“We all started laughing then and he was like ‘No, I’m being serious.'”
At this stage we all feel like we have heard pretty much every team talk there is to hear.
All the old cliche’s are churned out; “Get stuck into this lot early”, “Stay tight at the back”, “Focus lads, focus”, and all the normal run of the mill stuff.
However, when you have a manager who is eccentric and thinks outside the box, but is still old school in his vales, then you’re going to listen to those team talks, because they will be gold.
One such man who ticks all of these boxes is Neil Warnock, a mainstay in football management and a man who is famed for his animated behaviour on the touchline.
Speaking to talkSPORT, former Premier League star Darren Ambrose recalls the most bizarre team talk that might have ever been told.
“We were playing Wolves, we had come in, we all sat down and he said ‘Right, my wife Sharon, she had a dream last night…’
“No one really laughed when he said this because that was what he was like. He said: ‘She dreamt that my right back scores the winning goal today. So Danny Butterfield, you’re playing up front.’
“He wasn’t even the right back at the time, he was a fringe player because Nathaniel Clyne was playing right back at the time.
“We all started laughing then and he was like ‘No, I’m being serious.’ I was taking centre with him, and even then I was looking over to the bench thinking ‘Gaffer, is this a joke? Put him back to right back’
💤 “Neil Warnock did a team talk and said: ‘My wife had a dream last night..’"
😳 “‘She dreamt our right back scores the winner tonight…so you’re up front!’”
🤯 “12 mins in… he’d scored a hat trick!”@DarrenAmbrose84 tells a CRAZY @Warnockofficial story! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/t6xoTfY2lO
— talkSPORT (@talkSPORT) September 29, 2022
“I think about 12 minutes later, he had a perfect hat trick. Left foot, right foot, and header, we won the game 3-1.
“Every team talk we had then, all of the fringe players were going ‘Gaffer, has Sharon had a dream last night? Am I in the team, am I going to score?’
“The guy was insane – old school.”
The FootballJOE quiz: Were you paying attention? – episode 10
