If you ask Nathan Jones what kind of manager he would like to be for Saints, he’ll paint a picture of something he never experienced. A 23 year playing career took Jones from his home in Wales to Spain and back to the UK in the English lower leagues. Yet the manager he wants to be is based just as much on what he didn’t experience in that time. Speaking to the media just 24 hours after his unveiling as Saints manager and a further 24 hours before his new side take on Liverpool to end a whirlwind week, the former Luton Town boss outlined what kind of relationships he wants to develop with his new group of players.
Nathan Jones said: “Being a football manager has many facets. When you’re asking people to sacrifice certain things, when you’re asking people to metaphorically run through brick walls, when you’re asking people to buy in to something, you have to make them believe that. Now if you just dictate to them, that’s not my management style. What I want to do is get them to buy in to something and see the reasoning behind that, and then with my passion for what I do, with my work rate, they can see I believe in something. If I believe in a way of doing it and I can transfer that onto the pitch and I can get those to buy into that…and then see that I have an empathetic side when maybe they don’t play as well, then that will give them a real impetus moving forward. I manage like I want to be managed. I craved a manager to care about me, I craved someone to want to make me better, I craved someone to say ‘you can be this, you can be this player if you really want to, if you buy in.’ And then guiding me to be that. And then putting me in a team-framework that suited how I played, I craved that as a player. I never had it – which is ironic because I played for 23 years – but I never had it. But I want to be that manager, that coach, that basically changes their life.”
‘Buy-in’ is a phrase Jones regularly throws out in relation to pretty much all areas of his management whether it’s about himself, his players, or his team’s fans. We’re still zero games into his Saints tenure and just one press conference down, but Jones appears to understand his role as someone who both demands from his players while also believing in them through difficult moments.
