08 December 2023 , 17:30
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Snakes in the dressing room are some of the most dangerous creatures in football – because they always come out to play when the chips are down.
Erik ten Hag did not take kindly to reports that there was an air of mutiny in the dressing room at Manchester United, with several players said to be disillusioned, and he banned the media outlets who ran them. But shooting the messenger doesn't make the bad publicity go away.
The best way, the only way, to run a happy ship is to keep the snakes quiet by winning football matches. Players are selfish animals by nature. Dressing rooms are invariably hard places to survive among cliques and factions governed by self-interest.
You have senior players with young families trying to guard their place in the team, single lads with a different outlook and aspirations, you have different cultures, languages and religions, but one thing is paramount. Everyone wants to be in the team, and those left on the bench or frozen out will feel resentment.
As soon as a few cracks appear, and dressing room harmony is fractured, you can guarantee the snakes will come out to play. They are devious, they will go behind the manager's back, they will even turn on their own team-mates.
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It's not nice to be on the receiving end of the back-biters and snitches. I was once 'snaked' on at Derby, when we were having a terrible season on the pitch and a story about me arriving for training in a new £160,000 Mercedes was leaked from inside the dressing room.
I played c**p that season, like everybody else, but it had nothing to do with the car I drove. And I wasn't the source of a story about Dennis Wise goading me at a Leicester players' Christmas party with a sex toy. That was somebody else's agenda.
What happens, when there is bitterness and disquiet, is agents or members of a player's family will plant the story and do the aggrieved party's bidding for them.
That makes the snitches almost impossible to trace, so when players have a clear-the-air meeting, and the manager looks them in the eye and asks if they were the source of a leaked story, they just deny it – and it's almost impossible to prove if they are lying.
Even as co-owner at Macclesfield, where I like to think I know about everything that goes on at a Northern Premier League club, things have come out where I've wondered, 'Where the hell did that come from? How could anybody know?'
When there are snakes in a dressing room, there can be no watertight camaraderie – and there are no secrets among old soldiers fighting to preserve their careers, youngsters trying to take their place and, in some cases, people going to the manager and squealing, which many players hate.
Back in the day, squads would thrash out any differences by having a 'bonding' session or a few drinks on a players' night out. But that is not always a viable option now, especially in a squad where some players might be teetotal... and if you don't want to go, you are ostracised and pressured into going out.
And snakes don't need to cover their tracks as much these days because social media will do it for them. Nobody ever puts their hand up and admits, “Yes it was me who leaked that story.”
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Is it a nice practice? No. Is it nice to be on the receiving end of the gossip? No.
But here's the rub – for Ten Hag and every other manager. In 99 per cent of cases, leaked stories are usually bang on the money, not far off the mark or substantially true.