Managers are coming into fashion... (From Your Local Guardian)

Managers are coming into fashion...

4:51pm Thursday 8th April 2010 in Brentford

It says much about Easter Monday’s snorefest with Exeter City that its most interesting feature was the natty attire Grecians boss Paul Tisdale donned for the occasion.

He was dressed in flat cap and tweed like a true country gent and I commend his efforts.

Football can be an unforgiving arena – Graeme Le Saux, lest we forget, was on the receiving end of untold amounts of abuse because he read The Guardian rather than The Daily Sport – but Tisdale deserves a bit of credit for taking Adam Ant’s advice that “ridicule is nothing to be scared of” to heart and bringing a bit of style to Division Three.

To be fair to our own gaffer, Andy Scott, he also likes to dress smartly, although he favours a sharply cut mod suit to the Lord of the Manor look.

Yet, he and Tisdale must be the exception that proves the rule because I think it is fair to say football managers are, on the whole, not known for their fashion sense.

Scotty may wear a trendy suit but most of his peers fail to carry off this simple ensemble with much style.

Ex-Hull City boss Phil Brown is perhaps the worst example, with his shady estate agent’s air, and even foreign managers, who you would expect to be leaders in this field, often fail to cut the mustard – the hard-up geography teacher look favoured by Chelsea’s Carlo Ancelotti being a case in point.

The tracksuits is, of course, another sartorial option for managers, and this seems to be the one favoured by no-nonsense gaffers, such as Stoke’s Tony Pulis, and nonsense gaffers, such as former Bees boss Terry Butcher, who – in his baseball cap and ill-fitting sportswear – resembled a bloke in a park looking for a lost dog as he ambled his way up to the dugout.

There was plenty of ambling around by the Brentford players on Monday, too, as the Bees ground out the dourest of draws against Exeter.

I will go with Scott’s assessment that the players deserved the benefit of the doubt after a monumental effort in the past few weeks.

In stark contrast, the match at Millwall on Friday night was great entertainment.

It was a very tough match, with the hosts pouring forward and forcing a few typically excellent saves from our Pole in goal but, as we have done so often against the division’s top teams this season, the Bees put in a resilient performance that was throughly deserving of the point gained.