Just left St James’ Park after watching Exeter get thumped 4-1 by Burton Albion. Albion looked a pretty good side, to be fair, but their manager, Nigel Clough, was on the edge of his technical area for most of the game, roaring extraordinarily complex instructions at his players like he was playing voice-activated Championship Manager.
This obviously resulted in a fair bit of cat-calling from behind the dugout, and I was amazed by how personally he seemed to take it. A couple of times he even turned around and shouted “shut up” back at the fans, at least until the fourth official told him not to.
You’d think an experienced manager would have a big more sang-froid.