Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini has come up with an interesting training method particularly designed to guide his squad to combat poor refereeing decisions.
The Chilean manager always sets up training matches and during those practice matches the coaching staff intentionally referee badly, letting go fouls and giving deliberate wrong decisions, keeping in mind that the players will be get used to deal with unexpected calls from the officials in actual game time.
The theory has worked quite well so far, as Manchester City happens to be one of the best-behaved teams in the Premier League this season, with 39 bookings in their 23 games, and also yet to see a player getting sent off.
When speaking to the Daily Mirror, Pellegrini revealed that he was well aware of the poor referees, that’s why he started this psychological training, and also wants his team to play to the whistle all the times and keep their heads calm and cool irrespective of how bad a decision goes against them.
“The players know that we referee badly,” Pellegrini said. “We try to make plenty of mistakes so that they forget about the refs in proper games. There are fouls that we don’t punish because we want them to play to the whistle.
“We want them to keep running. We’re trying to prepare them psychologically because refereeing errors are important during games.
“It should never be the case that they lose their heads and don’t continue playing. In a real game, referees make mistakes. The most important thing is to keep playing until you hear the whistle. We don’t use cards to punish the players, we use press-ups.”
Manchester City are well placed in the title race and at the moment holding on to the second position in Premier League table after their recent 2-2 draw with West Ham United, three points adrift off leaders Leicester and ahead of third-placed Arsenal on goal difference.
That’s certainly an impressive strategy.
You are psychologically tricking your players into thinking that actual referees are doing a decent job while punishing your boys with army-style physical labour whenever they step out of line.
Whatever the approach and thought may be, it is clearly working for the time being. What if the managers of West Brom (43 yellow, three reds) and Sunderland (45 yellow, two reds) start to think about doing something similar. Manuel Pellegrini leading by example.