzanis said. Showing he had learned, he waited for Ryan to end the meeting.

# # #