Cats are settled by cool Sbragia – Reid

Jan 8 2009 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

ANDY Reid has revealed how Ricky Sbragia’s calmness has been the perfect antidote to Roy Keane’s intense and confrontational style of management.

Reid was one of the players to suffer from Keane’s heavy-handed man management at Sunderland and his unwillingness to communicate directly with players outside a matchday situation.

While the midfielder did not criticise his former manager and international team-mate – mindful of the positive things he also brought to the Sunderland team – he admitted he preferred working with a manager like Sbragia as the players were able to like as well as respect him.

Reid said: “No, he hasn’t changed his character at all. That was one of the first things he said to us, he said he wasn’t going to change just because he had become the manager. The hardest thing has been calling him Gaffer rather than Ricky.

“The one thing he is out of everything is very, very approachable, and you can speak to him. For me personally, that helps. I like having a manager that I can go and if have got something to say, I can say it to him, and if he has got something to say, then he has no problem saying it to me.

“I like to have an approachable manager and someone you can speak to. Before the game on Saturday against Bolton, he pulled me to one side and told me I wasn’t starting the game, and it was nice to have the situation explained as opposed to just being thrown into a situation.”

Although Sbragia’s appointment as permanent manager was a surprise, it was welcomed in the dressing room.

Reid insisted that the decision to give the manager an 18-month contract, rather than just a short-term one until the end of the season, was correct.

He said: “I think it was important to remove the uncertainty. Even when he was caretaker manager we weren’t sure what was going on, but this has got rid of that and we know where we stand now.

“You need that as a player. We know what the manager expects and what he is trying to do. Now we can start to look forward. He has brought a calmness to the dressing room.

“He’s a calm person and they are two very different management styles we’ve had so far this season. That’s not me saying one is better than the other, but that’s the way it is. The players have reacted well to Sbragia.”

While Sbragia may be a far more approachable character than the intense Keane, Reid also explained the Scot was no soft touch when it came to keeping the players in line. Reid added: “He has been very strict in a lot of ways. He has been careful not to let people take the mickey as maybe it would have been easy to do, especially when he was caretaker manager.

“He has clamped down on things on and off the pitch – he won’t accept people coming in late, and rightly so; he won’t accept people letting their standards drop in training, and the club duties we have to do off the field, he has made sure they are being done.”