Mike Leach Quotes

It's difficult to be a coach.

To look at the players, to communicate with the players, to observe and to analyze - that's my job.

I like to be able to control which players I'm working with. Because it doesn't matter how good a coach you are if the guys you're working with think they already know it all. You need a response, you need to feel they're trying. I want players who are always striving to improve.

You know, I think when you coach or you manage, you make decisions, and there's some that are really, really tough.

You can have great players, but if they don't want to be coached, what are you going to do?

If you're a coach and your team doesn't win, at some point you've got to change the coach.

My job as a coach is to make good decisions. It's not to go out there and block or tackle.

I was a coach, and I put a lot of education and experience into coaching.

As a player, you can be more spontaneous and instinctive, but now as a coach I have to find a psychological balance within the team.

It can be lonely as a manager out there. You are on the field, yes, but you are not really on the field with them. Yet I have to share with my players my experiences and my knowledge.

It's hard enough to coach in this league when you're doing what you believe in. But when you have to try to coach something you may not be sold on, it becomes even more of a challenge. It's really hard.

It's up to a manager to understand his players.

I have been doing this for a long, and it is the players who learn who you need to work with. You have to coach them to think and understand the game. If they cannot, then you have to tell them, 'You have to do this anyway,' but the best thing to do is say, 'Listen, if he is doing this, then maybe you have to do that.'

As an assistant coach, the wins and losses don't tally up on your record, so you don't necessarily have that to fall back on, so you have to find smaller games within the bigger picture to play in order to get your victories.

If you give time and space to players, they will make good decisions and score goals.

Football management is about managing people.

I think, as a coach, you've got to do what your players can do.

When I was a player, I was always interested in management.

I think it's very important to have contact with the players that I will coach.

The job as a coach is difficult.

It's not an easy job being a coach.

I think every coach brings their own personality.

It's about what the players are doing. My job is facilitate that. My job is to put them in positions to succeed. My job is to listen to their ideas, take them if they're good, quietly push them to the side if they're not. My job is to help them grow.

Believe me, you need good people if you want to make good players.

The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven't made up their minds.