Robbie Savage: Diary of a Football Manager: The key to success at every level
In association with Planet Sport Bet, Robbie is taking us behind the scenes each week at Macclesfield FC, the phoenix club rising from the ashes of Macclesfield Town, who went bust in 2020.
Robbie has played one of the leading roles in the rebirth of a now-thriving football club, first as director of football, now as first-team manager as the Silkmen seek to climb their way from the ninth tier back to the Football League.
In his latest diary entry, Robbie details his Christmas search for answers after a head-scratching Boxing Day defeat and how Macclesfield responded……
It’s fair to say my 2025 has started better than 2024 ended…
My Macclesfield team finished the year 13 points clear at the top of the Northern Premier League table and on track to achieve our promotion target. I’m so proud of the team and how they have met every challenge I’ve given them through the first half of the season. But the final week of December brought one big question…
What the hell happened on Boxing Day?
We welcomed Leek Town and more than 4,000 fans for a fixture that should have have seen us showcase our quality in front of the biggest crowd of the season so far. Instead, we lost, deservedly, in the 90th minute.
We were so poor. I could tell in the first 10 minutes that we weren’t right and we needed changes. By 20 minutes, my instinct was to make a double substitution and change the shape – we’d started with a diamond in midfield with the aim of our attacking width coming from our full-backs. But, after consulting with my staff and the rest of the bench, I couldn’t do it. It would have been an admission that the system wasn’t working – fine – but hooking two players would have been an unfair punishment for them.
So I stuck with the personnel and altered the shape. That sparked an improvement and we went ahead to lead at the break. But we weren’t off the hook. An individual error, compounded by a collective lack of reaction, gave Leek a way back into the game and just as we looked set to settle for a point, the visitors took all three when we gave up the freedom of the six-yard box to gift them a winner on the volley from three yards out.
It was nothing less than Leek deserved. They could have won by a bigger margin. We were so far below the standards we have set all season, it set alarm bells ringing in my head.
Like any manager, the first thing I did was look at my own contribution. Was the preparation right? Yes. I could certainly justify the team selection; the shape needed tweaking mid-game, but there’s nothing unusual in that. These lads can usually flit between Plans A, B and C seamlessly. As individual players, we all have off-days, but there had to be an explanation for such a collective struggle.
We found it in the data.
My message to the players all season has been that if we out-run and out-fight the opposition, our quality will shine through and we’ll win many more than we lose.
Against Leek, we simply did not earn the right to play. Our work-rate and intensity dropped so far below the levels I expect, it is a wonder we weren’t more heavily beaten.
Some proof: before Leek, my team (not including goalkeeper Max Dearnley) covered an average of 101,000 metres per game. On Boxing Day, it was 94,000. That’s a dip, but not as alarming as a 25% drop-off in the average high-intensity distance covered, or the average sprint distance falling by 38%. And one single player was responsible for 38% of that sprint distance.
With no game between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, that gave me, my staff and the players a long time to ponder what prompted such a lethargic performance.
Did they have a drink on Christmas Day? Too much turkey? My players are part-time, but the clear expectation was that they would celebrate Christmas like professionals, because that is what many of these lads hope to become next season by winning promotion. One player was honest enough to say he’d had one drink with dinner. Okay. I’d be a hypocrite if I hammered him because as a player in the Premier League, I often had a single glass of champagne with Christmas dinner before running as hard as ever in the Boxing Day fixture. That wasn’t the problem.
The more we discussed it and the deeper I dug for answers, the more it became clear that I was searching for a tangible reason that just wasn’t there. We had to simply put it down to a bad – really bad – day at the office, individually and collectively. Fair enough, it can happen. But it was made abundantly clear that a repeat would not be tolerated and a response was expected at Hyde United on New Year’s Day.
The result: a 5-2 away win, secured in part due to a huge uptick in the running metrics that were so damning against Leek. At Hyde, the players covered almost a thousand more metres in sprint distance. That’s more like it.
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Against Worksop Town at home on Saturday, the intensity levels were back to those that have got us to this position with a healthy cushion at the top of the table. They had to be because, again, Worksop posed a huge test.
We expected a physical battle, and I chose three centre-backs to deal with that threat. But Worksop adjusted their shape and system too to counter our strengths so, in the first half, the two sides cancelled each other out, though they led at half-time through a penalty. We’re conceding too many of those for my liking.
It was clear early in the second half that, while we were competing, we were not creating enough. So I made a triple change, sending on Sean Etaluku, Justin Johnson and Neil Kengni. Their pace swung the game in our favour. We were level inside eight minutes and ran out deserved 3-1 winners.
So that’s two wins and eight goals in two games in 2025 so far. I’m thrilled with how the whole club has bounced back from a Boxing Day defeat that, alarming though it was at the time, could turn out to be a blessing if we continue to remember the lesson it taught us. However much quality we might have, technically and tactically, the basis for whatever success we might achieve will always be the industry and intensity. That’s true from the Champions League to Northern Premier League.
Up next for Macc: Ashton United (A)
On Tuesday, we’re due to travel to Ashton United, who have done everything they can to beat the weather and get the game on. They are flying at the moment, in the promotion play-off spots, and they will feel they owe us one having lost to us in the league – narrowly – and FA Trophy this season.
After the Leek defeat, we set a target of seven points from the next three games, and we go into the final match of that run on six points. Now, we want to reinforce the fact that Leek was a blip by taking nine from nine.
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