Hearing about Tottenham's team-bonding trip to Marbella last week made me think about the similar methods I used as a manager to build team morale. While some things have changed from my day, the idea behind taking your players away to a new environment where they will benefit from spending a lot of time together has not. I wrote a few weeks ago about how Spurs boss Roberto de Zerbi needed time with his players on the training pitch after their poor start to the season, to bed them in and build a proper team.
He will have used their warm-weather camp in southern Spain to do more of that, getting to know what is almost a new squad of players. With De Zerbi being cut from Italian cloth, I am sure the players will have been working mornings and afternoons to drill in the manager's principles in respect to team shape and direction. But that's not the only purpose of taking them away.
De Zerbi will also have been able to monitor the different personalities within the group away from the grass. If the trip has worked then, as well as getting them ready to face Coventry on Monday night, I am sure he will now, for the first time, understand the strengths and weaknesses of each individual, on and off the field. A few eyebrows were raised about Spurs going away so early in the season but it makes perfect sense to me when you consider so many new players arrived there this summer, with several signings late in the transfer window.
When I was Stoke manager, I often took my teams away to Austria in our pre-season for the same reasons De Zerbi and Spurs have gone to Spain. Those trips were set up not only to test the players' fitness, but also to see how the group worked together. I have always believed in building a family togetherness within the dressing room, with a commitment from every player to the benefit of the team.
The extreme tests that we asked our players to do over that 10-day period brought out an inner determination to fulfil the tasks given them and, in my opinion, helped us through some tough times early on in our Premier League campaigns. Watching the lads slowly bond together on the training pitch and at meal times was great to see and I found out a lot about all of them, good and bad. Yes, I have to admit one or two players were short of the character we wanted and needed, but they didn't last long and left with no bad feelings on my side.
Today, whether it's pre-season or a winter break, most Premier League clubs who take their players away go first-class and enjoy great hotels, great facilities and wonderful food. Wherever the team bus goes, it is followed by an even bigger bus with all the non-playing staff on it. It is very different to my experiences in my early years as a player, when we would be taken to Blackpool for three days' pre-season training.
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