How bomb disposal experts helped shape Stevenage boss Revell

Talking to bomb disposal experts might not seem an obvious ingredient to plotting a promotion challenge.

But for Stevenage boss, Alex Revell, it's all about trying to ensure he feels as equipped as possible to handle the pressure that football management brings.

Emergency service workers and even the Red Arrows were also among those that the 42-year-old Revell spoke to while taking his Uefa Pro License.

It was for his presentation on pressure, something he has needed to get used to as Boro manager, despite winning five of their opening six games to sit fourth in League One.

"I spoke to someone who'd been to Afghanistan, one of his best friends stood on a landmine and he's there also trying to deactivate a bomb from the side of the road," said the former striker, who ended his playing career with Stevenage in 2019.

"I spoke to the Red Arrows in terms of how closely they fly together and if one person makes the wrong decision what that looks like and the dangers that come with that.

"I managed to go into all of these different types of places and speak to people, which was incredible for me.

"I wanted to look at factors that affect decision making when under pressure and I wanted to choose those jobs where it's life or death. Bomb disposal, it's red or blue or green, the different wires.

"There's so much belief in their own feel and touch of what they're doing. There are absolute processes and they know the processes day by day which helps them in terms of pressure situations, but also just how confident they were in their own field of their job.

"It gave me such a brilliant perspective of the people that deal every day with life and death.

"When you're in football, that's how it feels sometimes because it's winning and losing.

"The more I've learned, the better I've become. You've just lost a game, how do we bounce back from that? How you deal with it and and continue to be a leader through stormy waters or brilliant, calm, waters?"

Pressure and living with it is something the Revell household deals with - Alex at the top of League One and wife Julia as a neonatologist at Addenbrookes Hospital, in Cambridge.

"She looks after extremely small babies and her job is incredible in terms of what she has to go through at times and helps me a lot in terms of perspective," said the former Rotherham striker.

"When she comes home and she can be mum to our two boys, you realise it is life and death that she's dealing with and the conversations she has are extremely tough. She's taught me a lot."

Revell is in his second spell in charge at the Lamex Stadium, having spent 21 months at Boro while guiding them through the coronavirus pandemic.

Taking over as caretaker in February 2020, just a month before lockdown, Stevenage finished 23rd in League Two after the season was cancelled and positions based on a points-per-game basis.

They survived, having initially finished bottom, after Macclesfield were handed a four-point deduction to drop to the National League.

Revell eventually left in November 2021 but was reappointed in May last year after Steve Evans' departure, having been part of Evans' staff which won promotion from League Two in 2023, recognising he perhaps was not ready initially.

"That's no fault of anyone, that was on me, not leading as a leader and making sure that every day, everybody knew what what I wanted from them, whereas now they absolutely know what's needed, what's required," he said.

"All of those things you have to have confidence for and belief in your own ability and I probably wasn't at that stage.

"But having the time first and obviously then coming back and seeing how Steve worked gave me that opportunity to really start hammering home what I want to see from a team."

Now though, a wiser Revell has Stevenage challenging at the top end of the early table and was nominated for League One's manager of the month for August - won by Cardiff's Brian Barry-Murphy - before Saturday's trip to Mansfield.

The club have never been in the second tier, coming close after losing to Sheffield United in the play-offs in 2012, but Revell believes his squad can go further and reach the Championship.

He said: "Why not? Orient came so close last year, Wycombe came so close. Why not? That's what we are repeating. We want a special year. What that looks like, only May will tell us but we really want to.

"We want to create something special here."