In this episode, football coach Mark Robinson - former Chelsea U21 Head Coach and the man who built AFC Wimbledon’s academy from scratch - joins me to explore leadership, mindset, player development and the role of failure in growth.

We dive into:

→ How to build non-fear learning environments

→ Coaching mindset and reflection processes

→ Why failure, mistakes and “hiccups” are essential to development

→ High-challenge / high-support coaching

→ Player ownership and accountability

→ Emotional resilience, confidence and anti-fragility

→ What great coaches do differently

→ The psychology behind growth, pressure and performance

Mark has coached and developed players who’ve gone on to the Premier League, led Chelsea’s U21s to a record unbeaten run, and transformed AFC Wimbledon during one of the toughest periods in the club’s history.

His insights into leadership, culture and human development go far beyond football.

If you’re interested in growth, mindset, coaching or resilience, this conversation will hit home.

Mark, why do you think football brings us together the way that it does?

Well, straight in there.

What a great question.

I've actually thought about this.

I guess you've got to go right back really.

If you go way back and you think about when football originated, et cetera, I think it was, you know, it was definitely a working class sport at the time.

So you look at the sort of era, it was probably a time when people wanted to come together, you know what I mean?

Even if you sort of look beyond when it started, then you look at the war, it was a reason for people to come together.

So I think, you know, it's probably originated from that very, very working class sport.

But I've often not always thought was.

Then, you know, why football?

Why is football so popular?

And I, you know, this is just my opinion.

I kind of think it's because it's probably, as a sports go, it's as pure as you can get in many ways in terms of, you know, you and I could go out and have some sort of version of a game of football.

All we need is a football and we can come up with something, you know, and, and a couple of people, you know, if I go back to when I was a kid, it often would start like that.

Two of you would go out with a ball, next thing there's four of you, next thing there's six of you, and then you're having a game, you know, so I think there's that, that you don't need a lot, you just need a football and, and you know, coach for goals, et cetera.

And so I think there's that.

And I think also as a sport, you know, you use every part of your body almost as well.

You know, unless you're an outfield player, you don't use your hands, but obviously goalkeepers do.

But I think, you know, the fact that it's quite a fascinating sport in that way that you use every single part of your body.

So I think it's like a really pure sport that captures the imagination and you don't need a lot to play it.

I think that that would be my thinking and I know it's changed now with the money, but obviously the fact that it was very, a very working and it give people the chance to come together.

But then also you've got that, that, that tribal thing that's grown obviously over years and years now work.

Because I think people like to belong to something.

You know, they, they love that feeling of belonging to something and, and supporting something.

So yeah, that's that's my view on it.

Yeah.

That.

That belonging idea is really interesting, like.

And I suppose there's a family element of it as well, so it trickles down through those generations.

Right.

So you've got.

How many times you hear a parent say, oh, if my child supports whatever rival they've got, I'll be so upset.

But it's like that, Pastor.

I'm going through that at the moment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because obviously, you know, my family going back to.

Whenever, we're all Chelsea fans and both my daughter's boyfriends are Arsenal fans.

So we're already having that discussion right now.

And I remember, actually one of my mates, there's a video where he had something.

Something similar and I think is the.

The.

The guy that his daughter married was Arsenal Chelsea.

So they, they, when the baby was crawling, they put out a Chelsea and Arsenal shirt.

It's a brilliant video.

And whichever one he crawls to, they agreed that that's going to be his team.

Wow.

And it's funny because he's kind of looks like he's going towards the Arsenal shirt, then he veers off the Chelsea shirt and it's brilliant.

You can see the dad in the background holding his head and the granddad celebrating.

So, yeah, it's.

It's all that.

And it's all that.

That's all part of it.

Yeah.

So, obviously today we're going to speak a bit about your coaching career and stuff that you've learned from that.

You've been coaching for quite a while.

So looking back at the start, when you first entered the world of coaching.

Yeah.

Do you remember what the sort of texture of your mind was like in that moment, going into coaching for the first time?

Yeah.

I mean, my story is quite different in terms of.

Because I was a player, got injured, went out of football for a while, you know, still loved it, but didn't want to be around it.

Cause I couldn't play.

And then through various chance meetings, I decided I was going to coach.

I won't go into that, but I kind of made a lot of decisions I had to do to leave a job and coach and all.

I remember going into coaching on the back of sort of coaching my works team and something successful really happening was I started just looking at my experiences as a player.

When I felt good, when I didn't feel good, why I really shone at a certain age, then it levelled out a little bit and what influences the coaches then on me.

And I kind of took all that, including my injury as well.

Because I was very left sided dominant.

And that kind of meant I had the initial injury which was really bad, but then my body just fell apart because I didn't have any equilibrium.

I was so left sided dominant.

So when I went to coach, I looked at all those things and then started to think about how I wanted to coach, how I felt I could develop players.

And you know, but what I thought was key as well was when you haven't had a career, you know, at youth level, I played as high as you could, I capped in London, et cetera.

But you know, if you don't have a career, it leaves a gap.

There's no doubt it leaves a gap in your education.

And I was very mindful that I've got to try and fill that gap, you know, because if you haven't experienced playing at the top level, you haven't experienced it.

So I think you've got to fill that gap.

Which I, which I was very at the mindset that I'd had to do in terms of who I was going to visit, what environments I wanted to visit, who I was going to speak to and make sure that you're constantly learning.

But I was very clear on certain things, how I felt player development should look.

And when you said you were playing, you said there was times where you felt really good, maybe times you didn't feel so good.

What times were those?

Just how people made me feel fundamentally.

And I look back and I go, I wasn't quick as a player.

So I felt, I read the game well anyway.

Tactically things weren't that difficult for me.

I understood the game.

So a lot of it was how I felt.

And you know, I had one particular coach who just made me feel great.

Would I say he taught me the most in terms of other things?

Possibly not, but he made me feel great.

And he didn't put an emphasis on, I guess my lack of pace would have been a weakness.

He didn't put an emphasis on that.

He just used to constantly tell me that I was gonna be the best player, go out and run the game.

And more often than not I did at that stage their belief.

So that belief, whereas I had other coaches who possibly were more detailed, helped me technically, but would possibly emphasize.

Well, they would emphasize, but not in a negative way, but would just put an emphasis on the fact that I wasn't the quickest.

So more often than not you're going out there with that bit of a mindset.

So yeah, that kind of thing.

Where do you think that balance is?

Through your Experiences as a player and as a coach.

Where's the balance of technical input versus that more personal input and sort of building that self belief?

Yeah, I think the attachment you make with players is everything.

I think first and foremost if you want to have an impact on someone, you've got to build a deeper attachment.

And you know, because everyone learns in different ways, everyone sees things in different ways.

Some people you can go in quite hard on and be quite honest quite quickly they want that, others not because you know, they've all, they've all been formed through their, their informative years and what's been going on.

So first you need to build that attachment and then I think once you've got that, well, I think without that you're never going to really develop anyone to, to their full potential.

And I think, you know, once you've got that then you can delve into things they need to improve on.

But I think it's really important that I've always tried to go where you need to make their strength, super strengths.

And I think with the things you need to work on, it's not about hiding them.

But if you make that, the constant emphasis, it can be quite draining.

You know, come you need to get better at this, you need to get better at this and of course you need to improve that.

But I think you can drip feed it in along with their super strength.

So it's, it's, you know, they're very clear on things that they can improve on but they also know that they're working on the things they love, the things they're really good at and they're making, making those super strengths as well.

And sort of when you look at that, the style that you coach with accountability.

So this is listening to stuff I've heard you speak before about is that accountability and ownership that you put onto players.

Why is that so important for you, that you instill that in the players that you coach?

Because I think you, I think you one, you cannot improve without failure.

You just can't.

It's impossible because if you're not failing then you're not pushing yourself hard enough.

You're just staying the same.

So you know, that's just a fact.

There's no gray area on that.

And I think you need to again to grow as a person and a player, you need to get that sense of empowerment.

So I think if you give people ownership and you give them the right amount of support, then that empowerment and that ownership just helps them grow.

If you're doing everything for them, giving Them all the answers, you just won't see the growth.

And I think the key is recognizing how much support you give, you know, so I'm big on high challenge, high support, but sometimes I've worked with players who don't need so much support.

You can keep that challenge quite high, but you're just there for them.

Others need a little bit more.

And for me that is the beauty of coaching is recognizing who needs what.

But I don't care, care what, what kind of personality you are.

You need that, that uncomfortableness.

And everyone talks about this out your comfort zone and that.

But I think you know that, that, that feeling in your belly, that little bit of fear.

Yeah, but it's also a very similar feeling to excitement as well.

And then you overcome that, you know, and that's where you grow.

And on that failure, sort of learning from failure, I totally agree that that's where you've got to push yourself.

And failure is a way, that is the way that we learn as humans.

For anyone listening who's maybe in a managerial role, whether that's within football or not, how can they encourage the people around them to get comfortable in failing and learning from it?

Yeah, I think the trouble is wording is very powerful.

Right.

Words are spells and the word fail straight away has all sorts of connotations.

So I think you have to kind of trying.

It's not because failure sounds very defined, you know, I've failed where you haven't.

You, you just, you just, it hasn't quite worked out.

So I think it's how you get that across.

It's, you know, because I think as we, we look at failure as an end point, as in a fail bang, that that's going to have all sort of ramifications, sackings, blah, blah, boom, this, that.

So I think it's creating that you have to have that non fear based culture basically where there's standards and there's pressure and there's accountability but within that they recognize, let's not call it failure.

Possibly going for something and it doesn't go your way is all right as long as you reflect on it and you look why it hasn't gone right and then you go again, you know.

And I think that's, that's the issue.

The word failure has kind of taken up its own and we, and we look at it as, as bang, I failed.

What's going to happen now?

But it's not, it's, you know, missing a penalty isn't failure.

If something's gone wrong or, or making A mistake or trying something in a game and it didn't come off.

It's not defined failure.

You've tried something, you know, and it's the same in business.

And, and I think it's vital because if you don't have that culture, then you lose innovation.

And you know, there's a lot of talk around football now.

We're losing that bit of creativity.

It's why it's been nice the last few games.

Actually we've seen some great creativity in various games over the last few days.

And you gotta be really careful.

Cause you lose that innovation and people get scared to try new things and you have to have that.

Yeah, yeah, it's that reframing of the words like you say.

And we spoke before about a couple episodes ago, I spoke to a world record ultra endurance athlete, Sean Conway, and he said failure is a hiccup.

So that's the word that he substitutes.

Yeah, take it.

And like he, you look at his record and he's got world records for all these amazing things.

But what you don't see is that a lot of them he tried more than once.

And the first time he didn't get that far.

He had a hiccup and he learned from it and he went again.

Went again.

Yeah, and I think that's, yeah, so much around that refrain.

And it's hard because, you know, in any sport, business, life.

Someone else said this to me recently, which I stole.

The biggest battle is, is the battle yourself, you know, so how you frame things will often be how you come back, you know, and I've been, you know, in my last job, well, at my Chelsea job, we talked.

I introduced antifragility into one of our processes, which is the ability.

You know, we talk about robustness and resilience, but antifragility is almost beyond that.

You know, where you, where you succeed, but you come back even stronger.

And in a game like football, which is so random, you know, you need that ability because you can be doing a lot of things right in football and you're not getting the result you wanted.

So the ability to come back even stronger, which is anti fragility, is absolutely massive.

But I like that hiccup and I think again, a lot of it is reframing.

You know, it's like the word retire, I think is really poor use of language in football, you know, just, just my opinion, you know.

Do you think she replaced.

Well, just, just you're 35.

Like if you, if you look up, if you look up what retire means, it's quite a powerful word, you know, you literally.

But it's just my own opinion, I think it froze up.

Retires almost like, well, I'm done.

Yeah.

Whereas for me, football's just a beautiful moment in your life.

Yeah.

Oh, as a player, like for me you should be looking, you know, let's say it's a 15 year old, you should be going, this is going to be the most unbelievable 15 years of my life and then at the end of it I've got another whatever, 40, 50 years, you know, and you should be looking, you know, I think there's no problem at all where a player has got a bit of focus on what's after football.

I don't believe that inhibits your football at all.

Vincent Co. Was doing a degree when he was playing.

You know, I think in fact it probably makes your football, especially if you're at a certain level, you know, if you're below the, that level where you're not earning enough, where you're to, you know, it's.

I think it empowers you again to know that you've got one eye as him or when that, when that part of my life's over, I can be going into that.

I think it makes your football better because it takes away that pressure cooker feeling, you know.

So I think, you know, words and our think thought process behind them are powerful.

I think the word retire I think makes a lot of players make some really ill informed decisions around moves, possibly for a bit more money, that kind of thing.

When things were going really well, you know.

So I think, yeah, yeah, that's a.

Really interesting thing I've never thought about.

But yeah, you're right, you're 35 and you can go into, yeah, anything after.

I mean within football you've got punditry.

Yeah, Coaching obviously also you might go.

In a completely different casting now.

Loads of footballers doing that.

Yeah, well one of my ex players who played about 18, 20 professional games then went into semi professional football.

His name's Alfie Egan and he's still only 27, I think Alfie, 26, 27.

But he basically he went into marketing.

I think through default.

One of his relatives was doing it.

So he was playing semi pro and then went into marketing and was doing unbelievably well and couldn't work out why he's thinking, why am I, why am I really good at this job that I've never trained for?

So he come to the conclusion that lots of things that you go through as wanting to be a professional footballer Chasing targets, blah, blah, blah.

They give you certain traits that are fantastic for certain jobs like sales and marketing.

So basically set up a company now where he's getting players ready, saying, look, when you finish, don't panic, you'll be brilliant for these jobs.

So he set up his own marketing business, which is fantastic.

And he's already having really good success with it, you know, brilliant.

So.

So on the.

Just touching back on that fear of.

Fear of failure element that we were talking about and you mentioned the comfort zone.

Yeah.

So I've seen you post this photo where the two that I've seen before is you've got your comfort zone.

Yeah.

And then you've got like the growth zone.

So you step outside that, you grow, you learn.

Yeah.

And it expands your comfort zone and so on, so on.

But this image has the fear zone and the learning zone.

Yeah.

In the middle of that, those two.

Can you just talk me through those?

You know, I saw that and I just liked it because I don't think you just skip from coming out your comfort zone to learning.

You know, I think you go from out your comfort zone, there's gonna be your hiccups.

Right.

Which is the fear.

But then through that, that's gradually getting through that and reflecting and coming out of it.

That's what takes you into the growth zone and the learning zone, you know, so.

Or the learning zone.

The growth zone.

So I think that.

But again, when I saw it, because I put it on my WhatsApp the Nine, I was kind of like, oh, fear again.

It froze up fear.

Because we talk about not having fear based environments, but I think when you talk about fear, you're just talking about that, that knotted feeling in your stomach, you know, things that I've done to help me as a coach, where you're getting up and you're thinking, you know, I did a presentation the other day, it was like three and a half hours.

And I've got better at stuff as I've done more, but I've never done a three and a half hour one with gaps and interactive.

So I wouldn't say I had the same knots in my stomach that I had when I did my first presentation.

But I still got that feeling and I'd like to think it went well.

I've had really good feedback.

So after that I kind of again, that feeling, the empowerment's come because I had that little bit of fear.

If I'd not accepted it and not done it, I'd still be that person who's only ever done an Hour and a half presentation.

Now I'm going, well, I've done a three and a half hour and I know what it feels.

I've also looked at things I could have done better.

So I think I'll be better, even better next time I do it.

And I think you have to go through that.

And I worry, I worry I'm going a bit off track now, so stop me if you don't want me to, but I worry a little bit about modern life and where we're going, that we're taking that away, you know, that, that, that, that little bit of fear you have to go through to grow.

Because, you know, we talk about technology and I think we got this habit now.

As soon as we talk about technology, we think, we think it's growth because it seduces us.

So as soon as we go technology, everyone goes, oh, what does it do?

How does it do it?

But in terms of, is it developing us human beings?

I'm not sure we're growing, you know, if that makes sense.

And I think we got to be really careful because it can seduce us.

You know, technology, it can be very, you know, I've sat in presentations and it's all singing and dancing and you kind of set up a wow, this is.

And then when you come out you go, what actually did I learn today?

It was it kind of constitute you trying to give you a better example, driverless cars.

You know, I've got some people I speak to getting really excited about driverless cars.

It might just be the way my brain works.

I'm looking at that going, now if that did app come in.

I'm not saying there's not advantages.

Of course there are for people who can't drive disabled.

But that's another skill set you're taking away.

So if I go back to when I learned to drive again, I remember, you know, you think you're gonna be all right.

I remember that first lesson and you pulled away and you feel like, wow, this is like that fear again.

Everything feels stiff.

The car feels four times bigger than it did when you, you know, all that you go through.

And then when you pass your driving test, you feel like a whole new world's opened up to you.

Do you know what I mean?

You can do anything.

I remember I passed my test on the Tuesday and on the Saturday I drove up to, I was 17, I drove up to Liverpool with my mates, you know, didn't even tell me mum and dad because it opened up a new world.

So you've gone through that and I'm just worried that we're losing that and, and we, we are seeing that with young players now where those challenge points are going away sometimes, but, but I think it's going to go full circle.

Yeah.

I'm hearing things around kids now.

Getting fed up with it.

Yeah.

I think a lot of younger people, I mean, they're not drinking.

Yeah.

And that might be more to money.

Yeah.

To be fair.

But like, yeah, social media, definitely.

I think they're realizing that these algorithms are made to just keep people on it for.

Totally.

It's.

Yeah.

I did before this podcast, I did about five years with no social media and it was such a good time because I didn't, I didn't waste that time scrolling.

I'd love to speak about that.

Have you read Stolen Focus?

You ever read a book?

Ever read it?

You'll love it.

It's really good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean it's such a.

You get so much time back and yeah, you can fill it with other stuff, like productive stuff.

Just relaxing.

Yeah.

Because when you're doing that, you're not actually relaxing.

Your body is like that dopamine spike is going again and again.

You're running it dry.

And I've done it myself.

Like sometimes you get up and you have one of those days, you haven't got quite the purpose that you've had on another day, you know, since I, I lost my job at Burton Albion and you'd have those days and you sit there on your phone and all of a sudden like three hours have just disappeared and you've gone, what have I just been doing?

Yeah, looking at absolute nonsense, you know.

So, yeah, so, yeah, we have gone a bit off track, but.

No, no, I'd like to hear more about that.

Yeah, we've got, we'll go into that after.

But yeah, let's jump back on track and look at your management style.

So listening to things that you've spoken about before, the style of your management seems slightly unique in terms of that ownership, accountability, almost quite psychology based.

Did you ever find any issues with that when you were trying to bring that to a new.

A new club, a new role, any resistance?

I was quite fortunate at Wimbledon because I sort of started the academy from scratch and the guy who was kind of head of youth because back then it was all Sunday League, you know, because Wimbledon were a semi professional club and they needed to form a.

A youth structure ready for if they become a professional club.

So I was really fortunate that I was given quite a free hand to, to put in Place these things, try things, excuse me.

I would say once they become a professional club, I didn't get resistance particularly, but I got some raised eyebrows from above about certain things I wanted to do because, you know, again, you're dealing with ex professionals who have done things a certain way.

And that's challenging.

Yeah, like, that's challenging for me because I've got to respect they've had a career and I haven't, not, not a first team career.

But I've also got to be strong in my head that you become what you've.

You've been and if you don't stretch boundaries and think of things in a different way.

So, you know, I've always worked to the way I look at, you know, I look at these, these people who've got incredible mindsets and it manifests in different ways, whether it's football or individual sports.

So, you know, your Roy Keane's, your John Terry's, Gerrard's, lan Pardu.

You listen to them talk and they go, I don't need a coach to inspire me to train.

I don't need a.

Do you know what I mean?

You listen and then you look at tennis like Roger Federer, very different personality, very calm, but almost had to reinvent himself two, three times to stay at the levels.

So, you know, I look at those people and I go, unless that's my aim with the players I'm working with is to create them.

And that doesn't mean I'm helping create like screamers and shouters.

So it's not create, develop, but these, these people who are at that real extreme elite, I'm doing them a massive disservice.

So for me, just turning up and putting on sessions and worrying about Saturday's result and thinking that's the be all and end all, it's not.

I just read a brilliant quote from Bielsa saying, you know, youth team coaches have got to understand they're not handing over a youth team to a first team manager.

And this is how I've always thought.

At best, you're handing over one or two players and going, he's going to improve your team.

And you've.

And my biggest thing is player first, player last.

I want to give these lads careers.

Now that might have stem from me possibly losing mine.

Not saying I would have been good enough anyway, but through injury, losing mine and the pain I felt.

So I kind of want to give myself over to those players and give them the very best opportunity of having a career.

And the way I've always looked at it.

Even if they've come up short.

Because at the end of the day your talent will define where you go.

Even if they come up short.

Well, I've given some really good behaviors in that to thrive in life anyway and I'd like to think that's happened.

Yeah.

Is that part of what drives you in your coaching now is the fact that your career was cut short maybe.

And does that.

Yeah.

To drive you to give this.

I think in terms of.

Yeah.

The development side when I'm working with individuals 100 and I'm so, you know, I want them to enjoy it as well.

It's like, come on, enjoy this.

It's, you know, and it's hard now with social media.

Fans are more entitled than they've ever been.

And I'm quite happy to say that because I've been a football fan and I was a positive football fan.

You know, I was the one who organized open top buses.

I've, I've never lived life.

I've cut, you know, half glass empty.

I've never booed a player in my life.

Even when I, you know, it's, it's just how I see things.

You're there to support the team and lift them so.

And I'm just really want them to enjoy it because you, you know, you do.

You come across football players.

Sorry in football and they're not loving it like they should.

And managers the same.

They're not loving it like they should.

You know, it's a lot of work to get to where you've got to.

So yeah, you want to win and, and that but you've got to enjoy it along the way as well.

Yeah, that's really important with anything that you're doing in life.

Right.

Is trying to take some enjoyment from it and not just get to a point after where you look back and go oh actually that was really.

Or I wish.

I should wish.

I wish.

And there's a lot of that.

Yeah, I wish I totally just touch on some of those things that maybe you got raised eyebrows about.

Just for anyone that hasn't heard you speak before.

Yeah.

So first thing.

So when, when I started the women academy I, I looked at, you know, we weren't getting the.

Ever going to get the best players.

You know, there's so much competition around.

You know, apart from your Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham, West Ham, Fulham, you've also edgy Brentford's, QPR's, Orients.

You know, we were coming up so there's so, so much competition.

So you look at it and go well, we're not getting the, the best pick of the players, far from it.

If I'm running the same program as everyone else, why are we going to produce professional footballers?

So I looked at where can we try and be different.

So I guess from my own experiences I wanted to develop two footed players.

I thought it might give us an edge.

Also the injury prevention thing was in there and I thought if we produced at the time I had nerd of antifragility.

So at the time I thought if we produce the most robust, resilient players, mentally strong players, that could give us an edge.

So, you know, it didn't mean we didn't do tactical work, of course we did, but they were our focus.

So we had a huge focus on the technical and a huge focus on the social site.

So to give you an example of raised eyebrows, I got all the players to wear a different color sock on their weaker foot, right?

So their aim was to try and earn the right to have the same color socks.

So again, raised eyebrows from everyone, parents, coaches, coaches didn't like it because straight away they thought, well, we're going to lose football matches because the opposite position are going to keep showing us on their weaker foot.

So there we go back to the hiccups and failure and I'm like, okay.

So I look at that and go, great.

They look at that and just go, well, we're going to lose.

And I go, no, we won't.

Because the players will realize the lack of success because they are.

Your job is to support them.

Your job is to encourage them to go and practice more.

And then when we get to the stage where they show them on their weaker foot and they come inside and they're curling one in the top corner or making passes and there's your failure.

So you've got to go through the hiccups, lots of them, but the failure will come out if you don't just stay the same.

So.

And we had so much success with that.

Players who could go both ways.

It's great.

I remember, you know, kids scoring goals at under 12, running off to their parents like holding their foot up, pointing to their.

But like we're full of pride, right?

So we talk about.

But people just see that, that they wouldn't have seen all the practice, all the times he's missed, can't do it, probably getting a bit upset.

Oh, you know, and then you get that wonderful moment and then they want to do it more and more.

So there was that the player led games was another one around the social psych.

So under 18 level, youth team level.

I actually sent a team on their own.

No coaches just went with a physio.

So they took a game completely on this by theirselves.

And yeah, loads of raised eyebrows.

People telling me, don't do it, it could go wrong.

But.

But it wasn't a gimmick, Simon.

We had loads of processes behind that.

So it wasn't just one day.

I went, you know, we.

We had a big player ownership program anyway.

And then one year I just thought, I'm going to ramp it up.

But I knew I could.

Yeah, I knew they were ready.

I knew that if it didn't work out, it wouldn't have been a disaster.

There had just been loads of positive reflection in it and it was probably the best thing we ever did in terms of outcomes.

I mean, you probably know the national average, you know, you'd have 18 scholars every year.

Sorry, nine scholars every year at our level.

So you'd have first years and second years.

18.

So out of that group of two years when I did that, I think 11 or 12 of the 18 are playing professional football.

Oh, wow.

So if you look at the national average.

Yeah, so.

And I say that a lot when I work with coaches is if you're getting raised eyebrows doesn't mean it's definitely a good idea.

But I think if you come up with an idea in a room and everyone gets a bit nervous and scared, it could be a really, really good idea.

I.

If you walk into a room and you come up with an idea and everyone just goes, yeah, it's probably not going to do a lot.

Yeah, I think it is the ideas where people feel uncomfortable and have to really think what it's going to look like.

I think they are the ones that take you on to the next level.

And, you know, and it's not just me, my coaches, you know, Michael Hammer and Wimbledon used to come up with some great ideas that took us to the next level.

Yeah.

If you're doing the same things as everyone else, you're gonna get the same results.

Same results, right, exactly.

How does that impact you, though?

So obviously sometimes it worked well, sometimes maybe not so much.

Yeah.

How do you deal with that?

Is there any self doubt that comes into it when someone raises their eyebrow and questions something that you believe in that much?

I think that's one of my strengths.

If, if, because I'm, I'm very reflective.

I, I don't go down a, a rabbit hole with things.

Do you know what I mean?

I think I know if I'm going in the right direction with something and I think I'm good at having the ability to recognize this is just a hiccup, this is part of the process and recognizing that maybe, maybe you've gone too far.

So no, not.

It's self doubt on development processes.

I've had self doubt in other things like which I'm sure we go on to first team level.

You can have a bit of self doubt when results turn or not go your way.

But not, not that I can really think of development.

You will again maybe if you get questioned by someone who's played the game at a higher level or at a career.

But what I've been really fortunate in is I think I was at Wimbledon and I had these faults and I kind of went with them in terms of how to develop and how I think elite mindsets look and what is just football nonsense and football habitual behavior.

And what was really refreshing is when I went into Chelsea, which, you know, you go elite and I got to work with some real elite players, my kind of faults were confirmed in terms of how elite people do behave.

So that was quite nice, you know, because.

And there's no disrespect, but.

But at certain levels you will see certain kinds of behavior, which I'd say is a bit slovenly.

What are those behaviors like, the differences?

Just different in terms of how elite people look at their own development and.

And will challenge themselves and push themselves.

Do you know what I mean?

And quite happy to.

To have hiccups.

Yeah.

Because they know that they've got to.

To push this.

Does that make sense?

Whereas you look at others, it.

Yeah, it'd just be different, just a different outlook.

Yeah.

It makes you think of the Michael Jordan Netflix series they did and where he was speaking about how he pushed himself further than even the coaches pushed him.

He'd be there training by himself and he'd expect the same of his team, which in a lot of cases actually ended up in arguments and stuff.

But that's how driven he was.

That's how driven he was.

Yeah.

There's a book called Relentless.

I think it's Tim Grover, really good book.

And he breaks it down into.

I think it's callers, closers and cleaners.

That's the three types of people.

And a caller is someone who kind of turns up, goes through the motions a little bit, does enough.

A closer will do more if you tell them.

And a cleaner is like above the coach.

Like you're.

As a coach, you're trying to Keep up with them.

You're trying to keep them stimulated.

And we used to.

I used to get the lads, the youth team, to read different books every season and it would form part of our pre season.

So we use the All Blacks book legacy quite a lot around culture.

But then one year we use Relentless for that.

And it was just great.

It was a great little platform to talk about behavior.

You know, I mean, the lads would start saying it.

Okay, Rob, I know I've been.

I've been a closer.

And I said, now just think about.

Because all you want them to do is this is.

We're all human, right?

We.

We all go up and down, but you just want them to reflect on their behavior and recognize that, you know, that's not where they need to be, you know, so.

Yeah, and that's what I experienced when I went at Chelsea.

And, you know, I've worked with John Terry and you get to speak to people like Carlo Cudicini, Claude McAlele and you realize their mentality in terms of how they push themselves, you know, and.

It'S that self awareness, I suppose, as well.

A lot of people potentially get to a level where they're playing a good level and think that they're as good as they can be or think they've made it.

Yeah.

And just rest on that.

And then you see them start to fall away rather than those people who.

And I suppose there's a.

Which is the balance with it because they may never.

They may be that person that's never been present and they get to the end of their career and go, I was so focused on being better every day that I didn't actually enjoy the moments.

Yeah, no, I agree.

And you go back to Roger Federer.

I think he had a slightly different mentality.

I think he's probably prolonged his success because of his mentality by another four or five years because he.

You know, I've watched programs on where he almost not completely reinvented himself, but to stay with the pace, he had to make changes, you know, to training regimes, what he did to keep up to that pace.

And that's what the best do.

Right.

You know, you could.

James Milner.

I mean, phenomenal.

To keep playing at the same level.

I mean, phenomenal.

And they're the things that fascinate me.

And I just feel that if I don't look at those people and aim with the players I'm working with for that, then I'm doing a massive disservice.

And if I don't get cause there are a Lot of people go, ah, they are what they are.

You can't change them.

You get a lot of that.

Lads come in and they go, you can't change them now they're 14, they are what they are.

And it's tough.

Don't get me wrong, it's not easy because I look at myself as a person.

I'm very different to my brother, but there's a seven year gap between us.

But I look at things he had to experience as a young person compared to me and who was influential on my life, including him.

He hid me from stuff, you know what I mean?

And he knows we're very different.

But I can look and go, I can see why I'm a risk taker.

And he isn't so much like he's been incredible, massive part of my career and we talk about that and he's gone, oh, sometimes I wish I could be like you.

But I know the things he had to have as a young kid, kid growing up has made him a little bit different.

Yeah.

So I think as a coach you have to try and be.

You have to create an environment where you're there overriding.

How can I express it?

You're a bigger influence than anything else that's going on around them.

Because, because there's a lot going on.

You know, parents information over growing up, school, you know, friendship groups, all that kind of stuff.

And I think you have to try and be the biggest influence on them and you have to work with the parents on that as well that.

You know, those hours you get with them, they're.

They're fully in and they fully get it.

And they go, no, this is, you know, this academy and these people want the very, very best for me.

And you become the biggest influence in their life in that respect.

I just want to look at your time at Wimbledon.

So you spent the longest amount of time there as a Coach.

Was it 18 years you were there for?

I think, I think 18 and a half, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So you, you sort of coached through the youth setup, ended up coaching the first team for a time.

What was it like leaving the club after that long being there?

Tough.

Yeah.

Especially the way it ended.

Yeah.

I've had two, you know, in my career, football then through to when I worked out of football, having my own business with my wife.

I'd say emotionally that was the toughest time.

Cause I loved the club so badly.

So, yeah, emotionally that was tough.

If burn, which we go onto mentally was the toughest.

But yeah, because I'd been there so Long, I'd like to believe.

Well, I had real success there, you know, the academy, we were the Most Prolific Cat 3.

We'd gone from nothing to Most Prolific Cat 3 Academy in the country.

And then I stepped in as interim manager on the back of them.

They'd lost 11 games.

I think their goal difference was something like -24, 25 in 11 games.

So they were in a bad place.

And I had such a connection with most of the fans.

They didn't actually want me to step in.

Not in a bad way.

They just went, look, it's the worst squad we've ever had.

They're going down.

Just let them go down because otherwise you're going to get the sack, then we won't have you in the academy.

And I was kind of like, I don't know, I just thought, no, I've got to try and keep us up.

You're a risk taker.

Yeah, yeah, risk taker again.

I thought, well, no, I don't want us to just go down, you know.

So I went in interim and things changed.

You know, I think we lost five of the last 21 after 11 straight defeats.

Our goal difference in those 21 was a plus at the time.

It's been beaten now this season.

But at that point, well, saying that over a long spell, I don't know.

But over those 21 games, it was the most points per game.

And yeah, we went, you know, we won 5, 1, 4 0.

We're beating Ipswich like 3 0.

And things went unbelievably well.

And so.

And I'd never felt so confident in my life.

It felt like everything I was doing was going right, change this team.

I had no transfer window because I took over at the end of January.

So it was exactly the same players.

And yeah, it was a great feeling.

And I felt really comfortable being the first team head coach because I hadn't really thought about doing it.

And then the second year there was changes made that financially the club were, you know, were in trouble.

And then they said they took.

So they took money off the budget.

If I'm honest, my agent wanted me to leave.

He said, like, you know, your stock's high now, you need to go.

I can get you triple the budget.

And I was like, no, this is my club.

Yeah.

And so you make those decisions to stay.

And then I think 10 games in, we're sitting just outside the playoffs.

We got lowest budget in the league, youngest squad in the country.

There was things that happened that were out of my control in terms of the squad depth.

But, yeah, 10 gate was sitting outside the playoffs and they just done a feature on me in the EFL show.

And again, my agents come to me.

Now you really have to go like, you're stuck.

I could probably get you a job in the championship right now.

You know, the football that you're playing.

But again, it was my club.

And he said, like, you know, they let you down.

At some point, I'm going, well, that's not going to happen.

You know, this isn't going.

And unfortunately, there was a real.

There was a turn.

We ended up.

We were almost a victim of our own success.

We sold a player that had never been sold.

That had a dramatic effect.

At the same time, we had about four or five injuries and then the results took a dip.

And the wins become draws, draws become losses, and we couldn't buy a win.

And it was mentally tough.

But I still maintain, if anyone was going to get them out of it at that time, it was me, because they made the change and nothing changed.

If anything, it got worse.

I knew I still had the players, but, yeah, I remember packing up my desk after 18 and a half years and walking out the building thinking, I'm not coming back here.

That was beyond tough.

Beyond tough.

And, yeah, so I was really fortunate that Chelsea come knocking quite quickly.

So I've been in that respect.

Fortunately, I've gone from a club I fell in love with to the club that I loved as a kid.

So that was a real blessing.

But, yeah, no walking.

I've never felt like I felt that day walking out that door, you know, and it was.

It was.

It was incredibly tough.

Yeah.

You say there was times in there.

So, like, when you first took the role that people were telling you not to, because you're part of this club from the ground up, essentially, your agent's telling you, maybe this is the time to move on.

Do you ever look back at those times with any regret for not doing those things?

Or do you.

Are you happy with how it played out?

No, because who knows?

Yeah, I could have moved on and who knows, things could be great.

Bigger budget, you know, because I. I proved when I went with Chelsea, I took them from near relegation to title channels and most debuts they'd ever had.

So I'd never had that opportunity to work with bigger budgets.

So you don't know.

But no regrets at all.

Yeah.

Because I know who I am as a person.

I know what's important to me.

And I can honestly say this, that if I'd gone at that point and went to A club with bigger budget and had success, I still would have felt that I was letting the Wimbledon fans down.

And those 18 years of relationships I built.

And don't get me wrong, when results turned and we couldn't win, you get fans who don't want to look at the narrative of what's happened and they come for you and they're having a go at you and it can be hurtful, but I don't care about that.

I love the club.

There's people there that I've got so much respect for and for me as a person to.

And this is the first time I've really spoke about this, you know, so when I left and there were certain things, or when I got sacked, there were things that obviously are not happy, but I would never air anything in public because again, at the time people were trying certain things.

The club had to raise money, which we did.

That was a thing that never sold a non academy player until I was manager, ever.

So they'd never made any money from sales, they'd only ever sold academy players.

And in the period I was there and just after, because of players I brought in, they did like nearly 4 million pound, which for a club of their size was massive.

So.

But no, I don't.

Weirdly, I don't regret it because I was true to myself, true to what I believe in.

Yeah.

And, you know, success and money doesn't.

Doesn't ever override how you are as a person and what you believe in.

Yeah, I agree.

And you sort of mentioned about the hurtful maybe comments and stuff that come your way from the outside looking in.

Yeah.

Football is super volatile.

Things start to go even semi bad.

Yeah.

The media's on people, the fans are on people, Social media is exploding.

What's it like being on the receiving end of that?

Yeah, I mean, it's.

I mean, on the whole, I've got to say, Wimbledon fans were great, but, you know, you hear things.

I don't do social media anyway.

But you've kind of.

You've got the fans coming up to you.

Don't go on Facebook and it's like, well, don't tell me that.

Yeah, don't press the big red button.

Yeah, don't do it.

You know, and it's.

So.

I tried to avoid it, but then, you know, the game before I got sat there was booing and that was awful to feel that.

Yeah.

It's not nice and it's not about wanting to be popular.

It's just more the fact that you want to be A success for them.

And then you look at the times when it was great, you look back and go, four months ago we were beating Oxford and the crowd's rocking and you know, and you kind of, it's.

You want to give enjoyment to them.

So it's not easy, but it's not that.

I mean, that's part and parcel with the game anyway.

And I think if you're not, not willing to accept that, there's no point doing it.

It's more.

The things that are more upsetting is when people around you possibly don't take accountability.

That's more upsetting like the fans and whatever you just got.

Even though I don't understand it, not about me, I don't really care what they say to me, but in terms of the players, I don't get the negativity towards players because you want high performance and crucifying players.

I don't get as a fan, me, I don't really, I don't care.

But I think it's more in terms of when things, you've got the hiccups, which is when you've got to come stronger together.

And I clearly knew my role and the remits I was put under.

And then it's the accountability around you that can hurt.

You know, people go into self preservation around you.

That's more hurtful than anything a fan can say because, you know, that's just emotion.

Yeah.

Do you think there's a culture of that sort of going into that self preservation mode when things don't go well?

Obviously you are quite true to your like, loyalties to the club, to your own values.

Yeah.

Are there some people that maybe aren't as much that way inclined?

And I think so.

And you can understand it because it's a tough place to have a career.

But, but I think if, if, if you're a person of standards and that someone will always take you on and you get seen through in the end.

And yeah, you do see it happen, you know, and I get it.

People have got mortgages to pay and whatever.

I get it.

It's not easy, but whatever.

One day when I stop coaching or whatever, you know, I think you'd be our push to find someone who turned around and go, robbo, turn me over.

Or he did that to me.

And that fundamentally that means more than, than anything when you're going through a.

Tough time as a coach or even, I suppose as players for you personally, when those comments are being made, people are talking about what's happening.

How do you separate Mark the human being from Mark the football manager.

And do you separate it?

I suppose, yeah, you got to.

Because fundamentally you've got to keep, keep the player's energy high.

As I said, if the comments are going to hurt you that much, you shouldn't be doing the job.

So you've got to try and not take it into your home life, which is the toughest thing for anyone to do.

That is the difficult.

And you've got to try and keep your battery high and your energy high.

And that's the hardest thing to do.

And I think that comes from the people around you.

You've got to have good people around you, loyal people who help you do that.

And then if you do that, I believe if you carry on working together, you can turn situations around.

But you've almost got to get stronger during the hard times.

And that's what you don't see enough of.

You see becomes dysfunctional and broken.

But you've got to come together more because that's when the players need it as well.

Especially in the case road.

At Wimbledon we had the youngest squad in all four divisions anyway.

So when they sell one of them most experienced players and then two, three of the others get injured, you then just got a bunch of lads on the pitch who are experienced something they've never experienced.

They're not winning football matches.

They've gone from winning football matches to not winning football matches.

And you're only going to find solutions to that if you all come together.

If everyone starts going in a bit of self preservation.

And that's the thing, that's the stuff that's disappointing because my mindset is, come on, let's just sit down and talk through this and let's find a way out of this because everyone goes through those blips, you know, Pep Guardiola last year won one game in 14.

If I said to you at the start of the season, Pep Guardiola is going to win one game in Fulton, we'd laugh, you know, if we were betting people, how much odds would you get?

But he lost key player in Rodri and that can have a, you know, the tipping point between winning and losing and drawing football is tiny.

And that tipping point can sometimes be just one or two players, you know, and.

But again, he's got so much money in the bank in terms of our brick, you know, you get that time and to go again.

You're seeing it now with Liverpool, aren't you?

You know, he began all through that noise and it's how you cut through that noise in football.

But you're certainly not going to cut through the noise if you just leave each other alienated.

You got to come in.

It goes with your momentum as well, doesn't it?

Like the momentum.

If things are going well, the fans are happy, it's buzzing.

At a game when things aren't going well, it's quiet, that the players probably take that on and managers take that on.

And you'd love to think, you know, if you could change the mindset, the fans.

The same is again when it's hard.

You've got a lot more chance getting out of this if you all turn up and just completely get behind your team.

Yeah.

But, you know, things have changed a little bit in life again.

We've, you know, we've.

There's a lot more entitlement now across the board, in.

In everyone, you know.

Do you think just on that fans?

Because I've been to many of.

Well, a few Tottenham games.

Yeah, in the new stadium.

Massive, massive stadium.

But the price of tickets and I suppose this is across the board, especially at the top level of football anyway.

Yeah.

Do you think we've priced out the real fans?

Is that part of where atmospheres have died a bit or.

Yeah, possibly.

I mean, I think there's been good and bad because you never want to go back to the days of what we had before when, you know, football, of violence and that.

You want the passion, you want the tribal, that tribal thing, but you certainly don't want to ever go back to that.

So, you know, I know it's still about a little bit, but we've lost that.

But there's definitely is a little bit of voyeurism now.

There's not fans living in the present.

You know, I went to a game the other day and someone was just filming the whole game and in the end I just said very politely, you know, come on, try and try and take it in, you know, and they put it's different world, but it was quite frustrating because you got to phone in front of you the whole game.

So, yeah, I do think there's that voyeurism, which I don't think's healthy, you know, because it's such a fantastic game in it and you want to be present, living in the moment, getting excited.

You know, some people say, var, you've lost that a little bit because you score a goal and you just want to go crazy for that.

30, 40 seconds and first thing you do now is look and see, is it offside, was there.

So, you know, that Living in the present thing has gone.

But, yeah, I think obviously the.

I don't want to get too deep on the whole pricing thing, but, yeah, I think it has priced people out the game, which is a shame.

How that's ever going to change, I don't know.

You know, you're talking about massive, massive changes there because obviously players are on such extreme money, you know, although the revenue from the gates is only a small proportion of revenue coming into these clubs.

So.

So, yeah, yeah, I haven't got the answers on that one.

No doubt anyone does, to be fair.

Just jumping back to the thing you said before.

So while we were talking about that separating the human being from the manager and you said about not taking things home, are there any practices that you had that helped you make that sort of physical barrier from home and work?

Wimbledon.

I just.

My wife's fantastic, by the way, so I've got great support.

She's incredible, which you need, and anyone in football will tell you that you need that support.

So she's brilliant.

Such like, really positive person, like, everything happens for a reason type person, you know, so.

And Wynwood.

And I was proud of myself because there was still a little gap before the Chelsea thing come about and.

But I just got myself straight out there.

Not in terms of going back to work, because I mostly wasn't ready straight away, but I just went out and visited people.

I was lucky.

I had certain people reach out to me as well and said, look, come in.

And I went into the clubs and I went out to America as well, went out and visited someone out there.

So I just got myself out there with some positive people, just got myself out.

So I wasn't.

You know, you still got those moments you go to bed and you're thinking about that.

But, yeah, I was.

I was.

For the amount of pain I was feeling, I was pleased with how I dealt with it.

Burton was different, which I'm sure we move on to.

I. I actually had to get a little bit of help with that one.

Yeah, well, let's touch on that, because listening to your previous podcast, you mentioned that it was the thing in your life that you've learned the most from, or the.

At least through football coaching.

Just expand on that a bit.

What was it that you learned from it?

What were the tough points?

Yeah, well, I guess one, things were going great at Chelsea, so I had no reason to go.

You know, a lot of people thought I was mad because you're at the.

You're at the club you supported, you've had Two really, really good years.

Broken records.

Got an opportunity to jointly take the first team when one of the managers got sacked, which was fantastic.

So, yeah, things were going great.

But they approached me and I said no like three times initially because I knew the project was signing 23, they were going to sign 23 new players.

Never been done in football history, ever.

I think only three or four had played at the level, at League one level.

But they kept coming back and sort of presented to me and you go back to being a risk taker and it was going to be a five year project.

And I got to the point where I just thought, yeah, come on, why not?

You know, the tipping point was I met the old owner, right, who's a lovely man, he's like 80, but he's got the mentality of a 30 year old, you know, and obviously he was selling the club club and he'd, he'd built it and run it as a community club.

So kind of reminded me of Wimbledon a bit.

Yeah.

So I'm an emotional person.

Probably that side of me kicked in.

Yeah, probably a little bit of knew I could do it and I did.

That success at Wimbledon that then turned.

So probably a bit of proving myself, if I'm honest.

But I was really concerned about the amount of signings and because recruitment's not my thing.

I never looked after the recruitment at Wimbledon because I, I haven't got that knowledge.

I can certainly spot a player, but because I've worked in development 95% of my career, I couldn't tell you the best.

National League, League two, League one player.

I haven't got that knowledge.

So I was really nervous about the recruiting of 23 players, but they said it was a five year project, there was going to be time, there was this.

There was loads of things which I don't really want to go into, but there was lots of things.

And yeah, yeah, when.

So in the end I thought, come on, let's do it.

And when things manifest this in a different way, I said, now you're going back to the people thing and feeding light.

You know, you've made a massive decision in your career and bought into something that you think's gonna look a certain way and when it's not, it goes back to that, well, why aren't we just sitting down and having intelligent conversations and why aren't people holding their hands up possibly and just going, look, okay, maybe this and at the same time me, you know, and those conversations didn't manifest themselves in the way that I felt they Should.

So, yeah, when that come to an end.

And again, nothing changed after I left until they changed the remits completely.

And even now, you know, I think out of the 23 they signed, I think there's four remaining.

So it's not about being proven.

Right.

But how long ago was that?

So that would have been, you know, two, three, start of.

No, start of last season.

Oh, wow.

So they've all got.

Yeah, there's four left and it's not.

I get no.

I get no.

What's the word?

I get no reward out of that, you know, because the players were great.

It was just obviously things take time, right.

You get 11 games.

And there were certain elements I thought was missing within the squad.

So that was.

Was mentally tough because obviously I'd left a job to.

To take up this five year project.

It moved away from home and all sorts of various things, which I was more than happy to do.

So when, you know, people aren't fulfilling their end of the bargain and people, you know, very easy to look football go, you haven't won in 11 games what you expect, but no one looks at the circumstances behind it.

And I actually believe when I look at it now and I go through the process, I think it's some of my best work.

When I look at the football we played in the early games, from what they were, what my remits were, the football they played, how close we were to getting wins and gelling 23 players.

And I think we had something like 10 injuries because of things that should have happened that didn't.

You know, I look at it now and I'm going, well, someone to come in and do that as well as try and restructure a whole football club.

It was tough, but it took an awful lot of time for me to get from there to looking and going, no, you did some of your very best work there because the remit's completely changed now in terms of my remit, it all looks very, very different.

But that was hard to get and I kind of got outside help to help me with that.

Yeah.

And looking at the rest of your career, you obviously, you're at Wimbledon, you said it was quite a quick turnaround between that and Chelsea and then you went straight to Burton, Right?

Yeah.

So leaving Burton after that short amount of time, where was your mindset around potential?

Now not having that role for a time, it was.

It's lighting up a bit because we're getting a bit different, so.

But I remember my wife sitting there going, everything happens for a reason.

Remember that and I did laugh at that point.

And I was sitting there, you know, because I've all, I'm a London boy, always lived in London, I'm sitting in.

And I said to her, come on in, kid, tell me, like every is a reason, tell me this one.

And she was like, I don't know yet.

She goes, I'm not sure, but I'm sure it will happen.

So, you know, because I was sitting there thinking, feeling a bit sorry for myself and then literally the, the lma, which is who looks after managers, they always send you for health checks after, after, if you come out of a job, check stress and all that.

So I went for my health check, everything was good.

But I had a lump in my jaw for 20 odd years.

Basically I've noticed it got bigger, noticed my jaw had moved and I was getting this clunking.

So I just brought it up, I said, look, I don't know if you can do anything, but I've got a, got, you know, this constant clunking.

I've noticed the lumps got bigger and they went, no, of course we'll check it out.

So they sent me off to Harley street, get it checked out.

Anyway, I had a 4 centimeter growth in major and it was benign, but I fractured my jaw when I was younger and the trauma, apparently it caused this growth anyway, it was like literally millimeters away from severing my nerve and I would have been paralyzed down one side of the face.

Oh, wow.

So like, I laugh now, but literally within two weeks I've, I've gone in, I've had like, like sort of 58 stitches, like cut right, opened it up.

I'm still, I'm still numb now around this side.

Oh, wow.

And they took it out.

But you look at it and you go, well, if things had gone well at Burton, I literally could have woke up one morning, bang.

Yeah.

Paralyzed.

And it would have been irreversible.

So, you know, in terms of whether I've been out of co chair again, so it's quite, quite weird.

So, yeah, so I had, I had that, that done.

So at that point, that was quite a lot to take in because I'd been mouth wide closed for about six, seven weeks.

I couldn't, I was, I was just on liquids.

So, so I thought, no, this, you know, this is a time now to just get everything straight in your head.

So it was, it was quite, it was quite a lot to take in.

Yeah.

And I feel brilliant, I feel the best I've ever been.

But, but I did get some.

Yeah, I've got some outside help again, through pure.

And we talk about being open and want to have a growth mindset.

So many things that have happened in my career has been because I always answer people back in terms of if someone comes to me, I've got a policy in my own head that I always reply, even if I can't do anything from.

I'll never not reply to people, blah, blah, blah.

And yeah, someone I knew because of that just contacted me, a couple of ladies who had worked in NHS for years and years around psychology and some real success with individual sportsmen.

And I'd always looked at individual sportsmen in my coaching because the way I looked at that football, as I said to you, is you're not handing over 11 players, you're just handing over individuals.

So they said, like, would you reckon football, would they be open to this?

Like, we've had some great, done some great work.

And I said, well, football's very habitual, I don't know what angle.

And I said, but I'll tell you what, I'm struggling a bit with my own faults at the moment.

George, fancy doing some work with me?

You know, again, something I would never have done.

Unbelievable, Simon, Unbelievable.

Yeah, just got me thinking so different, like real turning point.

And I think, well, again, if I hadn't been open minded to other people, this wouldn't have come my way.

No.

And I would, I'm sure would have found a way.

But she turned my thought processes around within four to six weeks.

Brilliant.

Like, brilliant.

And it was something that, again, something I wouldn't have gone down a route I wouldn't have gone down.

But yeah, it was so powerful.

It's great.

Yeah.

Something that we hear more and more about, especially say, men that need to talk and need to get what's in here out and get things in their mind and like lay them out, whether that's journaling, speaking about it, but we still don't.

Or when we do, sometimes we don't listen the best.

We don't actually hear what people are saying and what their issues are.

Sometimes they can be minimized or.

And it's so important to actually take that person's issues at face value and understand that to them, however small it may seem to us, yeah, it can be the biggest thing in their life.

No, it can.

And what.

And what this person did as well, which was something that I.

She talked about unlocking stuff that inhibited you from way back.

So, you know, because her big thing with football, she goes, you everyone Seems to be working towards targets and working towards.

Towards this.

And then when they don't have success, it's like, you know, she said, but.

But they kind of.

They always put the lack of success down to your state of mind.

Now she goes, they don't seem to look and go, there might be something further back that's hindering you.

And that's what fascinated me because.

And I was like, okay, so it was a process she went through with me and it's unlocked stuff from way back when I was a kid.

And this is why I feel better than ever, you know, because I think, blimey, there's stuff there that might have even been hindering me before, you know, so I feel more kind of empowered than I've ever felt.

So.

And again, it's, you know, it's.

But being open to trying that.

And you do.

And, you know, you look at certain players where their careers go off on a tangent and they never get back.

And you often look and go, well, maybe it's not just the here and now, maybe there's something a little bit deeper that they needed help on.

Did that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

And I just want to say I appreciate you talking about it openly as well, because I think that's a massive part of it is having people speak about these things who have gone through it and to encourage other people to.

I know that the Premier League is now doing a tackling suicide campaign within to try and hit especially men where men go to football games.

Yeah.

And yeah, as working as a firefighter, it's a massive thing that we see.

And all emergency services, military personnel.

Yeah.

And footballers in that is that sort of ladish mindset.

Brave.

Don't talk about it, but actually to see how much it's helped in actually quite a short time, relatively.

Yeah.

To how long you've been going through like this career.

It's really.

Yeah, it's really important to talk about.

No, it's.

I think it's massive and it's.

It's.

Yeah, I think you got, you've.

You've got to be open to it.

Life's not easy.

Right.

Any.

Whatever you're doing.

And we do.

We put on this big facade and we all want to be winners and we all want success and we all want to be content and whatever.

But, you know, there's a lot of stuff sometimes going on at different periods and I think, you know, I think it's why it's important when we talk about connections and we talk about.

About leadership and whatever you know, those connections have got to be deeper if you really want to have, I believe, impact on individuals.

You know, just touching back on that time at Burton, looking back on it now, after everything we've just spoken about, what.

How would you compare beforehand what you thought it would be to looking back at what it actually was, what were the main differences?

Yeah, I mean, it couldn't have been more different.

But.

But what I want to say as well is I don't, I don't feel any.

What's the word, viciousness to.

Or things like that.

You know, I don't think people would went, oh, you know, let's employ Robbo, let's chase him, we want him.

You know, we're headhunting him.

And then what we do, we're making, we destroy his life.

You know, it's not about that, it's just about how you, you run something that if you want sustainable success and processing them.

You know, my personal opinion is they just got loads wrong.

And I'd like to think now they're sitting there realizing they got loads wrong.

And, and if you said to me, well, what did you get wrong?

I've learned that I'm very trusting.

And I think if you said to me, what's one of your biggest qualities?

I do believe that I trust people and I buy into people and I throw myself into things.

What I've learned is, is you do put in, you know, especially in football, you need some self preservation.

And I possibly haven't had that.

Like at Wimbledon, I had no self preservation, but I don't want to change, if that makes sense, you know, like, I should have asked better questions.

If I'd.

What I've learned is if I'd asked better questions going into Burton, red flags would have popped up all over the place and I probably wouldn't have taken the job.

That's my biggest learning from it, is that if you ask the right question and I've done a dissertation on this, but how can I put.

Because I don't want to sound holier than now here, but I've done a dissertation to help young coaches.

Yeah, not me, because if I'm honest, I'll probably go and make the same mistake again because it's who I am.

If I'm sitting across someone and I buy into them, I buy into them.

So, you know, I don't want to live my life cynical and always mistrusting people, you know, and, you know, we are.

Because fundamentally I've been coaching 25 years, I've had said seven months of what you would say, not a great experience.

The rest has been a fantastic journey.

Yeah.

So I don't want to change.

You know, people go, yeah, you've got to do this and go, yeah, okay, maybe next time I will ask some deeper questions.

But I'm not going to change if I'm sitting across someone I trust, I'm going to trust them.

And if they let me down, they let you down.

You know what I mean?

So the dissertation I wrote was to help the next younger coach is around recognizing the difference between a job offer and a job opportunity and hopefully giving them some key areas that they need to look at that might actually go all because you only get so many chances in football, especially if you want to be a head coach or a manager.

So it was more for the next generation of young coaches to try and give them some pointers around.

These are the areas you really need to dig deep in a positive way.

But find out because there might be some things there where you go.

Because listen, I don't think you ever get the perfect job in football.

You don't, but you need to make sure the odds are loaded in your favor enough to give you a chance of having success.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's so important to breed that curiosity as well.

And to ask questions, whether that's in football or outside of football is be curious.

And if you are like someone like yourself who trusts people, maybe, maybe too quickly.

But don't be disheartened by that because you see it a lot where people fall, fall in love with someone, say in a relationship and they get let down and then they just say, I'll never trust again.

Exactly.

Who wants to live their life like that?

Yeah.

It's only going to cause more pain.

Pain.

Yeah.

Going forward.

Whereas if you deal with that scenario as that scenario.

Yeah.

And then move on and don't get wrong.

I'm not saying remain totally naive.

That's probably not healthy.

But you know what I'm saying, If, if you're, if you're of a certain mindset and, and you like going for things and whatever you, you want, who, who wants that?

Just because you experience someone where possibly their, their moral compass weren't quite the same as yours, it's not worth it.

I tell my boss, Neil Barth at Chelsea had a brilliant thing which as coaches we all steal things.

Right.

And he had a high performing box at Chelsea and then he had the four other boxes.

So he had spectator, victim and cynic and then he had high performance box and sort of the high performance box was full of high energy behaviors and the other boxes were low energy behaviors.

And it had what kind of behaviors they were.

But it was great, was there as you walked into work.

And it's almost like a mirror, you know, you can't have a little look in that because we're all capable, right?

And, and, and, and I'm doing some work with a young player at the moment just as a favor and he's only 15.

And we're just talking about like what box you're sitting in.

And it's a brilliant tool because he said, if I'm honest, I'm sitting in the spectator box a little bit because he's having some injuries and stuff.

And I said, so we've talked about.

I said, but first of all is going, that's natural, it's natural.

So first of all, don't feel, you know, beat yourself up about it.

But how can we get you into this?

Because at the moment he's going, well, if I'm not playing football, how can I sit in the high performance box?

I'm not playing football, I'm injured.

So it's kind of talking to him going, yes, you can.

There are other ways.

The way you're treating people, the way you're engaging with your coach, the way you're working on your rehab.

Do you know what I mean?

All those things.

And so getting him to think differently, you know, and I use me as example.

I said, I don't think I've ever really sat in the spectator box because it's not really my thing.

I said, but after my Burton experience, I sat in the victim box for a while and probably a little bit cynical as well.

I floated in and out of there.

I said, but the key is I've had to get myself back into that high energy, high performance box.

And I think again, it's recognizing you will pop out now and again.

We're human beings, right.

We're emotional beings.

And but it's.

How do you get.

You keep getting yourself back in there, you know, that's what's key.

Yeah.

And it's a lovely, like, I love those sort of visualization things where like you said, it's like a mirror, you can look at it and go, right, that's where I am.

Yeah.

What do I need to do to get.

What do I need to do?

So this quote, again, I think I saw you post it.

I'm not sure people will forget what you said.

People will forget what you did.

People won't forget how you Made them feel.

Yeah.

What does that mean to you?

I just.

I just think it's.

That's true.

You know, I think I just think of the people who've had the biggest impact on me.

I think it's how you make them feel.

It just as simple as that, really.

And how you make them feel inside, how you inspire them.

So, you know, yeah, I want to be the best.

Best coach I can be.

I want to be tactically excellent.

I want all those things.

But.

But fundamentally, I want people that are around me to feel fantastic and feel inspired and feel like super people, that they can achieve anything.

And it's.

What does that look like?

And I've got key things in my head in terms of what that looks like, in terms of how you engage with people, how you connect with people.

Because I think it's good we talk about this stuff now, but it is a bit overkill, and I think there's a lot more talking and not enough action around it.

You know, I've been on seminars where we talk about cultures and we talk about this, and you sit in this seminar and you get these guest speakers, and you go, right, great.

You feel quite inspired, and then you walk out and everyone gets on their phones.

No one even talks to each other.

Or someone's talking to you and they're looking over your shoulder for the next more important person to speak to, you know, or you're having a conversation, their phone goes off, and they look in their phone, and people don't realize, like, you know, if.

If you're talking to me and you're thinking, oh, Robbo's all right, isn't I?

And then all of a sudden, I start glancing down at my phone.

You're disconnected.

Yeah.

Your brain's telling you that this fella's not all in with me.

Yeah.

You know, turn the bloody thing off.

Put it away and be with that person.

Yeah.

You know, and I see a lot of it.

See a lot of talk and not a lot of action.

And, you know, and, you know, there's all manner of things, but.

And.

And, yeah, that's it.

And I think you need to make you.

You want the very.

The very best from.

If you do.

Yeah.

Brilliant.

Mark.

The way I like to finish my episodes is to ask the guest yourself to leave a question for the listener.

So I like listening to podcasts and going away and having conversations with other people based on what I've been listening to.

Yeah.

So if you could give someone a question to go away from this episode with.

With and ask A family member, a stranger, a friend, whoever it is, what question would that be?

Blimey, question.

Okay.

Can it be like a self question to the self?

Yeah.

Okay, so I would go, I think if, if you wake up in the morning and you go, or at the end of the day you go, oh, did I have a positive impact on today day?

And what did that look like?

I think if we all did that, I think we'd find ourselves all in a bit of a better place.

Yeah.

And it don't have to be anything big, by the way.

I think we always look at things.

When you start talking about this stuff, it has to be grand gestures and it don't.

But I think if we all woke up every day and went, who am I going to have a positive impact on today and how am I going to do it?

And it might be the most, smallest thing, thing, I think, all of a sudden, you know, because I feel, feel like everything's a little bit flat right now.

There's a lot of cynicism going on and you know, I mean, I think if we all woke up with that mindset, I think we, we might find things in a better place.

Yeah.

And it's a question you can ask to other people, I suppose, as well as.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you had a positive impact on today?

You know, I will talk to my girls about stuff like that.

Yeah.

And, and, and, and, and say things like that, you know, and that's interesting, really.

You know, I don't know if I'm digressing now because, you know, my girls are getting older and I look at them now and they're very different and I find this stuff fascinating because I'm like, same household, same mum and dad.

Yeah, but that's so different.

But I kind of, you know, this might just be interesting to listeners, but I look at their pathway.

So me and my wife opened a business and my eldest was four and the youngest was like just turning two.

So my eldest would have been a lot more aware of what we were doing as a business.

She's still very young, but like we were so much going on, quite a bit of stress, blah, blah, blah.

And she would have, I think she would have felt it, seen it, do you know what I mean?

Like building a business, things going wrong, blah, blah, blah, a few rows, that kind of stuff.

But getting through it.

And, and I look, and we're talking the other day and they're very different, both wonderful in their own ways.

But my eldest has just opened her own business.

Oh, wow.

And yet my Youngest would never open her own business, but she's going to be successful in her own way.

But you just.

So you look at that when we talk about, you know, people go to you, oh, you can't change behavior or whatever, but how fundamental the environments are.

So I believe as a 5, 6 year old, she would have witnessed that and me and her mum, the kind of stuff we were going through, but overcoming it and probably was more present when we were having conversations, 8 o' clock at night because she.

Whereas the little one was in bed.

Do you know what I mean?

Things like that.

Yeah.

And I'm looking at her, how she's coping with opening this business and phenomenal.

And I thought, and I laughed and my wife said, well, where do you think she's got that from?

Whereas my younger one is going down a different pathway.

And to her she's like, oh, no, that's not for me, me.

But do you know what I mean?

And yeah, it's just.

Yeah.

So I just think as.

They'll think about that as well.

You're having such an impact without even realizing.

Yeah.

You know.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Mark, thanks so much for coming on.

Really enjoyed it.

Pleasure.

No, I've really enjoyed.

It's been great.

If people want to keep up to date with what you're doing.

I mean, I know you said you don't have social media, but is there anywhere they can find you or.

No, not a business or not business.

No, not really.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My daughter's business.

Yeah.

Body by Lou.

She's opening.

Well, she's.

She's currently got it, but she's opening her own site in January in Vauxhall called Body by Lou.

So if you're.

If you're a woman and you're into fitness and she.

She combines step classes with dance.

I'm obviously biased, but I think it's incredible.

So she's built a community of women.

Yeah.

So it's really inspiring.

Yeah.

In terms of me.

Yeah, I know I've got.

Yeah, I've got.

I've got five or six options right now.

So I'm weighing up in my mind what's next.

But yeah, by January I should be back in and I, I can't.

I can't wait, wait.

Awesome.

Well, all the best for that.

When that comes to the listener.

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