Manager philosophies often differ when it comes to delegating responsibilities among the squad – and James Milner found out the hard way how to rub one of his old bosses the wrong way.
The three-time Premier League champion was in the final embers of his career at Aston Villa when he took umbrage with how Martin O’Neill was running the show. Specifically, it was his belief the squad wasn’t doing enough to keep fitness levels in line with their competition.
He wasn’t alone, either, as Stephen Warnock recounted how he arrived at Villa Park in 2009 and was astounded the club were doing so well at the time. However, it was Milner who received both barrels from the manager for daring to voice his concerns over how much – or rather, little – attention was being paid to conditioning.
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“Gabby [Agbonlahor] went to Vegas twice and New York [once] in that year – in the season,” said Warnock during a recent appearance on Undr the Cosh. “Because we had that much time off.”
When pressed on whether that resulted in the team failing to match up to their foes in terms of fitness, the former full-back replied: “Yeah! We blew up in April. There was a team meeting around March time, and it was led by James Milner, who basically said, ‘We’re not fit enough. We need to do more.’
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“And O’Neill took the knock massively. It was like, ‘How dare you f***ing question me?’ He was fuming. Milly [Milner] was super fit. He’d do the running machine after training, would do his runs on his own and things, but he knew as a whole, as a team, we weren’t fit enough. And we weren’t.”
Warnock went on to explain how the 2009/10 campaign concluded with Villa gassing out around April, saying he and his team-mates were “f****d, because we hadn’t trained properly.” He noted the culture shock of coming from an “ultra professional” setup at former employers Blackburn to the fitness coach not even taking warm-ups at Villa because he “didn’t wanna do it.”
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It ended up being the beginning of the end for both Milner and O’Neill at Villa Park. Milner – who went on to play for Liverpool and now Brighton – was the subject of a £26million move to Manchester City and became one of their most valuable servants, while O’Neill’s four-year spell in Birmingham ended with him resigning on a sour note.
As for Warnock, he remained with Villa for another three years before moving onto Leeds in 2013. And one can bet he struggled to come across another manager quite as prickly as O’Neill when it came to matters of fitness.