Seven years on from his first attempt, will it be third time lucky for Marc Skinner?
Only the second manager to lead his team out at Wembley three times, Marc Skinner needs a trophy more than ever. Seven years on from his first, has his approach changed?
Marc Skinner will lead his team out at Wembley for a third time on Sunday afternoon when Manchester United face Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Cup final.
He’ll be only the second manager to have achieved the famous walk three times in the women’s game, after Chelsea’s Emma Hayes who bested him in a closely fought final 12 months ago.
Skinner though enters with a backdrop of a tough season. After taking the title race down to the final day and getting United to a first major cup final this time last year, Skinner was winning over a percentage of fans who doubted he was adept enough for the role, but 12 months on they are likely condemned to a fifth-place finish, and a defeat in a game many tag them as favourites in could prove terminal.
It's been a long and winding journey since his first with Birmingham City seven years ago, the club he learned his trade at it in the Centre of Excellence before being propelled into the first team role at the end of 2016 when long-term joint head coaches Marcus Bignot and David Parker resigned.
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Despite having only been in a senior role for a few Spring Series-sprinkled months, Skinner beat Hayes and Chelsea in the semi-final to set up a date at Wembley against Nick Cushing’s masters of the cups Manchester City.
The parallels will not be lost on Skinner. Just one win in nine in the Spring Series left fans with serious doubts given despite a limited budget they had challenged the top sides in previous years and reached the 2016 Continental Cup final.
It left fans questioning him, as United fans are now, but seven years ago as a much younger manager it’s clear he was in a different place to the more bullish Skinner who consistently swats away questions about fans critiquing his style of play, tactics and substitutions.
“I’m a very humanistic person,” Skinner described himself as to me in an interview less than a year after the 2017 cup final, which ended in a disappointing 4-1 defeat in which most of the damage was done in the first half.
“One guy used to put a Skinner Out hashtag on Twitter. It was funny to my staff because they knew what we were trying to do, but I felt everything, I felt absolutely everything.”
The nature of the women’s game now and boom of new supporters means that hashtag now goes way beyond just social media, and has gone as far as signs in the stands of United’s Leigh Sports Village home.
True to the way he wanted to play, Skinner didn’t adapt his Birmingham City side to the occasion nor opponent, but admitted in the aftermath it had been an experience of firsts for him, including his players not being able to hear his instructions compared to the atmosphere of a few hundred at their then home ground of Solihull Moors.
The 2017-18 season didn’t start much better despite some eye-catching recruitment, and the Christmas period was a new low for him, and Skinner admitted at the time people within the club were “looking at whether it was too much for me.”
His partner was away playing in Australia and sent him a ticket to watch The Greatest Showman, which sparked a change in his mindset.
Skinner went back to the basics of what he knew, and even though he can often find himself rubbing his own fans up the wall with his unique way with words, it’s always been part of what he falls back on.
Before he was a manager his social media feed was a catalogue of inspirational quotes from the likes of Michael J. Fox, Muhammad Ali and Paulo Coehlo.
He focused on getting his players back to doing what they did best, and in his words “put his ego to one side”, going as far as using the FA Cup prize money to ensure new sets of goals and a new GPS system for his players rather than investing in the transfer window.
At United, the message has often been from fans ‘This is not Birmingham’, and whether there are too people within the club looking at whether it is too big for him, he has become adept at cutting through those criticisms, in stark contrast to the manager of seven years ago.
Last summer could have been the stepping stone for greater success, and there’s no doubt this season things have taken at least one step back, but Skinner spoke in his pre-match press conference with the tone of someone who expected to still be in a job come pre-season.
He has at times fallen back on those he trusts from the olden days, such as Hayley Ladd, Rachel Williams – who has saved big results for Skinner many times – and Aoife Mannion, who he praised at Birmingham City for her attention to detail when it came to analysis.
When I asked him on Friday morning how he’d changed from seven years ago in how he now more bullishly deals with the criticisms which come his way, he had plenty to say ahead of a third shot at a major trophy.
“I think naturally the experience…nobody wants to on a national stage feel those experiences but it’s part of competitive sport,” he said. “I think you grow up, you mature, it never gets easier but it’s part and parcel of the game, so you learn more about the pressures.
“I think what I’m learning more and more is…there was an Eddie Howe with Gary Neville interview and they talk about how managers have to be bullet proof and you’re expected to be bullet proof, but we’re also human. It would be unnatural for me not to feel and not be devastated by a loss, but I’ve always known losses make you stronger and the strength you need to succeed in the long run is to understand how to deal with failure.”
Reflecting on 2017, Skinner added “That first final, I never watch it back, I never watched it back because it hurt at that moment, but what you learn to do is deal with your emotions when you feel that and that’s important because I’m human and if I want to treat humans in my environment like humans I have to be able to feel those moments.
“And it builds you, it’s built resilience in me, it’s needed for my job and the career I’ve chosen and what you learn to do is when you do feel those moments and disappointments you can still think and ask players to think in moments and that’s where you grow within these games.”
There is no doubt despite a tough season and the fact Tottenham are very much on the up under Swede Robert Vilahamn that many will be expecting Skinner’s side, which is filled with international talent, to win out.
With Tottenham also without star loanee Grace Clinton, United’s experience of Wembley may prove fruitful, something Skinner admitted himself, but he was keen to play down the fact this time around United go in as the people’s favourites, unlike 12 months ago.
“Where I think we will have a stronger position is experience. Experience in the final, it’s new if you haven’t done it before and Spurs have players who have done it, but it can absorb you and affect the way you want to play.
“It has to be business for us, enjoy it of course. We’ve got to Wembley, you get an energy in your first final, but this is an equal playing field and we will not and cannot underestimate it. Whatever tag people give us, we’ve got a job to do.”
On how last year’s defeat added to the hurt of 2017, he continued “When that hurt hits and you can feel it and recall it, it can be an extra motivating factor.
“We have to use it, bring back those feelings and give more and give more and give more. No one is guaranteed to win the final, but we have to give everything in the performance to be worthy of it.”
Whatever happens on Sunday, there is an ever-growing faction of United fans who would prefer to see Skinner replaced, but reports suggest that may not be the case, despite the recent takeover from Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS.
A trophy on the biggest stage the country has to offer may just about offer a reprieve, but Skinner will be under no illusions there’s an expectation this week, and he was asked whether a first FA Cup triumph would ensure a successful season.
“We’ll have added silverware to Manchester United, that’s successful wherever you are as a club. There are things we’ll learn from this season I already know the answers to we can fix this summer.
“You want to finish it the best way we can, we’ve got two finals to go, this and then Old Trafford. We want silverware, but it will be difficult. We’re pretty humble people, Tottenham deserve to be in the final, there’s no underdog. Success more importantly for our fans…it will be hugely important moving forwards.”