Big personalities, leadership and all that cal: how much is enough? How much is too much?

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Redknapp said: "I still feel at times we lack leadership and that has been a big concern for me ever since I have been here."

when Gerrard, Carragher, Pepe Reina, Xabi Alonso, Fernando Torres and Javier Mascherano gelled to propel the 2008-09 side to second place in the Premier League with 86 points. Any professional footballer will tell you a trophy-winning team needs a decisive ratio of gifted players and committed winners. Benítez's best side possessed that magical half-dozen. But when Alonso and Mascherano left, Torres lost interest and Gerrard and Carragher were hampered increasingly by injuries, the mediocrity all around them again became Liverpool's defining characteristic

'big personalities' not the same thing as leaders. Not incompatible, but one isn't a guarantee of the other.

You can be a cheating screamy whinging wind-up merchant like either neville, doesnt make you a leader.

you can be an inspiraional game-changing focus-of-the-team player like gerrard or fabregas, i dont necessarily think those guys are great leaders either tbh, though they're a step closer

maybe easier to list outstanding leaders, tbh.

Two first examples spring to mind are roy keane and lothar matthaus.

Roy Keane was in my head too, thought I'd wait and see how long before he came up. When you look at sides on the unstoppable slide, like Villa or Liverpool today or Newcastle two years ago, it's impossible to imagine that happening with Keane among them.

What it doesn't do is make the 2002 world cup any more explicable.

The lack of one of these was one of the major failings of Tony Mowbray's tippy-tappy pretty Celtic (that and the fact loads of our players were pish and we never had a midfield to speak of), and it's one of the things Neil Lennon (no slouch in the leadership stakes himself as a player) is trying to address, with varying degrees of success.

You could actually see everyone's heads going down last season, and no-one trying to raise them back up. I remember watching an interview with Mark McGhee about Celtic winning the double in 1988, and he said a large part of that was down to then-captain Roy Aitken refusing to let anyone hide and admit defeat. I'm definitely of the opinion that a guy like that is the kind of guy you want in your team. The last few custodians of the yellow armband at Celtic (lol Shaun Maloney? Really?) fall some way short of this.

Roy Keane was in my head too, thought I'd wait and see how long before he came up. When you look at sides on the unstoppable slide, like Villa or Liverpool today or Newcastle two years ago, it's impossible to imagine that happening with Keane among them.

This is the thing. There are loads of players who LOOK like great leaders when it's all going well (John Terry, William Gallas to name but two) but don't seem to be able to lift a team when things go wrong. Gerrard used to be in the former category but increasingly sits in the latter.

I remember that 1988 Celtic team, it seemed like they won every match (Aitken, 89)

saipan is what happens when your player-general feels that the team and coaching structure is inhibiting his performance, i dont think it's incompatible with the mentality we're talking about. These guys are built to lead against external opposition, but will hit meltdown if not in internal harmony with their manager/club/team

great teams without obvious (or traditional, maybe) leaders- older maldini's milan, current barca?... struggling to think of any more. maybe the holland of the late 80s?

terry has the raw material to lead, i reckon. But he's done too much damage to his image, and i think that's relevant to the type of leader he could be. On-pitch he ticks all the boxes.

Watching Drogba the past few games, he's proof that big personality ≠ leadership. Seeing him bouncing everyone away while he celebrates, arguing with EB&LJT (above), running past Malouda to celebrate on his own (when it was Malouda who scored!) - the guy's clearly a massive presence and a great player, but must be a complete pain in the arse to be around.

Like, everything's to aggrandize The Drog, his fellows seem to exist only as props to make that happen.

not sure that great strikers are built to lead. He's got to knuckle down to the on-pitch boss, tho, and terry isnt getting that respect/status anymore i think.

but if your team has a great striker, the setup has to be able to exist to serve his ego a lot of the time too. When a manager can organise the talent/ego balance right between personalities, his work's already half done

Terry's got a big ego and is desperate to be liked, that's a big weakness I think. You'd want to line up behind a guy who has almost complete indifference towards everything except the performance of his own team - facing Keane must've been utterly terrifying.

I was going to suggest Shearer as ideal striker/leader, but I might be reading too much into his aspie qualities - also I think Sherwood was the leader of that Blackburn side, and maybe Adams or Ince for peak England. Shearer certainly tore his own side apart when it suited him. Maybe the manager's own personality is key here.

Barca, and Spain for that matter, are so good it feels like they don't actually need a player in this mould.

Although I suppose Puyol fills that role?

manager for barca is very important, but yeah until they're seriously challenged it's hard to say.

Not sure how much terry needs to be liked, but yeah he doesnt have keane's indiffetence either way

tevez is the ideal striker leader on the pitch. and totti

Wonder if the "personality" of a leader should always reflect the "personality" of the club where it has one, or whether there's more to be said for some contrast there?

depends on the manager's style, maybe. Ferguson wants them in his own image, mourinho prefers them to be sergeant to his general, kinda thing?

Let's not forget the professorial Patrick Viera.

What was the Adams Viera overlap like? Did they defer to one another?

Wasn't Adams supposed to have had a team meeting mid way through the Arsenal double winning season where he told Petit and Viera that they weren't doing enough to protect the back four and had to up their game or am I misremembering that?

1997 Arsenal Xmas party, so the story goes.