Pulis: Managers Must Look After Themselves First

Tony Pulis has used his BBC Sport column to make a point that often gets lost in the tactical debate: the person a manager most needs to look after is the one they see in the mirror every morning.

His starting point was the health scare involving Vincent Kompany, who has managed Burnley and Bayern Munich. For Pulis, the episode was a reminder that the strain of the job is not only mental. It shows up in disrupted sleep, poor eating, and the way a person carries a defeat from Saturday into Monday's training session. Those pressures build up over years, not weeks, which is why they are easy to ignore until something gives way.

Pulis writes from experience. He spent decades in dugouts across the Football League and the Premier League, and he knows how little room there is for rest when results are poor or a club is fighting to avoid relegation. The hours are long, the phone rarely stops ringing, and there is an expectation to look calm in front of players, fans and the media even when the inside feels very different.

The core of his argument is that managers tend to rank their own wellbeing last. The squad, injuries, the owners, the press and the next fixture all come first, and personal health gets pushed aside until it forces its way back to the top of the list. Pulis's column suggests that a strong character alone is not enough protection, and that the people around a manager should take an active interest in how they are coping.

The message reaches beyond first-team managers. Assistants, academy coaches and young coaches on their first jobs face the same demands, often with less support. Clubs that keep an eye on the wellbeing of their leaders are also protecting their own decision-making, because a worn-out manager is more likely to make poor calls on selection, tactics and recruitment.

The Kompany episode has made that point in a way that is hard to dismiss. Pulis's column asks the game to treat the health of its managers as a basic responsibility rather than a private matter, and it is a question clubs at every level will need to answer.