Newcastle United boss Eddie Howe says he is happy to adopt a New Zealand All Blacks style "no d*** heads" policy at the club. Howe has steadied the ship at St James' Park and has made big efforts to bring the group together and he and his staff have made it clear they want to include everybody in the group.
Indeed, this shone through when unregistered players like Ciaran Clark and Isaac Hayden travelled with the squad to Dubai for the recent warm weather training camp. The All Blacks have a rule that no inflated egos will be tolerated in the group and the team and squad must be put first.
When asked about the similar policy he has in place at Newcastle, Howe said: "Yes, absolutely right. "Again, it comes back to the 'respect' word. If you're not in the team, you've got to respect the player that is in the team and you've got to wait for your opportunity, and just how you behave day-to-day around the place.
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"I've got to say, we've got some very, very good professionals here, we've got some great, great people. If you've got great people, you've got a chance of creating a great team."
Howe has turn managed to improve the fortunes of some out of form players at the club like Ryan Fraser and Joe Willock. Expanding on some of the methods he uses, Howe said: "Yes, I think it is important.
"If a player isn't happy off the pitch, in my experience they're never going to perform well on it. It just goes hand in hand, so when you identify a problem, you need to understand what that problem is and then try to find a solution."
Howe has also tried to get to know his players better by asking them to fill out a form about their lives off the field. He said: "It's key that – it goes back to the earlier question – you've got to know about your players' private lives, you've got to know do they have kids, what makes them tick, loads of different factors that can go into making a player happy or unhappy off the pitch, and you have got to try to find ways to help them.
"One of the big areas of growth as a club is trying to improve our infrastructure to support the players. It's something that we really like to do. We like to find out about players' personal lives and their history.
"There's a lot I might think I know about a person, but then when they start to talk about themselves and their childhood and certain things that have happened in their life, you find out a totally different view that you by normal conversations wouldn't find out.
"It's very healthy not just for me to know that but the rest of the squad, and it can start relationships and conversations about things that normally wouldn't happen.
"We've had some really interesting talks and you find out a lot more about the players' character. I won't go into details because it's not right for me to do that, but it's a very healthy thing we do, I think."
