from yorkie post re ritchie

Ritchie'sstyle has Reds on the up
Teacups are safe in the Oakwell dressing room as manager displays calm manner

Andy Ritchie has adopted a modern day approach to football management and put Barnsley on the brink of promotion. Ian Appleyard reports.
THERE are some managers who insist that their word is law, that the stick rather than the carrot is the best motivational tool, and who don't particularly care if they are unpopular. That, however, is not the modus operandi of Barnsley's Andy Ritchie.
Since taking over from Paul Hart exactly one year ago, Ritchie has injected fresh confidence into Barnsley's players and results have improved.
With only eight games of the season remaining, Barnsley's sights are firmly fixed on winning promotion to the Championship.
A home victory over Bournemouth on Saturday will keep alive hopes of going up automatically although securing play-off qualification remains the far more realistic task.
Ritchie, whose only previous spell in management ended five years ago at Oldham Athletic, will be unlucky if his efforts are not rewarded with a new deal.
Yet Barnsley has become a burial ground for managers and, since dining at the top table of English football in 1997-98, the club have parted company with nine managers in eight years; some have never bounced back.
Ritchie, 45, could just be the man to buck that trend providing Barnsley's supporters are prepared to be patient and the players keep responding to his methods. "They gave me two years to get promotion and I have got another one to go after this," admitted the former Leeds, Oldham, Brighton and Manchester United striker. " Who knows, if we do well this season, I might just get an extension.
"Unfortunately, the expectations of football fans cost football managers their jobs – it is their expectations that fuel those of the board," he added. "When I was at Oldham, I always said the club was realistically a League One club that might 'flirt' with the Championship. It is the same situation at Barnsley.
"The finances we need to get into the Premiership are now totally off the scale and we are not going to have those finances for a long, long time – but I do believe we could be a successful Championship side, maybe not getting into the Premiership, but certainly holding our own at the next level.
"We had three seasons in the Premier League when I was playing for Oldham, heady days, but I don't really think that is going to happen again to a club of that size, unless, of course, you have a rich 'uncle' like Jack Walker (at Blackburn).
"Without that initial injection of cash to fuel it and get on the bandwagon, any club is going to find it very difficult. Football has changed so much and you have to realise now that, as a club, you have a niche."
Management, too, has evolved into a vastly different art form, says Ritchie, with the rise in political correctness bringing about a need for a more refined approach to the job.
"The days of the ranter and raver have gone – the old school is beginning to wane. You can't just go in effing and jeffing and throwing things around. It won't have any effect on players because they have been brought up differently, more politically correct, if you like.
"Coaches in Academies cannot go around swearing. You get hauled over the coals by the authorities if you bawl and shout at someone.
"My style of management is not dictatorial; I like to have a laugh with my players and make them feel that I am approachable.
"I would never do what I had done to me in my playing career.
"There were times at Brighton when the local reporter would be ringing me on a Friday night to say that I had been dropped from the team. That is not the way to do it.
"In three-and-a-half years of management at Oldham, and nearly two years now at Barnsley, I have only had a bit of a ding-dong with one player who got a strop on and said he wasn't going to be on the bench – but a few hours later he was ringing me to apologise and I don't bear grudges."
Ritchie has vowed to continue an 'open door policy' for players with an opinion to express and will keep his dressing room floor open for comment after a defeat.
It might not be the way Brian Clough would have done the job, but it appears to be working for Ritchie.

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tha'l do for me son

 

Correct me if I'm wrong...

but didn't AR spend most of his career at the top of the English game? Those managers must have been doing somthing right.

As for not being able to swear at kids, nowt stops you when they are "men".

DRFC 5 BFC 1. Ricthie ducked out of going in to tear shreads off em.

 

think he is a top bloke, well respected and doing a top job no matter where we finish!