Anthony Scully - The Athletic | Vital Football

Anthony Scully - The Athletic

‘Dmitri changed everything for me’ – Anthony Scully’s debt to West Ham coach

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By Roshane Thomas Mar 3, 2021
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It is lunchtime for Anthony Scully. But instead of fuelling his body for training, he is keen to talk about what led to him losing the appetite for academy football at West Ham United.

“When you play under-23s football you think it’s brilliant, but in terms of your career you don’t get remembered for what you do at that level,” Scully tells The Athletic. “It’s not real and too many young players get comfortable. It’s all about what you do when you start playing professionally.

“It reached a point where I was 20 and I thought, ‘If I’m not going to get a chance now, when will I?’ When you take the emotions out of it, you have to think about what’s best for your career. I was having a good season but I never made a first-team appearance. The option came up to join Lincoln City on a permanent deal and it was perfect for me.”

It has now been 13 months since Scully moved to the League One side and during that period the Republic of Ireland Under-21 international forward has scored 14 goals in 41 appearances. Scully, son of turn-of-the-century Queens Park Rangers striker Tony Scully, talks passionately about having no regrets over his decision and why more young players should back themselves.

Scully, now 21, joined West Ham when he was 12 and became one of the key performers for their academy sides. He finished the 2019-20 season as their under-23s’ top scorer with 14 goals in all competitions and formed a close bond with under-23s manager Dmitri Halajko, who Scully mentions numerous times during our interview. Halajko helped fine-tune the talents of James Maddison and Hamza Choudhury in previous roles at Norwich City and Leicester City respectively, and Scully’s form markedly improved under his tutelage.
“Dmitri changed everything for me,” he says. “Before he came in, I hardly played. Dmitri believed in me and it massively helped my confidence. He had the vision to play me as a striker. I was delivering for him on the pitch and it was nice to play for someone who believed in me.

“But between the ages of 16-18 when I wasn’t playing, I was thinking, ‘This isn’t fair. My mates can play football and enjoy it, I can’t even get a chance’. I really doubted myself and it took me a while to get my confidence back.

“That’s why Dmitri was always on me, because he knew what I was capable of. If I wasn’t ‘at it’, he would let me know in a real constructive way like, ‘Come on. You can do better. Don’t let standards drop’. (West Ham captain) Mark Noble was also great at giving advice to young players. Whenever I trained with the first team, he would pull me aside after and say what I could’ve done better. But when it comes to Dmitri, I can’t thank him enough.”

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Scully displayed his scoring touch for West Ham Under-23s last season but opted to leave for first-team football with Lincoln City (Photo: John Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
Lincoln manager Michael Appleton was a big factor in Scully joining the club.
The prospect of first-team football, challenging for promotion to the Championship and playing in a youthful team was hard to resist. Lincoln are third in the table, two points off Hull City in the second automatic promotion spot with two games in hand. They have exceeded expectations this term, with Scully’s 12 all-competitions goals proving hugely important.

He recently signed a contract extension until June 2023 and since the turn of the year, his goals have helped Lincoln sustain their promotion push. Scully scored a late winner in a 2-1 victory against Northampton Town and the equaliser in the 1-1 draw against league leaders Peterborough United. Appleton has been a good mentor for up-and-coming prospects with Morgan Rogers, an 18-year-old winger on loan from Manchester City, also thriving.

“When you look at the gaffer’s track record with young players, I’m only going to get better with him as my manager,” says Scully. “He’s constantly on me and will never allow me to get comfortable. When I got to 10 goals, straight away I was thinking, ‘How can I get to 20?’, and that’s down to the manager. He cares about me and knows I can be a better player. That means a lot to me.”
Scully lists Kevin De Bruyne, Neymar, Eden Hazard and Raheem Sterling as his football idols. He is determined to reach his potential and will often study those stars’ games: how they lose defenders in the box, their ability to score different types of goals and how they lead by example on the pitch. Scully is a wise head on young shoulders, although he admits there is one area of professional football he finds particularly difficult.

“I’m starting to get better but my mood often depends on the game,” he says. “If we win and I score, it’s really easy to come back and relax. But sometimes after games when we don’t win, and I miss a few chances, it’s all I’ll think about. I’ll struggle to sleep because, in my head, I’m just going over the game.
“If I’m being hard on myself, I probably should be on 15 goals — I want to get closer to the 20-goal mark. Whenever I miss a good chance, it’s wrecking my head until I can get back out training. I need to get back out on the grass to get it out of my head. I want to score every goal and I know it’s not always possible but I think I’m capable of doing it. But the gaffer always tells me I don’t need to score goals solely to play well.”

Scully has aspirations of playing in the Premier League but in the short term, he wants to help Lincoln win promotion. The club have never played in the top two tiers of English football in their 137-year history and were in non-League four years ago, but if Scully and company maintain their present form that could change in the not too distant future.

“I remember my debut and my parents and girlfriend were there and even they couldn’t believe the atmosphere,” Scully says. “We had about 10,000 fans that night (last February, shortly before the first pandemic lockdown cut Lincoln’s 2019-20 season short) and I could hear the roar from the players whenever I got on the ball. Coming from an academy with a few hundred fans to what I’ve been experiencing with Lincoln was quite a change.
“The fans have been very supportive and it would be great to win promotion for them. It’s in our hands and we can achieve anything we want.
“The main thing is not to lose track of what we’ve done. If we can replicate the first half of the season in the second, we know we’ll be in a good place.”
 
Michael Appleton: ‘I fell foul of not doing proper due diligence on people I worked with’

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By Steve Madeley Mar 2, 2021
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Almost a decade ago, Michael Appleton left West Bromwich Albion to become a manager.

He was impatient, impulsive and, he admits, still a little angry. Just 16 months later Appleton had managed and left three different clubs and he found himself unemployed.

Yet now, 10 years on, Appleton’s reputation is soaring once more. His Lincoln City side are third in a League One table packed with relative heavyweights and Appleton is replicating the impressive job he did at Oxford United.
If Albion need a manager this summer then Appleton will inevitably be among the favourites despite a new four-year contract signed last week at Sincil Bank.
It is a far cry from the drama of Appleton’s early management journey, which took in three clubs in 14 months and ended in his sacking by Blackburn after just 67 days.
“I was tarnished,” Appleton tells The Athletic. “I was branded as someone who jumps ship very quickly, and I felt that was harsh because there were a lot of people who didn’t really know the truth.
“I’m big enough and ugly enough to admit when I’ve made a poor choice but there were a lot of things going on. I’ve kept my mouth shut and I’ll wait for the right time to talk about them.”

Appleton’s early days as a manager were nothing if not eventful. He departed Albion, where he had spent nine months as Roy Hodgson’s assistant, to take over as manager of Portsmouth. Two administrations and a relegation later, he left for Blackpool, but after just 11 games amid a similar level of chaos at Bloomfield Road, he was on the move again, this time for an ill-fated stint at Blackburn.
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Appleton during his playing days (2001-03) with West Brom (Photo: Barrington Coombs/EMPICS via Getty Images)

“I was in a real rush to make up for the lost time I had as a player,” says the former midfielder, who developed at Manchester United’s academy just a year behind the famed “Class of 92” but had to retire aged just 27 following a knee injury while playing for Albion.
“I was in such a rush when I finished as a player to be fully qualified and a Pro Licence coach at a young age and I had that same drive to get into management.
“There were reasons behind some of those decisions that were personal but you live and learn from that and move on. If I hadn’t made those decisions in the early part of my coaching career I might not have coped so well with some of the difficult times I’ve had since.
“I fell foul of not doing proper due diligence on the owners and people I was working with and paid the price.”

After playing his final first-team game aged just 25 and spending two fruitless years attempting to overcome the injury he suffered in training, Appleton was a man in a hurry. He got to work coaching youngsters in Albion’s academy and rose quickly through the ranks, having been identified as a future coaching star by sporting and technical director Dan Ashworth.

By the age of 35 he was itching to manage, so ignored warnings about the turmoil at Portsmouth. It is a mistake he would be unlikely to repeat now as he contemplates an unexpected challenge for promotion with Lincoln.
The anger at the way his playing days were cut short remains within him but its edge has been blunted by the passage of time.

“You don’t forget it because it was a difficult part of my life and it’s still a major part of me and who I am today,” he says. “But it’s definitely subsided in terms of the anger and the frustration that I had as a coach and a manager. Now I’m in a place where I just see it as part of my journey and I can use the things that happened to me in a positive instead of a negative way.

“I’m a better coach now than I was then, because you never stop learning, and I’m probably the same as a manager, too. But I think I’m also a lot more relaxed than I was. When I first went to Portsmouth I was more aggressive and dealt with things that happened a bit more harshly. I was probably a bit more rash. Now I can take a step back and my patience is a far greater.”
That patience was put to the test over a 16-month spell out of coaching after his sacking by Blackburn left him framed as a short-term fix. He scouted, watched games, spoke to friends and took advice.
“I knew I had to go to a club where I could stay for a while and I knew I had to have success,” he admits. Eventually, he found the right place to restart his career.
Oxford United chairman Darryl Eales identified Appleton as the man to turn his club around. The appointment paid off.
In three years at the club, Appleton oversaw promotion from League Two, two appearances in the final of the EFL Trophy and some memorable days in the FA Cup.

His reputation as a coach and a manager was re-established. But with Eales looking to sell the club, Appleton became concerned about his own future, too.
So when a conversation with his former Albion colleague Craig Shakespeare about loaning two Leicester City players — Harvey Barnes and Callum Elder — turned unexpectedly into an offer of a job as Shakespeare’s assistant, Appleton surprised the football world by moving on in the summer of 2017.
The chance to work in the Premier League with one of his closest friends proved too tempting, but by October the move had gone wrong as Shakespeare was sacked.
 
Appleton remained at Leicester as No 2 to Claude Puel but it was a far from happy experience.

“Shakey and I had a relationship where I could have my opinion and say what I wanted, knowing he wouldn’t be offended or take it to heart or think I was treading on his toes in any way,” says Appleton.

“It’s very difficult to turn down a job in the Premier League. I’d had three really good years at Oxford so I took it. Even then I thought I’d manage again but I didn’t think it would only be a year at Leicester. It felt right at the time, but I clearly didn’t think Shakey would lose his job after eight games.

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Appleton on the bench next to Puel in April 2018 (Photo: Plumb Images/Leicester City FC via Getty Images)
“When Claude came in it was difficult because he had his ways and ideas and I had to be respectful of that as his assistant. I had to take it on the chin and go with it.

“I didn’t really have too much of a say (under Puel), which was very different to when Craig was there. Claude didn’t really allow me to coach, I don’t know why. I was a little bit isolated at the time. All I tended to do was the opposition analysis and the team meetings.

“I just tried to keep the players’ spirits up because it was hard at times. It was dull and not very exciting at all for the players.”

By the summer of 2018 Appleton’s time at Leicester was over and he was out of work again.

The following season he was back at Albion, answering an appeal to help out another former colleague, Jimmy Shan, in a promotion bid that ended in play-off semi-final defeat to Aston Villa.

And the following season he was lured back again by Luke Dowling, Albion’s sporting and technical director and Appleton’s former colleague at Blackburn, to manage the club’s under-23s.

Shan and Dowling understood that Appleton’s managerial ambitions still burned bright and his third spell at The Hawthorns ended sooner than either expected when Lincoln came calling.

The League One newcomers needed a boss to take over from the Cowley brothers, Danny and Nicky, who had led them to two promotions.

With Lincoln keen to slow down their spending, it looked like a daunting task.

“They threw a lot of money at getting out of the National League and at getting out of League Two and Danny and Nicky delivered,” says Appleton. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the biggest budget or the 10th biggest, you’ve still got to deliver, and they did.

“But the club were quite open when I went in that they couldn’t sustain paying the money they were paying at that level. So it was about changing the style of play to be a bit more attractive, change the type of player we were signing and looking to make the team younger and reducing the wage bill. We wanted to sign players we could improve and sell on and plough that money back into the club.”

So now, with Lincoln third in League One behind leaders Peterborough, Appleton and his latest club find themselves with an opportunity they did not expect.

“It’s taken us by surprise,” he says. “Our target this year was to try to finish in the top half of the table. I signed for three and a half years and I said that by the end of that I’d want us to get into the Championship.

“For me it was about progressing each year but we’ve recruited well, got a good balance in the squad and we’ve found ourselves in the top two

“I’d be a liar if I said it was about promotion this year but now we’ve put ourselves in a really strong position and if we don’t achieve at least the play-offs we’ll be disappointed and kicking ourselves a bit.

“But the reality is that as long as the club keeps progressing and getting better we’re doing OK.”

Appleton’s career is on the up once more. Having completed a master’s degree in sporting directorship while at Oxford, he harbours hopes of one day becoming a sporting and technical director. But that is a long-term ambition. For now, management is his priority.

So 10 years on from his first, tumultuous steps into the job, has it given him the buzz he was missing when his playing days ended prematurely?

“Yes and no,” he says. “For me, standing the test of time as a manager is the main thing.

“I’m 10 years in and that will surprise a lot of people. As a manager I’ve only lost my job once and yet I’ve managed five clubs and maybe a lot of people don’t think that.

“I had to answer a lot of questions about my time at Portsmouth, Blackpool and Blackburn, which I understand.

“But in the last seven years I feel like, whether I’ve been a manager or a coach, I’ve been successful and yet the only thing people ever want to talk about is Blackpool and Blackburn, which is frustrating at times.

“There’s a lot of stress involved, you always feel like you’re three or four games from the bullet and the only time you can really relax is in the build-up to pre-season.

“There are a lot of stresses and strains to it and there are a lot more lows than highs so you’ve somehow got to find a way to enjoy the highs because they’re the moments that you’ll look back on with a bit of fondness.”
 
Not sure if it's still available but I signed up last month for £1 a month and they have some really good long reads. The EFL coverage is light but when they write about EFL clubs its really insightful (instead of the copy paste/obvious stuff you get elsewhere) and there's at least 2 or 3 EFL articles worth reading every week. Really good one on Barnsley the other week and how they run the club for a particular style and recruit managers and players based on that (like a more evolved version of what we are doing) and they have shot up the league since I read that.
 
Not sure if it's still available but I signed up last month for £1 a month and they have some really good long reads. The EFL coverage is light but when they write about EFL clubs its really insightful (instead of the copy paste/obvious stuff you get elsewhere) and there's at least 2 or 3 EFL articles worth reading every week. Really good one on Barnsley the other week and how they run the club for a particular style and recruit managers and players based on that (like a more evolved version of what we are doing) and they have shot up the league since I read that.

Thank you. I enjoyed reading both of those. The price currently quoted is £3.99 per month for 6 months, £7.99 thereafter.