The Foreign Factor

Glenn Roeder is delighted that Sven-Goran Eriksson has had such a good start to his England career - and says that the foreign influence on the game can be a good one.

Glenn says: "I do feel that with the advent of a lot of foreign coaches coming into the game it has certainly made a lot of our coaches sit up and realise that coaching is an important factor in a successful football club."

Glenn - who has experience of the England set up himself, having been a coach with the national team under Glenn Hoddle - reckons that even players at the top of their game can still be improved and adds: "The West Ham players who have been on international duty will have benefited from working with someone who is very coach orientated and puts a great emphasis on a team shape - which I feel is very important.

"When you have a good team shape there is obviously going to be good organization there and you are going to create more opportunities to score goals because of that.

"And hopefully you will find stopping the opposition a lot easier. With your practices you can give another dimension and another thought to those talented players.

"The game is not just about running with the ball, there are other factors involved in the team.

"After all it is a team game; we all win, we all draw, or we all lose on the day."

Glenn himself had the best of tutors in his playing days. After starting out at Leyton Orient in December 1973 and making 107 appearances he went to Loftus Road and says: "I was fortunate enough to work under a coach in Terry Venables who is exactly that, a coach.

"Every day was an organised training session and he got the best out of the players at QPR because of those coaching sessions."

He spent five years there before moving, in December 1983, to Newcastle. Six years later he went to Watford before ending his playing days, via a return to Brisbane Road, at Gillingham.

It is clear, though, that his time under Terry Venables made the most impact on his thinking, and he adds: "I felt as a player I improved under him simply because he coached us and he gave us new ideas and new practices to help our individual games."

He decries the notion that the greatest individual talents need to be allowed to do what they want, adding: "No-one is going to teach Paolo Di Canio how to trap a ball now, or how to score a goal.

"But I am still sure you could stimulate his mind by offering him different types of practices that maybe make him think a little bit harder, and maybe put some fresh ideas into him on the tactics of the game, on the shape of the team and the responsibility to the team in the position you play, rather than just letting players like Paolo and Joe be just free spirits.

"I hate the words 'free spirit', just allowing people to run all over the place and run in different areas of the pitch that you don't want them to be in.

"The case that you must let them display all that natural talent mustn't be held back.

"But you must let them show that within the shape of the team and the structure that you want as a coach."

As well as the team play, he says individuals can still improve on their own repertoire, insisting: "It's a quality in a coach to see what a player can do and what he can't do, and to emphasise improving his strengths but at the same time trying to improve the weaknesses.

"I'm a great believer that your weaknesses will never catch up with your strengths because as your weaknesses improve so will your strengths and they'll never catch each other up.

"With practice you can certainly make those weaknesses better and if you don't practise they certainly won't improve at all."