What's the difference between a coach and a manager?

What’s the difference between a manager and a coach? In the chaotic world of professional football, it’s probably little more than semantics, certainly the definitions seem to have been blurred since he good old days when the manager wore a sheepskin coat and the coach was a wiry bald man in a tight tracksuit.

The concept of the ‘head coach’ is an affectation of the modern game. A reaction against the omnipotent management tradition styled by the likes of Brian Clough and Sir Alex Ferguson. It’s a message from the owners that says; ‘you may be the one in the limelight, but I run this schizzle’.

The head coach is quite exotic, a hipster move, something foreigners do. But, like many things adopted by Britain from abroad, it’s not taken on wholesale. Much as we admire the German approach, we’re still fond of our despotic owners. When things are going wrong, fans call for ‘someone’ to come in spend money - it’s rare you hear them calling for the club to be run as a not-for-profit democracy.

So, there is almost certainly no consensus on the difference between the two and perhaps it doesn’t really matter. Perhaps, but perhaps not, because if you do confuse the two, then how do you know you’ve got the right people running your team in the right way?

By definition, the coach is there to develop players. It is a positive, nurturing role; taking players to their full potential. As such, it’s fairly easy to be the good guy. In fact, it’s pretty important that you are the good guy if the players are going to respond to the things you want them to do.

The manager, however, is almost the opposite. Within his arsenal has to be the ability to be the bad guy, he has to make decisions which are not always popular - scratch that, no decision is popular. Every decision will upset someone; players, fans, owners or media. He has to earn empathy and respect, but he needs mental robustness to resist criticism and the emotional detachment to remain objective. In a world where ex-players continually lament the banter and camaraderie of the dressing room over almost everything else the game offers, the idea that you might want to move into a role where you are almost always going to be disliked by someone can’t be for many.

So, like anyone in a senior role, a football manager, to be successful, has to be a sociopath. And this could be after a career where the idea of the individual is beaten out of you. Of course, many coaches are considered for managerial roles because they are amiable and they do the right things playing football the right way. They follow the textbook, which sounds just great if you’re an owner.

We’ve had a few managers who were good coaches; by all accounts Graham Rix was an excellent coach, David Kemp’s career in the Premier League shows that he was a much better coach than manager. Ian Atkins and Chris Wilder were very good managers, as was Jim Smith who always needed a very good coach to make things work. It doesn’t stand to reason that a good coach makes a good manager, or that a good manager makes a good coach. So you interchange them at your peril.

When Danny Hylton slotted home the equaliser at Mansfield on Saturday, it seemed like we might have escaped with a barely-deserved draw. The first reaction of the players was to get the ball from the back of the net in order to hurry up the restart. We did the right thing by the fans, and the spirit of football, and we went for the three points.

But, having suffered a home defeat on the opening day and with a gift of an away point eleven minutes away, is going for the win the right thing to do? Or, given the nervousness that comes with being one of the handful of teams without a point, should it be time to shut up shop?

His decision was a coach’s decision, not a managerial one. The coach goes for the win; sticks to the principles of the game, does the right thing. The manager recognises the value of an away point which settles everyone and puts us amongst the pack.

Perhaps it illustrates an inability to operate in the managerial role. We don’t know whether that’s a permanent thing or whether he will gain a managerial mindset. Let’s face it, his previous roles have hardly given him scope to spread his wings. Securing points by any means is one of his easier decisions. As the season progresses, things get harder - there will be decisions about playing injured players, rushing them back to do a short-term job, he may look at fixtures and decide they’re worthy of sacrifice because of more significant jobs coming up. Then there are the habits, bad or otherwise, that players begin to adopt. He will need to develop some of those habits, but he will need to suppress others. He may also need to make decisions about players who are good and decent people - players he perhaps brought in - who will need replacing. In short, the job will get dirtier.

Partly, this is about Appleton’s ability, but it’s also about the strategy of the football club. Is Appleton’s role to be the manager? To make tough and unpleasant decisions? Or is he the coach? To develop players’ technical ability? Do we know what a head coach is supposed to do? To date, it’s not clear. While the single point of failure concept that operated for most of Chris Wilder’s reign is not desirable, we currently have a gap in ability which needs filling, or developing, quickly.