Bob Bradley has revealed he wants to improve fitness levels at Swansea City, but rejects suggestions he is an American drill sergeant.
The new manager is preparing to take his team to Arsenal on Saturday for his first match in charge since taking over from Francesco Guidolin.
Without a win since the opening day of the season, Bradley’s squad have been given a tougher regime on the training field – something the former USA manager says the players themselves were seeking.
Bradley – who moved to Wales last week from French club Le Havre – has often carried a reputation for stressing fitness, discipline and organisation as the bedrocks of his coaching methods.
But he says comparisons with his countryman, the fearsome square-bashing Sergeant Hartman character in Stanley Kubrick’s film Full Metal Jacket are wide of the mark.
Bradley insists: “I’ve heard this said but I’m not a drill sergeant. When that kind of stuff is thrown my way, it’s just too easy to say – ‘American drill sergeant’.
“Look, I’m on the field and I’m passionate. I bring energy to the training field. I am encouraging, I’m pushing, I’m challenging.
“But if Klopp or Guardiola does that, nobody calls them a drill sergeant. For me, I’ve seen a lot of good guys work in different ways.”
“I still believe that football fitness and sharpness comes largely from training,” said Bradley. “Sometimes, you need to add some additional fitness work, but in the main it comes from training.
“The players have been incredibly respectful towards Francesco. But I think you would also find that they felt that kind of training had gone away a little bit.
“My sense is that the sharpness, the extra bit of fitness and quickness – some of them felt that had dropped a little bit.
“We are trying hard to re-establish training that is going to bring that back to a really good level.
“So, when I talk about the good response so far, I think the way I have always done training and the different ideas I have, fits with how they think it needs to be done.”
Bradley says he is very much a hands-on manager, one who will be rolling up his sleeves and taking the coaching sessions.
In that approach, he says, he is less like one of his inspirations, Sir Alex Ferguson, and more in the mould of previous successful Swans managers.
“A guy like Sir Alex, he didn’t run the training. He had a man who did it for him – be it Brian Kidd, Carlos Queiroz, or Rene Meulensteen – and Sir Alex was the observer. It worked great for him.
“I think there are many other managers – and some have been at Swansea City – who are more active on the training field.
“I think Brendan (Rodgers) was still on the training field and coaching – on top of little things. Certainly, the masters of this kind of work, the Guardilolas and Mourinhos, and I’ve always worked like that.
“I think of how my coaching style evolved. I played, I had ideas on what I thought was good training, I wasn’t a great player, so very quickly I started coaching.
“When I did coach, in the early days, I coached by playing on the field with the players. I was playing, but using the position on the field to coach. But I wasn’t Michael Laudrup, so I couldn’t continue playing with the players.
“But you take the style you have used and you start to tweak it. I have watched some really good basketball coaches in the US. You talk about Greg Popovich, he doesn’t stand off to the sides and let everybody else do things. He is active.
“I have always worked that way. I am not saying this is the only way to do it. But this is still what I have done since I arrived.
“The players can see there is organisation. I include the staff and I don’t do this as a one-man show.”
Bradley is set to soon confirm former US fitness chief Pierre Barrieu – who worked with him at Le Havre – as a member of his backroom staff.