You need troops to follow orders at this crucial stage of the season, captains like John Terry ensure every player in Chelsea's squad follows Jose Mourinho's guidance

• Martin Allen believes it's a crucial time for troops to follow orders
• Players like John Terry ensure whole squad is pulling in same direction
• Perceptions in football need to change and they need to change quickly
• Birmingham boss Garry Rowett is heading all the way to the very top 

By Martin Allen for the Daily Mail

Published: 16:36 EST, 5 April 2015 | Updated: 18:58 EST, 5 April 2015

Martin 'Mad Dog' Allen returns with his latest column for Sportsmail. The Barnet manager talks about how important it is for the troops to follow order during this crucial stage of the season. 

TAKING THE BISCUIT

Just a few days ago an old friend of mine Jimmy Carter, the winger who played for Millwall, Liverpool and Arsenal not the US President, visited Barnet and left me a nice packet of milk chocolate biscuits in my office.

After training, to help me get rid of them, I decided to give some out to our players. The first seven who walked past my office door were called in for a cup of PG Tips and a chat. I asked each one to take a biscuit and pass the pack on, around the group.

I kept repeating it, each time: Take one and pass it on, take one and pass it on.

One player didn’t want a biscuit and simply passed the packet on.

Martin Allen believes it is important for troops to follow order during this crucial stage of the season.

I stopped them in their tracks and asked him why he hadn’t taken a biscuit. This was an opportunity to point out how important it is to follow the coach’s direction.

I didn’t tell them to eat it - I told them to take one and pass the pack on.

The other six were looking at their biscuits waiting for the go ahead. I passed the packet back to the player and he now took his biscuit. I let them all know they could eat if they like, and if not return it to my desk, and shook all their hands as they left the room.

When it comes to this crucial stage in the season, you need all your troops ready to follow orders.

IT’S A ZAYN IF THEY’RE NOT PULLING IN ONE DIRECTION 

At whatever level it’s always important to have all your players going in One Direction. Just like the band, if you’ve got one person wanting to go a different way, do a different thing, something is going to crack and the team ethic and unity will be broken.

At the business end of the season, it is so important that they are working as a team.

People have to do their jobs; defending set plays, defensive shape when you’re attacking, working up and down the pitch. You need good captains and leaders within your group. People like John Terry, who not only does his job but also makes sure each and every person in that Chelsea squad follows Jose Mourinho’s guidance out on the pitch.

It is One Direction, or no direction.

Captain John Terry works hard to ensure everybody at Chelsea is heading in the same direction

ON THE PERIPHERY

Having good players in your first team is obviously vitally important. But the players out of the team, on the periphery, can lose you matches.

Negative body language, people unable to cope with not playing, disruptive comments, and a dismissive look about everything you say and do can infect the whole squad.

The man-management of these players on the edge of the first team is crucial and the skills needed they do not teach you on the UEFA Pro Licence or courses put on by the Football Association.

I’ve spent the last three-and-a-half years working with a guy called Rob Northfield, who runs Inspire based up in Harrogate, on man-management skills for my players, my staff and of course myself.

He deals with chief executives of the infamous banks and building societies.

Allen won a championship with Gillingham and is hoping to soon do the same with Barnet

Since then, I have one championship in the bag at Gillingham and hopefully by the end of this month would’ve bagged a second. Without Rob Northfields this would not have happened.

Mourinho is a coach who is so good at dealing with players who are on the bench and not always in the side. He knows at some point in the season he will need them and they are always fighting for him.

Players on the periphery can make the difference between winning and losing.

Allen’s Analysis…

One person I keep hearing about… Gary Rowett Gary Rowett is winning so many games and doing so well at Birmingham City. He has steered them in the right direction after their poor start to the season in the Championship.

He did a tremendous job at Burton Albion and back then there was no doubt in my mind, having played against his teams over the last couple of years, he would go on to manage at a much higher level.

He must've asked me at least one hundred questions when my Gillingham team visited Burton the week after winning the championship. He was like Bamber Gascoigne, the old University Challenge presenter - non-stop firing questions at me. 

He was listening to the answers and asking intelligent questions about how we managed to win the league with Gillingham from a team that had previously been mid-table. For me, he’s heading for the top.

Allen believes Birmingham City manager Gary Rowett is going to go all the way to the top

One thing I’d change about… perceptions in football 

At Barnet last summer, I found myself with no staff and a need to recruit new people.

I took on Jon Nurse, born in Barbados, as a player-coach. I was impressed when he told me how when he was a teenager he lost his mum and he had the responsibility to bring up his younger brother.

On top of that he got a degree in computer networking and played more than 300 league games, winning a promotion, the FA Trophy and been in numerous playoff finals. He also has a UEFA B coaching licence and a schoolboy skills training academy called Love The Ball.

I took on another player-coach, goalkeeper Graham Stack, an Irishman, who has four impeccably behaved children, who runs the Graham Stack Soccer Academy for youngsters and a high-end executive travel company with his wife, who can build patios and brick walls alongside his UEFA B coaching licence.

Former Arsenal goalkeeper Graham Stack has been working alongside Allen as a coach at Barnet

Then I was introduced to a young man called Omar Yabroudi who moved to London from Dubai and wanted to be my analyst. He works hard and has been a real help. He works for virtually nothing and has fitted in superbly.

We have a 23-year-old female physiotherapist, Jade Cook, who had only worked with our youth team before but she has stepped up to work with the first team for the first time. She is calm, quiet, well-organised, disciplined, structured and I am very happy all the players are being so well looked after.

I did not take on a Barbadian, an Irishman, an Emirati or a female because of their nationality, or skin colour or gender. I took them on because they’re good at their jobs, they are good people, with good personalities and they have excellent characters.

I’m very proud of all of them in their first year working for me and no doubt all four will go on to work at the top level in the Premier League.

Without them we would not have been top of the Conference for so long.

The big issue… England coming out of the dark ages.

When I was a little boy watching England versus Poland in the front room with my dad, the amazing Jan Tomaszewski, who Brian Clough called a ‘clown in gloves,’ stopped England qualifying for the 1974 World Cup with his heroic performance in goal.

The panel of pundits, all those years ago, said we’ve got to change. We’re not playing the type of football other countries play; our children don’t get coached to be good technical players like other nations.

Over the years I’ve heard it time and time again. The same old stuff. Especially over the last few years with the Spanish dominance, people asking why we have not got the Iniestas and Xavis of this world on our shores.

Allen believes Greg Dyke is the man to help find the Iniestas and Xavis of the English game

The Football Association’s technical director now, Dan Ashworth, appointed by my old chairman Greg Dyke, is a forward-thinker who can finally make some changes.

He may never have played a professional game in his life, but at West Bromwich Albion he implemented a modern football structure at the club, where the manager does not have to deal with everything, where other departments and professionals are involved.

Greg Dyke speaks to Premier League chief Richard Scudamore ahead of his FA council meeting

Ashworth can handle himself well. At a League Managers Association training day a couple of years, at a hotel near Reading, one Sunday afternoon, speaking just before Fabio Capello, Ashworth faced a roomful of sceptical, old-fashioned managers that thought they knew best and thought they knew the way forward. 

The gave him a torrid time with their caveman-like mentality that the manager should run the whole club.

He handled the room carefully and skilfully and I think Greg Dyke has put English football into the right hands. He is the right man to take England back for their second World Cup win. 

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