Robbie Savage is joining F365 to give us an exclusive insight into his first steps in football management. It’s going rather well so far…
In association with Planet Sport Bet, Robbie will take us behind the scenes each week at Macclesfield FC, the phoenix club rising from the ashes of Macclesfield Town, who went bust in 2020.
Robbie has played one of the leading roles in the rebirth of a now-thriving football club, first as director of football, now as first-team manager as the Silkmen seek to climb their way from the ninth tier back to the Football League.
In his first diary dispatch from Macclesfield, Robbie reveals his motivation for going into management, his ambition, and what’s important to him as the boss…
You didn’t expect that I would be the manager of the only unbeaten team remaining in the top seven tiers of English football, did you?
Nor did I. I didn’t expect to be a manager at all. That wasn’t the plan. Punditry was more suited to my personality when I retired, and I never thought managing would be for me. But I always wondered if I could do it.
It took a lot of persuasion to get involved at Macclesfield FC, as director of football, when my business partner Rob Smethurst bought the assets of Macclesfield Town off Right Move after the old club went bust in 2020. I’m delighted he talked me in to it because, even though it has been a whirlwind, it has taught me how to run a thriving football club.
Perhaps inevitably, even though I was in the background, all the scrutiny was on me. Coming up from the North West Counties Football League to where we are now, the Northern Premier League, the narrative was that if we lost, it was my fault. People said I picked the team. That was not true.
Last summer was the tipping point. We lost in the promotion play-off final to Marine. They deserved to win. Afterwards I was sat at home with my family, receiving a stream of personal messages from different individuals, gloating gleefully, rubbing it in. But as director of football, I wasn’t in a position to influence matches as they were unfolding, despite the perception that I was.
That frustration built up and then I got a call from another club asking me to be their head coach.
At first, I felt that it would be very difficult, with my shareholding at Macclesfield and BBC 606 commitments. But the idea grew on me. So I went to the board and told them I was going to accept the offer.
I decided I wanted to be a manager, to be accountable, since everyone assumed I was anyway. If I was going to be blamed for the decisions, I should be the manager making them. The other board members understood my desire to take that step and they decided that I should do it here at Macclesfield.
If I’m not good enough as a manager, then at least in future, I can look at myself in the mirror and hold myself accountable. That’s always been important to me, as a player and a pundit. I wasn’t good enough to play for Manchester United, but I bounced back. In the media, I started by doing 5Live Extra for a year, going to Colchester in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy to learn and work my way up and I’ve done OK since. As director of football, with Rob, we brought this club back from the dead. The next step for me was management.
And, naturally, I want to go as far as a I can. I want to manage in the Premier League or Championship. Ideally, with Macclesfield. But it won’t matter if we don’t get promoted this season because I’ll be out of this job, never mind being considered for others.
That’s the promise I’ve made: we’ll be up or I’ll be out. It’s a long season and we’ve achieved nothing yet, but right now, we’re going well. We’re top of the table, unbeaten, having won 14 out of 16.
238 teams from the Premier League to Step Three of Non League – only Macclesfield FC remain unbeaten in the league 📊
We keep pushing forward 👊🏻 pic.twitter.com/8Q3O9pIz8K
— Macclesfield FC (@thesilkmen) November 10, 2024
Critics say we should be top of the table. That’s fair. We have got the biggest budget. But other teams have similar budgets and we’re all training twice a week. As we’ve seen at every level, from the Premier League down, money is absolutely no guarantee of success.
People matter more, and I feel we’ve built a fantastic squad here. A group that is hungry to play at a higher level, and I would trust these players in the National League. You will hear plenty more in the coming weeks about the lads, some of whom are playing and training around jobs as teachers, personal trainers, plumbers. None of these boys are full-time professionals. But they’ve got the drive and I love helping them to strive and be the best players they can be.
There are so many good players at this level, lads who I cannot believe haven’t played in the Football League yet. The only differences between many EFL players and plenty of these boys: consistency and decision-making.
It was said of the team last season that they weren’t consistent enough and I thought a lot about that when I took the job. This season, so far, they have shown remarkable consistency. I’ll talk more next time about why that might be.
To me, my team is just as important as the team. That’s the whole staff, but closest to me are my assistant Peter Band and first-team coach John McMahon. Bandy has managed countless games in non-league; John was reserve-team coach at Liverpool under Rafa Benitez and he’s seen it all in the Football League.
They are so important for me. Football is ruthless and I learned as a player that trust is everything. I trust these guys.
We’ve seen it this week with Ruben Amorim going in to Manchester United, and Ruud van Nistelrooy leaving. It’s a massive job for Amorim and he knows he needs people around him he can trust. The new manager has got an inner circle and you can’t simply integrate someone into that because he’s a Manchester United legend.
And it’s the same for me. Hypothetically, if I was offered a job anywhere, I would want to take my staff with me. We would have to go together. People don’t recognise the collaboration that goes on and you have you have the utmost trust in them. You cannot force that overnight.
But, first, we have a huge job here at Macclesfield. And I’m buzzing off it.
Coming up this week: Curzon Ashton (A), FA Trophy second round.
We have a break from the league on Saturday but there will be no easing up when we go 25 miles up the road to a side flying high in the division above.
We got to the last four of the FA Trophy last season, the only club outside the National League to do so, and the first time the semi-final it was a single-legged tie. We lost 2-1 at Gateshead, but if we had the chance to bring them back to our place, I would have fancied us to get to Wembley, which could have been massive for us.
Robbie Savage is a brand ambassador for Planet Sport Bet
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