‘It absolutely mental, it’s madness, chaos… you have to be bombproof and fireproof!’ Ian Holloway on the unique pressures of football management as he releases documentary… and why he’d dive straight back in despite moving his family 48 times already!

• Holloway has made a documentary on the unique stresses and strains of football
• He spoke to a number of prominent managers about dealing with the pressure
• Listen to the latest episode of Mail Sport’s podcast ‘It’s All Kicking Off!’ 

Ian Holloway leans forward, stares down the Zoom lens and pours his heart out as he often does.

‘It is absolutely mental, it’s madness, it’s chaos…’ Given Holloway’s penchant for going off on one, for happily following a tangent and seeing where it leads, we could be chatting about anything.

But this time it’s the subject he knows best – football management.

Holloway has made a documentary exploring the hidden world of the football manager, the immense stresses and strains unseen to the supporter and concealed from the media.

It’s clear the year-long process of interviewing familiar names in the English game – Neil Warnock, Mick McCarthy, Gareth Ainsworth and others – has been cathartic for a 60-year-old out of the dug-out for almost three years.

Ian Holloway at home with his wife Kim in a scene from his new documentary on the stresses and strains of football management called The Hotseat

Holloway, 60, has experienced every emotion in the game and would still return to the dug-out

One career highlight was guiding Blackpool into the Premier League back in 2010

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Holloway found the managers he spoke to were more willing to open up to him because they knew he too had ridden the extraordinary rollercoaster of euphoric highs and soul-crushing lows that come with this unique profession.

To his evident relief, he realised he wasn’t the only one who’d regularly wrecked his family’s weekend after a bad result or deliberately isolated themselves and bottled up emotions when things weren’t going well.

‘They knew the minute I started asking questions, they knew I’d lived it, they knew I’d had trouble with it and they answered with brutal honesty,’ Holloway tells Mail Sport.

‘You can’t show weakness. For someone to give you the reins of your club, you need to look like you know what you’re doing. What about if we don’t? You have to blag it.

‘They were so brutally honest because they knew I was struggling and needed to know some answers myself.

‘I think it was quite good for them as well. They all seemed more than happy to do it and we had a hug at the end.

‘The reality and the truth is like ‘BANG’, it hits you in the side of the head.

‘We are human beings and this comes out. We do have feelings. You have to be bombproof and fireproof, you have to cut yourself off. It’s almost like you’re acting.

Holloway returned to Blackpool to speak with Mick McCarthy, who was then their manager 

There was genuine emotion for Holloway with his Blackpool return reducing him to tears

‘It’s a perception of who we are. You only see a tiny part of what we’re like. You’re never allowed to see the real us.’

The documentary, called The Hotseat and released on Wednesday, chisels away at that facade.

The most startling aspect is the clash between such an all-consuming job, which can occupy every single thought from morning until night, and a happy home life.

McCarthy recalls growling at his kids ‘like a grizzly bear’ for kicking the back of his chair when driving to church the morning after a defeat at Millwall. His wife Fiona ‘took his head off’.

Steve Evans, manager of Stevenage, speaks with enormous regret of two years of family photo albums where he is completely absent from the holiday snaps because he was just too busy working.

Holloway’s wife Kim has taken to calling him ‘Dobby the house elf’ now he’s at home so much but you suspect she’s just happy to have her husband a little more present.

Kim’s comments about ‘living with the aftermath of the result… every time’ obviously stuck a chord.

Stevenage manager Steve Evans admits his regret at being absent from family holidays

Holloway catches up with his former player, Gareth Ainsworth, when he was still at Wycombe

He then has to interview Ainsworth a second time after he moved to one of his old clubs, QPR

‘I was shocked by what my wife said, what my kids felt,’ Holloway admits. ‘I thought I was handling it well, but I wasn’t.

‘At Leicester City [in 2008], I rented a house and took my whole family there. Six months later, we’re relegated and I’m sacked.

‘I’ve got another six months to sit in this rented house, opposite a pub and they all knew it was me.

‘Every night the police had to sit outside my drive. How does that feel? I tried my best, I felt the club was in a mess, we couldn’t stay up. I just tried to clear out as many as I could to give the next bloke the best chance.

‘All I got was pelters over my wall day-in, day-out. Nothing prepares you for that.

‘Luckily I have balanced, I have my grandchildren, art, fitness, loads of things I love doing. But I know it totally dominates every thought that I ever have.

‘So much so that I am probably a bit warped and twisted. But there are a lot of others like me out there, which was quite a relief!’

The documentary was obviously cathartic for Holloway, who realised he wasn’t the only one to experience the unique emotions that come with football management

Despite all the highs and lows of his career, Holloway admits he would willingly dive back in

Sacking season is well underway, even though the games played column is barely into double figures.

Mark Hughes at Bradford, Xisco Munoz at Sheffield Wednesday and John Eustace at Birmingham are recent recipients of the P45, Warnock at Huddersfield was eased out too for Darren Moore.

Holloway sees the increasingly short tenures of managers as just a symptom of wider society.

‘Everything has to be instant, we want it now,’ he says. ‘You can order yourself something and it’ll be there tomorrow morning.

‘You can not cook yourself something. We used to be a hunter-gatherer, now we’re a presser.

‘The lion would love that, sat in the jungle. But what would it look like? Fat and lazy. We’ve got to keep moving.

‘The way things are going with technology, none of us will have a job soon. You go into the supermarket and how many people are on the till?

Holloway chats with Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who is now working as part of the England staff

Neil Warnock, who has since left Huddersfield, is another of those addicted to the profession

‘This A.I. being as clever as Einstein, they’ll realise we’re all idiots and take over. It’ll be like Terminator all over again…’

Holloway’s year-long spell at Grimsby ended amid ownership chaos, but the club were also 20th in League Two and heading for relegation.

He fully appreciates his tendency to use humour as a pressure release valve can rub owners up the wrong way, that he might be perceived from the outside as not taking the job seriously.

But it’s clear that after nearly three years away, Holloway would happily jump straight back in.

He is reduced to tears when walking out on the pitch at Blackpool, the club he memorably guided into the Premier League in 2010. 

Like all managers, he is addicted whether he likes it or not. 

‘There is no other feeling like it. The variants of great performance, good performance, terrible, dire, useless. It all happens so quickly,’ he says.

‘The highs – there’s nothing like it. The lows are unbelievable. We are like machines really.

Holloway goes to Hull and speaks with Liam Rosenior, a young coach impressing in the dug-out

He also gets an alternative perspective from Simon Jordan, who brought him to Crystal Palace

‘But how empty am I on a Saturday? I miss it, I know it. I have got just 12 more to do 1,000 games as a manager. I’d love to get in the 1,000 club.

‘I know I love football, I miss it like mad and I’m not mental at all. I’m like all these other people. I’m much happier because now I know I’m alright, I know why I said some of the things I said.

‘Maybe if you’re an owner, you think I’m mucking about all the time. But what I do is serious.

‘But if someone offered, I’ll be there. I’d have to convince Mrs H because I have been a tad selfish, moved her 48 times for me. The kids’ schooling as well. It’s a very selfish life I’ve led and she’s allowed me.’

But it turns out he’s not the only one.

The Hotseat premieres on the League of 72 YouTube channel at 5pm on Wednesday 11th October. It will also be broadcast on ITV4 in the coming weeks. 

IT’S ALL KICKING OFF! 

It’s All Kicking Off is an exciting new podcast from Mail Sport that promises a different take on Premier League football, launching with a preview show today and every week this season.

It is available on MailOnline, Mail+, YouTube , Apple Music and Spotify

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