Mark Bonner seeking Cambridge United to maintain momentum in new territory of League One
Mark Bonner has always taken a considered approach to all things Cambridge United.
Listen to his many interviews, and the U’s head coach avoids knee-jerk reactions to any situation.
When the pressure was at its greatest last season, there was never a hint that it was telling on the rookie boss and it led to the ultimate reward, promotion for United.
It justified the calm style of Bonner, who it is easy to forget was in his first season as a head coach and while there was so much talk of dealing with the pandemic, everything was new in a first-team setting to the man at United’s helm.
But what was the most important lesson that Bonner learned about himself during the 2020/21 League Two campaign?
“There are so many small lessons you learn, and I think the job tests you every single day, and every single game teaches you different things,” he explains.
“I really enjoyed the challenge of managing a group of people throughout a season and through real pressure periods and that was a good lesson for me in terms of how to do that and get the best out of people.
“I learned probably that your environment and your culture, and the way in which you respond to things when they don’t go your way, is so important to what happens next.
“It was a big thing for us with our results and our record last year, but just the way in which we stuck together when it got tough or when the games got difficult, that was a major thing for us.
“I think it’s a really good learning for us as a team and for me, personally as a coach, and as a group of staff going ahead.”
Putting that theory into practice was the most telling aspect.
A strategy was developed from the beginning on how they wanted to respond and behave, and a set of values created by which the squad would stick.
The challenge was making sure that it did not just become ‘wallpaper’, something that people would just end up walking past rather than living by.
Bonner, pictured left, sought the squad to be consistent and relentless in sticking to those values.
“The first thing is you have some senior players that you are relying on to drive that and you have to keep reinforcing those messages with them and with the team,” he says.
“But as a group of coaches and all of the backroom team, we just have to consistently reinforce that amongst each other.
“It was the real thing for us to push each other and challenge each other every time when it wasn’t going well, or when it was going well. We needed to make sure we had a bit of a culture of feedback where we would talk to people and face up to the problems or challenges we had.”
Linking back to Bonner’s own development as a head coach, it was his first time having to execute them in an environment where the spotlight was on – it had previously been done within an academy setting.
However, managing people remains the crux of the matter, it is just the context that varies.
“The theory is the same but the pressure and intensity of the work is a lot higher,” says Bonner.
“The theory of trying to implement something, I guess I have tried to do in the past, but this was certainly in a more focused environment when other people are watching you and there is certainly more of a consequence on the outcome every single week.
“That was a great test, and I really enjoyed that intensity and pressure that we had to work under.”
The biggest question now is how those learnings from last season will be applied in the new campaign?
There is, of course, no rulebook, otherwise everyone would take the same approach.
“It’s trying to find the right reaction and response all the time, in the good and the bad,” explains Bonner.
“To manufacture some momentum if you’ve not got any, or to try to maintain some momentum if you have got some, or to try to turn a bad spell around if you’re in that situation.
“A lot of management is instinct as well as ideas. You have an idea of where you want to be, but you have to react quite instinctively quite often, and you make hundreds of decisions a day.
“Obviously you get loads wrong but in the main you’ve got to try to get as many of the big ones as right as possible, that’s why you rely on all the staff around you.
“For me, it’s trying to do the same thing again – try to have a way of being, a way of playing and stick to it.
“We know the challenge goes up this year, but in a way the theory of how we need to do things is the same, we just know it will be tougher at times.”
In what was a surreal season in so many ways, it may seem strange that United developed a greater connection with supporters than they have done for many years.
Success was obviously a big factor in that, but so too was the way in which they performed, behaved and delivered their goals to hook people.
It meant that there was a journey for fans to attach to, even if it was mainly on iFollow.
With the identity created, and the development at a faster rate than anticipated, it is now a question of staying on that track.
“To try to maintain momentum this year is what we’ve got to try to do but the curve will level off at some point; we won’t be able to maintain the pace with which we accelerated it last year,” said Bonner. “We have to just keep moving forward, keep developing and keep improving.
“Yes, the challenge goes up in terms of the level we’re playing at and the teams we’re playing against, but at the same time we’ve earned the right to be there so we’re going to try to really enjoy it.
“We’re going to try to be as competitive as we can there, and win as many games as we can there.
“You want to look back at the end of the year and see that we’ve continued making progress as a club, on and off the pitch. Ultimately, that is what this job is about.”
And it all starts at home to Oxford this Saturday (August 7).
