Saturday 17 September 2016 12:59, UK
Pep Guardiola is the talk of English football, but there's another Catalan coach by the same name working a little lower down the pyramid. Nick Wright talks to Leeds United's assistant manager Pep Clotet about how he came to work with Garry Monk via Manuel Pellegrini, Michael Laudrup and Guardiola himself…
After parting company with Swansea in December last year, Garry Monk and his assistant Pep Clotet spent months exhaustively analysing exactly what had gone wrong. The duo had guided Swansea to their highest ever finish in the previous season, but they departed with the club placed 17th in the Premier League after a run of one win from 12 games.
How had things gone so wrong, so quickly? And how could the pair ensure they didn't make the same mistakes again? Monk and Clotet wanted answers, and no stone was left unturned. For days on end, they assessed video footage and buried their heads in statistics to get to the bottom of it.
"We spent days watching a lot of games," Clotet tells Sky Sports. "I did it on my own, Garry did it on his own and then we met a lot of times at my house in Swansea. We analysed the good season we had at Swansea where we finished 8th, we analysed our first season, when we took the club out of relegation danger, and we also analysed the season that we left.
"We analysed tactically. We analysed game-by-game. We analysed every final-third entry for and against us, the domination rate for every five minutes, the possession. We even analysed the opposition. We kept video records and physical data from every training session. We wanted to know if our training impacted our performances. What could we have changed to make it better?"
Such obsessive attention to detail will come as no surprise to those who have worked with Monk and Clotet. Their meticulous, data-driven approach at Swansea saw sleeping pods installed at the training ground and drones filming sessions overhead, and speaking to Clotet provides a glimpse of the extraordinary work ethic of a management team now attempting to take the lessons from Swansea into reviving the fortunes of Leeds United in the Championship.
"That period after Swansea helped us see what went well and what didn't," says Clotet. "We drew a lot of conclusions on what is the best way to work with a team and to implement our football. I was happy when Garry got the chance at Leeds and he wanted me to come with him because I feel very comfortable working with him."
When you see your opposition once, you make no difference, but when you see them five, six, 10 times, you really get to know them and you start to highlight things.
As is usually the case at Elland Road, however, it has not been straight-forward. The Leeds job is considered one of the toughest in English football for good reason, and Monk is the seventh manager to have stepped into the hotseat since Massimo Cellino's takeover two years ago.
A disappointing start to the season ramped up the pressure, but Leeds pulled away from the relegation zone with Tuesday's 2-1 win over Blackburn, and Monk insists their methods are beginning to take hold ahead of Saturday's trip to Cardiff. "We are moving forward and progressing," he said this week. "The owner is very supportive."
If Monk needs additional support, then Clotet is certainly the man to provide it. The 39-year-old was promoted from academy consultant to assistant manager when Monk took over at Swansea in May 2014, and his loyalty is such that he even rejected the chance to take over as Brentford's head coach in November 2015, just weeks before he and Monk were relieved of their duties in South Wales.
"It was a great opportunity and I would have loved to do it," he recalls, "but I thought it was unfair on Garry in the situation we were in at Swansea. I work very well with him and we are loyal to each other. I couldn't live with leaving the ship in that bad moment."
Monk described Clotet as a "top-calibre" coach and talked up their "incredible" relationship when he was appointed at Leeds in June. The Catalan has a reputation as a scrupulous analyst and a smart tactician, and Monk is not the only manager who holds him in high regard.
Clotet coached Espanyol's youth and reserve teams between 2004 and 2009, and there were spells as assistant to Swedish boss Roland Nilsson at Malmo - where he won the title - and Norwegian tactician Age Hareide - now in charge of Denmark's national team - at Viking before he was appointed as Malaga's B team coach by Manuel Pellegrini in 2012.
They were the beginnings of an impressive coaching education, and there was inspiration from Pep Guardiola along the way. "Pep Guardiola is a very good reference for a Catalan, because he comes from a small town like me and many others," says Clotet. "He makes it to the top as a player and a coach but he never forgets where he's from. He's still rooted to Catalonia."
Clotet was director of Catalonia Federation's Coaching School when Guardiola, still coaching Barcelona B at the time, accepted an invitation to present a seminar on his methods. "The whole school was there, maybe 300 coaches," says Clotet. "He showed his way of playing, he showed all his tools as a coach tactically. He actually showed everything."
It was an illuminating experience for Clotet, and it was only a few years later - when he was working under Pellegrini at Malaga - that he received a phone call from Guardiola's former Barcelona team-mate Michael Laudrup. "He was at Swansea and he told me he was looking for an experienced young manager who was good at developing young players," says Clotet. "He was looking in Spain and a few people had put my name forward."
Clotet travelled to London to meet with Laudrup, and his new role in Swansea's academy was confirmed in November 2013. Clotet made an immediate impression on Swansea's chairman, and Laudrup's sacking two months later opened another door. "Huw Jenkins thought me and Garry would make a good partnership to take the team forward," he says.
"I had never actually met Garry before so I thought okay, let's give it a try. Maybe it could be beneficial to us both because I had experience in the dugout and he had experience in the team so we could use it together. That's how it went. Since then it has been a fantastic experience.
"Now, I know how Garry thinks as a manger and I think we complement each other very well. We discuss a lot of ideas on how to defend and attack better, and then how to train better. We have an open dialogue, and we're open with the rest of the staff too. I give him my maximum support and knowledge, and at the same time I get a lot of knowledge from a brilliant young manager."
The pressure is already on, but Monk and Clotet have confidence in their methods, and they have seen positive signs amid their stuttering start. "The atmosphere in the club is professional, hard-working and focused and we are very positive about the work we have been doing with the squad," says Clotet. Elland Road can be an unforgiving environment, but regardless of what happens next, no one could accuse Monk and Clotet of being underprepared.
Watch Cardiff v Leeds live on Sky Sports 1 HD from midday on Saturday
