Ben Garner was motivated by frustration. As a young player, the Football League boss was left irked by how little emphasis English coaches placed on tactics, technical play and a positive mentality. Then one man, the late Terry Venables, changed his entire outlook on football.
‘I was quite frustrated as a young player about how my generation was developed, there wasn’t the tactical emphasis there is now,’ says talented coach Garner, 43, who in just four years in management has already experienced his fair share of turbulence across four jobs.
‘So the motivation for me was to develop players in an intelligent and technically, tactically bright way, which we perhaps did not in the past.