Saturday lunchtime, Blackburn: in a bar across the road from Ewood Park, Brian Barry-Murphy is sipping mineral water and watching Southampton versus Manchester United on a big screen. The Southampton manager Russell Martin is a friend of Barry-Murphy, who sees the Saints get an early penalty Cameron Archer does not convert. Two minutes later Matthijs de Ligt gives United the lead.
Three hours on, Barry-Murphy is inside Ewood observing Blackburn Rovers versus Bristol City. It is 2-0 midway in the second half and City substitute Sinclair Armstrong rushes to the Rovers byline and squares the ball for what seems to be a certain goal. At 2-1, City will be back in it.
But a Rovers boot gets there first, the ball is cleared and seconds later Yuki Ohashi curls in a magnificent shot at the other end.
Instead of Southampton leading 1-0, Manchester United were leading 0-1; instead of Blackburn Rovers 2-1 Bristol City, it was Blackburn Rovers 3-0 Bristol City.
“Unpredictable,” says Barry-Murphy wryly. It is a word he uses three times — negatively, positively and empathetically — in the course of a conversation about football, how he sees it and where he sees himself. At 46, Barry-Murphy has just taken the unusual, unpredicted step of leaving Manchester City after three years of being head coach of the under-23s. He enjoyed daily contact with Pep Guardiola.
Barry-Murphy had been manager of Rochdale before City and he wants to be a manager or head coach again. The Irishman succeeded Enzo Maresca with the under-23s and there is a post-City Maresca trajectory to consider.
Judging by the match-day enthusiasm of Barry-Murphy, the uncertainties of the game, as he had just witnessed afresh, will not deter him.
“I’ve been pretty clear for a while that I wanted to move on,” he says. “It might sound unusual, as I would sum up my period at Manchester City as the most insightful of my life in football, because of who I was working with.
“But also, I have this real want to go and test myself on my terms. You tell yourself: ‘Go on, then,’ rather than stay there and be in awe of Pep, watch what he does and never use it for anything.
“I had a real instinctive feeling when I went to Man City that it was the right place at the right time; I have had the same feeling for over a year now. It sounds selfish but I have got what I wanted from that experience.”
Barry-Murphy instructs his players ahead of a UEFA Youth League tie against RB Leipzig in November 2023 (Charlotte Tattersall/Getty Images)
Selfishness is actually ambition. Barry-Murphy, son of decorated Irish sportsman Jimmy, has been part of football since he was 16, playing for his hometown club Cork City in the League of Ireland. He was signed by David Moyes (whom he praises) when at Preston North End, then played for Sheffield Wednesday among other clubs. Barry-Murphy’s career as a defender ended at Rochdale, where he was player-coach before becoming manager in 2019 and developing a reputation for a style of play that may not have brought a small club three points every week, but which caught the eye of much larger neighbours.
So three years ago, recruited by Jason Wilcox, Barry-Murphy began coaching the likes of Cole Palmer, Oscar Bobb and Romeo Lavia — three of those he mentions — and learning from Guardiola. Barry-Murphy left in the summer and accepted an invitation from The Athletic to spend a Saturday watching a match, discussing where he has been, what he has seen and what might come next.
At Ewood Park, Barry-Murphy is immediately impressed by the intensity of Blackburn’s start to their Championship game. Tyrhys Dolan, 22, a former Manchester City academy player, sets a standard — fast, aggressive, skilful. Rovers press Bristol City into errors and, from one of these mistakes, take the lead.
A determination to play out from the back has cost Bristol City, but they do not change and, as it continues not to work, an earlier reference from Barry-Murphy regarding Guardiola’s adaptability grows in relevance. He does not think Guardiola gets enough credit for this.
“Pep is so appreciative of opponents’ strengths and what they’ll try to do,” Barry-Murphy says. “He’s thinking of how to overcome that; he doesn’t just focus on City because they’re so good. When they played Real Madrid, Madrid clearly had thought about that deep run Kevin (De Bruyne) does a lot and planned for that.
“Pep’ll say to the players, ‘When the opponents do something, we’ll do this’. He’d give them solutions. So if the opponents are going to man-mark Rodri, for example, he’ll say, ‘Well, we’ll go here before going there’. And he will pay as much attention to a Carabao Cup game as a Champions League game.
“He noticed that, when teams started to go for man-for-man, it would leave (Erling) Haaland on the halfway line. So Ederson would go long.”
Blackburn’s Dolan leaves Bristol City defenders in his wake (Andrew Kearns – CameraSport via Getty Images)
That is what Bristol City try to do intermittently, but they do not have Haaland at No 9, the ball does not stick and Rovers mop up. The visitors return to their way of playing from the back, to the jeers of some of their own fans. Barry-Murphy recognises the situation, the need to win, the Saturday afternoon tension.
“I’m proud of what I did at Rochdale,” he says. “It means a lot to me. But I wouldn’t dispute for a minute that we kept the ball for possession’s sake. And I got it wrong sometimes.
“I’ve a deep belief in the way I think the game should be played and I’ll never go away from that, but you have to be respectful of who you face.
“When I was a younger coach or manager, I was obsessed with having possession and it’s something myself and other players fed off, because during our careers we were starved of the ball. But when I look back now I’m not sure if I always got the balance right. It’s about attacking in an efficient manner — being patient or attacking quickly, dynamically. Giving players the feel of rhythms is something you as a coach can do. Efficiency is a very important word.
“In League One, Rochdale were a very small fish. We’d young players and we’d play against the likes of Hull and Sunderland and these big squads. The way we wanted to compete was to have the ball for periods, which is not what smaller teams are meant to do.
“I’d read (Mauricio) Pochettino’s diaries from Espanyol and when they played Barcelona, the expectation was they’d defend on the edge of their box. He wanted to change that. At Rochdale we wanted to have our own philosophy, play with a style that gave us a point of difference, keeping the ball away from the bigger teams for as long as we could. We couldn’t just go out and buy a striker.
“The difference at Man City is that you’d build up possession to give the ball to Cole Palmer, who can go and beat five players, or to Oscar Bobb and he’s like Messi. He beats players in a flash and I’d never seen that up close before.
“Your job then is to get the ball to those players and in the most efficient way — sometimes that will be one pass, sometimes 50 passes. At Rochdale we didn’t have that and my perception was that the quicker we attacked, the quicker the chance we’d give the ball to a big team who would then pound us for 90 minutes.”
Barry-Murphy celebrates with Oliver Rathbone at Rochdale (Joe Prior/Visionhaus/Getty Images)
In both of these roles, development was a key word and pursuit. Yet the two environments and challenges were very different.
“Week after week at Rochdale I’d come out and say the lads did well, did exactly what we practised,” he recalls. “And the reply would be, ‘But you got beat’. I said, ‘Yeah, but we could be at the bottom of the table anyway and kicking it long’.
“Then there’d be no reference point for the players, who we believe will benefit in the long term and will succeed — though there’s no guarantees.
“But it’s ingrained in us all to want to win.
“At City the players are all on big contracts, but some come from pretty poor backgrounds, so have a lot of pressure on their shoulders. What you have to do is convince them that your way of working will improve them as players, give them the rewards they want: ‘But you have to do it as part of a team otherwise you won’t get the chance.’
“You’re trying to create that common goal. ‘Convince’ or ‘influence’, I don’t know which word is better. I always said to the players that I’d convince them of what I was doing because I know it works. Ideally you want every player to believe you and hang off every word, but they don’t. You’ve to show them there’s substance to what you’re saying.
“They’ve all got different characteristics. Oscar Bobb will do anything for the team because he wants the team to succeed above all else. Within that he wants to improve individually. But it’s not very common to see someone that selfless.”
At half-time Bristol City manager Liam Manning makes one change and, after Blackburn go 2-0 ahead on 55 minutes, he soon makes three more. City get better, Armstrong propels his team forward. Then there’s the chance and the Rovers break away and it’s 3-0.
On the final whistle, the two coaches, John Eustace and Manning, shake hands. They’ve had the opposite experience from the same game. Barry-Murphy knows these Saturday five o’clock feelings. The differences.
“I imagine Liam will be heading back on the bus thinking it didn’t go their way and they didn’t perform to the levels they wanted,” he says. “For all that, they gave the first goal to Blackburn and there was a point in the game where it could have been 2-1. At 3-0 it feels deflating and demoralising.
“But that’s just the nature of the game and it’s important to remind yourself how volatile it can be, how small things can leave a large imprint. John Eustace will have the same awareness about what happened and what could have happened.”
Manning and Eustace on the touchline at Ewood Park (Andrew Kearns – CameraSport via Getty Images)
The uncontrollable elements of the afternoon are striking, and from that perspective, it looks an angst-ridden profession to seek out. But Barry-Murphy, as he says, wants it. “If there were guarantees, you wouldn’t get the buzz, would you?”
He has spoken to one Championship club this summer — not Preston, despite the links — and the managerial churn in the division means opportunities are likely. Barry-Murphy will take with him three decades in the game and three years alongside Guardiola. How is he before and after that experience?
“Pep changes the way you think about football. I used to hear people say that and think, ‘Really?’ It sounds a bit dramatic, like. But he does. He makes sense of the way you have to work repetitively every single day to bring to life the things you want to see on the day of a game. It’s so simple in terms of how he implements it, but it’s so difficult in terms of how obsessive he is about repetition and preparation. He’s incredible, incredible.”
Guardiola accepts coaches such as Mikel Arteta, Maresca and Barry-Murphy will want to test themselves after being in his professional company, and City’s director of football Txiki Begiristain has told Barry-Murphy it is his time “to go and fly, show what I can do. It’s given me encouragement to go and do what I’m going to do. Txiki said, ‘Put yourself on the line, test yourself’ — amid that jeopardy we’ve spoken about.
“Where I go next, I will want us to attack in the most efficient manner, always progressing the game. You don’t have to worry about satisfying the audience then, because what they’re seeing is that you’re always trying to attack. That’s why I feel so liberated by what I’ve done professionally, because I now know how to do it.
“I’m ready. I fancy it.”
(Top photo: George Wood/Getty Images)
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