Interview with Hock in today's
Guardian :
https://www.theguardian.com/football/fo ... no-manager
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David Hockaday: ‘Cellino used to ring me at midnight, 1am, all sorts'
The former manager recalls his whirlwind 70 days at Leeds, including transfer frustrations and ‘a dysfunctional squad’
David Hockaday at South Gloucestershire and Stroud College on the outskirts of Bristol, where he is head of male football. Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/The Guardian
From a lavish stay in the Dolomites to 1am wake-up calls and dressing-downs at Elland Road courtesy of Massimo Cellino, there are so many bemusing and bewildering moments to reflect on that David Hockaday knows he could write a book. So much so that, after an hour, it feels as if we have barely scratched the surface about his wild, white-knuckle 70-day ride at Leeds United.
Infamously parachuted into one of the biggest jobs in the country almost five years ago on the back of three covert meetings with the then owner, the 61-year-old became the first victim of the madness under the previous regime at Leeds.
Other than his regret at failing to shore things up at Bradford, when Leeds were leading with eight minutes to play in his final game, he is immensely proud to have followed managers such as Don Revie. Listening to Hockaday, who since 2016 has been head of male football at South Gloucestershire and Stroud college (SGS) on the outskirts of Bristol, speak brutally about his six matches in charge is staggering; Hockaday believes he has greater resources – in terms of the staff – at SGS than he did at Leeds.
“I was going into Championship games blind – it was crazy,” he says. “I’ve seen [Marcelo] Bielsa going on about all this data, but we had nothing. We had just one match analyst, one strength and conditioning coach and it just felt unprofessional. I was thrown to the dogs, just scrambling to get information on the opposition by phoning up other managers who had played the teams. I went in at ground zero. There was virtually nothing.”
Hockaday recalls his squad looked at him as if to say “Who are you?” in their first team meeting, his previous job having been at Forest Green Rovers, and it was as big a mystery to him as to everybody else how he ended up at Leeds without applying for the job. He says he was wheeled out in front of the media before even signing a contract. “It was just surreal, so cloak-and-dagger,” Hockaday says. “I knew his record with managers [Cellino sacked 36 in 22 years at Cagliari] and I was thinking: ‘Does he want to get an Italian-based manager in and get somebody who knows the English game to support him as the first-team coach? Or does he want an under-23s coach to bring through players, which is really what I’m about.’
“But he said: ‘I want you to be my head coach.’ I said: ‘What, like your manager?’ And he said: ‘Yes, I want you to be my coach.’ I was like: ‘OK, interesting,’ and I was sort of playing poker. I said: ‘I can handle the coaching, that’s not a problem,’ but said: ‘There’s a few things we need to talk about.’ He said: ‘You can recommend players but I will have the final say.’ He said: ‘You pick the team, you train them and I don’t interfere with that,’ and, to be fair, he never ever did.”
Hockaday suggested several players but felt lumbered with a series of imports from Serie B. “He said: ‘Go and get me a young, unproven striker that will score goals and we can sell on,’” Hockaday explains. “I said: ‘Andre Gray.’ A few days later, he said: ‘No, I’ve spoken to him and his agent, he’s too much.’ I said: ‘From Luton to Leeds United, and he’s too much?’ Later into the season, he goes and gets [Mirco] Antenucci for millions of pounds.”
Hockaday says he was shut down after recommending Virgil van Dijk, then of Celtic, as well as Craig Cathcart and Mark Hudson as preferred centre-back options. A move for Conor Coady, available on a free, never made it past Cellino either. “Flipping heck,” Hockaday says, asked about what might have been. “Don’t make me cry. I was scratching my head being told ‘no’ about those I had recommended while we were getting in these Italian-based players who were nowhere near it. That’s what killed me.”
Hockaday fought to convince Cellino, who he says liked to be referred to as Mr President, to pay for food after training. “I basically had an under-23s team and a lot of disenchanted senior players. It was the most dysfunctional squad I’ve ever played with, trained with, coached – whatever. It was a terrible environment.
“I don’t know what they are doing with the swimming pool at Thorp Arch now but you know when you see the westerns with all the tumbleweed? It was like that, because none of it was being used. It was a massive facility ‘too expensive to run’.”
The real fun and games, Hockaday says, began when he and coach Neil Sullivan took goalkeeper Marco Silvestri away from the squad to work on his kicking. “I found out quite quickly that the Italians reported back to the president … I had a phone call from Cellino to say: ‘Get yourself to Elland Road.’ I get there and he says: ‘What are you doing, embarrassing my goalkeeper?’ I said: ‘Right, hang on a minute, what’s he like with the ball at his feet?’ He went: ‘He’s not that good.’ I said: ‘Does he need to work on it?’ He said: ‘Yeah.’ I said: ‘Do you know what we’ve done? We’ve taken him to another field and worked on it.’ He said: ‘Good work, well done.’ That sort of thing went on every day.”
Hockaday is able to laugh now. “He [Cellino] used to ring me every day, and at weird times – at midnight, 1am, all sorts – and, at that time, I used to pick up every call, which was a bit silly of me. He said: ‘Coach.’ I said: ‘Yes, Mr President.’ And he went: ‘You’re not a good English coach.’ I was thinking: ‘Oh number 2s.’ But then he said: ‘You’re a good Italian coach, three times [training] a day. I love it! Keep it going.’ He had spies and they were reporting back to him … I was incredibly grateful for the opportunity so I was always going to swallow some of what he was going to throw at me. He wanted a vulnerable, if you like, good coach. He told me he’d let me down and I have talked to him a couple of times since, when he has phoned, out of the blue.”
Since joining SGS, Hockaday has enjoyed great success. The defender Kasper Lopata, who joined Brighton, and the striker Antoine Semenyo, who joined Bristol City, are the most salient success stories, and Saikou Janneh, also signed by City, is another export of the full-time programme.
“I’m going to leave a legacy here,” Hockaday says. “I’m going to build something incredible.” As for Leeds, he smiles. “It was a brilliant experience, I learned a lot about myself. ‘Can I handle the number 2s?’ Yes, I can. ‘Can I handle players at that level?’ I think so. I’m such a massive Leeds fan now; I love them to bits. It was only three months but it is a massive part of my life.”
