Sheffield Wednesday legend Ron Atkinson on the secret to beating Manchester United
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The Sheffield Wednesday legend guided the club to a first-ever League Cup title with a 1-0 win over Manchester United in 1991, the same year he got them promoted to the top flight.
He also won silverware with Manchester United and Aston Villa during a management career stretching almost 30 years.
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Hide Ad"I was lucky that I had a load of not only good players but good blokes,” he says of the players he managed at Hillsborough.
"We had a great spirit. They just all gelled together. We went to a cup final that we knew we were going to win.
"I don’t think I’ve ever had that feeling in football, whoever we were playing, but we knew we were going down there to win it.”
Ron, now 83 and based in the West Midlands, picked out two of his favourite memories from his two spells in charge from 1989 to 1991 and again six years later.
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Hide Ad“Nights like the semi-final when we saw Chelsea off in the second leg (3-1 at Hillsborough in the League Cup semi-final).
"I had worked at big clubs before – (Manchester) United, in Madrid – and I never felt any different in Sheffield.”
An unusual pre-match rallying cry before a home match against his former club in 1998 worked wonders, as Ron explains.
"I had a good mate of mine, Renato, he was a singer with Renée and Renato, and he was a great character.
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Hide Ad"I put him in the dressing room before the game against United and he started signing Nessun dorma, we call it the goalkeepers’ song, and Fergie’s walking past.
"I’ve got the door open and he’s in there singing, particularly to the Italian boys, and I said ‘Alex, come in here’.
"We’ve now got Alex Ferguson in our dressing room before a match listening to an Italian bloke singing to our team!
"The commercial guy then got him to go on the pitch and do it. We had 40-odd thousand in there and of course we beat them 2-0.”
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Hide AdItalian Paolo Di Canio, perhaps inspired, was among the goal-scorers that night.
Ron was also full of praise for the current incumbent in the Hillsborough dugout ahead of a crunch clash in their quest to return to the Championship at the first attempt.
The Owls will move back into the top six, if they avoid defeat at Fleetwood on Tuesday.
“I know Big Dave, as well call him, his older brother played for me as a youth team player at The Villa.
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Hide Ad"He’s done very well and hopefully he keeps it going. They had one or two rickety spells but then all of a sudden they seemed to get on a roll.
"Let’s hope that continues right until the end of the season.
"From time to time, particularly in the Midlands, you bump into him at various functions. All credit to him, he’s hopefully got them on the right lines.
"He’s got to make sure that he’s right, that his tactics are right and he doesn’t put them under too much pressure.”
A rendition of Flower of Scotland for the team’s talisman and his Scottish colleagues before kick-off to lift the tension, maybe?