Queens Park Rangers v Norwich City

hoops
Ferdinand
shields the
ball from
Manchester
United’s Denis
Irwin during
the inaugural
season of
the Premier
League
for me and he is right up there as the
best manager I worked with. That was
because – to a man – we all knew our
roles when we went out on the pitch,
there was no confusion. No-one said: “I
think I should be here. I think I should be
there.” You knew where you needed to
be. Tactically, Gerry got it right with the
squad of players he had at QPR.
What was in-game management like
under Gerry?
Gerry was one of the best I worked
with in terms of being able to see a
problem and then rectify it. We had
some good characters in our team
back then, so a lot of the time we were
able to solve problems out on the pitch
ourselves. But Gerry would say: “Look,
just treat this a little bit differently. You
go here, you run there, that will make a
difference in the second half.” And nine
times out of 10 it did.
You were our first choice centreforward
but there were plenty of
striking options alongside you. People
like Bradley Allen, Dennis Bailey, Gary
Penrice, Garry Thompson and Devon
White all featured that season…
Yes, I appeared with a host of different
strike partners. We always played with
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