The pros and cons of being a long-distance football manager — SkimNews
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- Frank Lampard, Jose Mourinho, and Arne Slot are among Premier League-era managers who lived far from the clubs they ran, with Lampard splitting time between Coventry and London, Mourinho living in a Manchester hotel while based in London, and Slot residing in Hale — close to Manchester airport for trips to his family in the Netherlands rather than close to Anfield.
- Tony Pulis logged one of the longest UK football commutes, driving more than 400 miles round-trip from his south coast home to Stoke, and later 320 miles each way when he joined Middlesbrough in 2017.
- Pulis turned his post-match drive into a preparation ritual: phoning Stoke chairman Peter Coates only after defeats, debriefing assistants David Kemp and Gerry Francis, then calling his chief scout for a report on the next opponent before arriving home to watch that opponent's previous game on TV.
- Pulis argued the solitude of the long drive was an asset, saying being alone in the car with no office interruptions gave him clearer focus than being at the training ground, where chairman drop-ins and other demands compete for attention.
- Pulis, whose last managerial role was at Sheffield Wednesday in 2020, said he never felt he was letting a club down by keeping his family on the south coast, and that clubs always provided comfortable weekday accommodation for him.
- Pulis acknowledged the trade-off personally, saying his daughters would tell him he spent too much time working away, but added he would never have run a club remotely and felt physically present on the training ground was non-negotiable.
Why it matters: Pulis's account reframes a setup often framed as indulgent or detached into a deliberate working method: the car became his tactical think-tank, his post-match debrief room, and his scouting bay, and the clubs he ran accommodated the arrangement for over a decade across Stoke, where he managed for 10 years. For fans and boards who judge managers by presence at the training ground, his testimony argues that preparation quality — not zip code — is what separates effective leadership.
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