Jaap Stam: Reading boss hoping to use lessons learnt from Manchester United legend Sir Alex Ferguson
New Royals manager spent three years at Old Trafford, winning three Premier League titles and the treble in 1999
JAAP STAM is hoping to put what he learnt from the Sir Alex Ferguson school of management into practice at Reading.
Stam, 44, was the surprise candidate the Royals turned to as boss after axing Brian McDermott earlier this summer.
The Dutchman is obviously a well-known character on these shores having spent three trophy-laden seasons at Manchester United before his infamous departure to Lazio in 2001.
It was Ferguson who shocked the footballing world when flogging Stam to the Italians after the hardman defender had written about the Scot and United in an autobiography that year.
Yet despite that controversial decision, Stam still looks up to Fergie and wants to use his former manager’s success at moulding teams as inspiration for his own makeover at the Madejski.
The three-time Premier League winner told SunSport: “I’ve worked with top players at United and a top manager at United. You can use that for yourself to eventually get success.
“You need to find your own way and combine all the the things that you think will work out for yourself.
“And also you need to learn from managers who you think were not good enough. You have certain things and think ‘OK, I’m never going to do that’.
“As a player who played at a top level, you are always searching for certain things from managers that you have worked with and that you can bring into your own style of management.
“Fergie was very important in that because he was the type of manager who was extremely good in building a team in his own way that he wanted to play.
“That’s very interesting because a lot of managers just buy players without thinking, ‘Does he fit in my system that I want to play’.
“Ferguson was very good in buying players for a certain position. Players need to have a certain quality to fit in the team.”
Stam has already begun his own Reading rebuild with new signings such as Chelsea’s John Swift and Joey van den Berg.
The latter is a 30-year-old Dutch midfielder who six years ago was washing dishes in a pizza place but had a rebirth working with Stam in Holland in the last few seasons and could be one of the characters of the coming campaign.
It is not surprising that Stam is turning to those kind of off-the-wall buys as Reading look to change tack from spending big money on fees and wages and think more creatively in the market.
Stam is embracing that challenge in his first managerial post and wants to do it in style, insisting that despite being known as a defensive player, he is keen for his side to play attacking football - although he stressed Reading will not become Ajax Mk II.
And the steely-eyed boss cannot wait to make his bow at home to Preston on Saturday, 6 August where he hopes to herald a new dawn that will at some point take the club back to the Promised Land.
The ex-AC Milan star, who spoke to Ronald Koeman and Guus Hiddink before he took the job, said: “The club is ambitious in that eventually they want to go back to the Premier League. That’s not saying it will be next season.
“We are competing with a lot of big teams in the league with a lot of money. We need to be inventive in what we do in terms of players coming in, and salaries that we can’t pay. But we still want quality players.
“For this coming season, it would be nice if we could go up the table and maybe be around the 10th spot, maybe a bit higher, maybe a bit lower.
“We want to play attractive football as well. If we can do that, the results will come as well.”
One star who has left Reading is Wales hero Hal Robson-Kanu, after his contract expired before Stam arrived at the club.
But the Dutchman is unfussed at the loss of a player who scored the goal of Euro 2016 as he lacked consistency.
He said: “I’ve got a question: How many games did he do well?
“He’s got certain qualities and when I signed at Reading I saw clips of him. I knew at the time he was leaving the club.
“Now he played for Wales and scored a fantastic goal against Belgium. You know how it goes in the Championships, if you do well a couple of times or score a nice goal then everybody is bragging about you and writing stories about you.
“But the thing is and what I find from players is that they need to be consistent. For the ten games that they play, they need to bring it eight times.”