the nascent appeal of managerial competency

Yes, and that probably meant that getting his players to carry out negative tactics much easier - they knew they were suited to them. Whereas if Mourinho can get next year's Real Madrid team, which scored 102 league goals this season, to continue to play in a reactionary style against Barcelona (and win this time), it'll be largely a product of his personality/man management abilities.

I think Ferguson and United's utter dominance of the Premiership era has let to a load of entrenched received wisdom about "the right way" to manage a football club vs all others but Fergie kinda got lucky being the best team at the right time and having the right kids at the same time and his reputation has lived off that for a long time.

Real were utter shit during the first leg at home. They looked like they were either cowed (hard to believe), had lost Jose's script, or had started to believe in Barca and not in themselves.

That come-back against Bayern wasn't 'having' the right kids was it, Matt? Solskjær was practically unknown before signing and Sheringham was brought in 'cause Cantona had left and it showed the kind of grit that Ferguson insisted on.

That's true but I'm not really talking about winning Champions Leagues, I'm talking about building a philosophy of how to successfully manage in England. And in England there are only two - Ferguson and Wenger, and the shine has come off the latter a bit.

His annoying moments of cecity aside, I don't think Wenger's all that different than he was 'at his peak'. I think that with the influx of foreign money and players and managers (of which he was a def harbinger), the league is much more competitive and his relative spending money compared to other clubs is down. Also van Injury etc... The draw against Newcastle was a disgrace, though, so maybe he deserves some of his present lack of lustre.

He's not really made signings of the quality of Vieira/Anelka/Henry over the last few years though. A concurrent decline in French football might also have something to do with it.

Winning the Cup Winners' Cup with Aberdeen answers any charges that good fortune played a part with Ferguson. He'd've been an amazing success anywhere. That generation of great kids was an absolute freak, but without them he'd just've won things a different way (see e.g. this season).

xpost re: Wenger - As has been pointed out many times, heseems to be trying to protect his legacy by moving the goalposts - defining the club's success in terms of achievement given certain limitations, mainly the youth of his teams and the relatively low transfer expenditure (balanced by a high wage bill), but also the stylishness of the football they play.

Maybe Wenger's less comfortable judging talent from outside Ligue 1, which could help account for the sizeable gap between the France-sourced invincibles and the likes of Rosicky, Hleb, Arshavin. I still think his current French gambles (Nasri, Koscielny, Chamakh) could end up being successes. And Eduardo was just bad luck.

Wenger's best three signings didn't come from Ligue 1.

One thing I don't get about the Fergie legacy is the fact that he won so much with a well developed youth team doesn't seem to be taken into account. It is all in the cult of Fergie personality and although lauded players like Beckham, Scholes and Giggs obviously grew up living and breathing the Utd way, it is rarely spoken of as an important quality. (Maybe because the two best players to play under Ferguson were Schmiechal and Ronaldo, leading people to not focus so hard on it.)

although lauded players like Beckham, Scholes and Giggs obviously grew up living and breathing the Utd way, it is rarely spoken of as an important quality.

Uh, it's spoken about all the time

cantona, for a start.

yeah cantona surely the key signing, more so than ronaldo certainly.

Still baffling why Leeds let him go to their main rivals. It's impossible to imagine an equivalent transfer happening today.

Supposedly Fergie asked Houillier if Cantona was as much as a headcase as was rumoured at the time and Ged told him that the stories from France were exaggerated and that cantona hadn't been treated that well by the federation and that he'd been fine for Fergie. Thanks Ged.

Top ten key signings in order, something like this imo:

Cantona
Keane
Schmeichel
Ronaldo
Vidic
Ferdinand
Van Nistelrooy
Stam
Rooney
Sheringham

Crikey, they've signed a lot of top players in the last twenty years.

I might put Yorke and Ince in there as well. Yorke was incredible for a couple of seasons. Oh and Andy Cole.

Solskjaer?

Evra, Hernandez, re-signing Hughes, it just goes on & on.

Wenger's best three signings didn't come from Ligue 1.

Bergkamp didn't, but it's fair to say that Vieira and Henry did. Their Serie A performances aren't what made Wenger buy them.

It's appropriate that this conversation took a Ferguson/United tribute detour - something to cheer them up when they read it. They did play a great first half.

Did wenger even sign bergkamp? Thought that was Rioch.

correct

i suppose of the recent french hypes, he got nasri, missed menez, gourcuff couldn't really be accomodated alongside fabregas, and benzema was out of his price range after a few months in lyon's first team

lloris, sakho, m'vila, sissoko are probably all feasible if he's prepared to cough up

fyi i meant ljungberg, henry and cesc

ljungberg was a great signing alright, but could you put him ahead of vieira?

vieira wasnt technically a wenger signing - he came before him.

did not know that

Wasn't signing Viera and Garde part of Wenger's conditions for taking the job?

Not conditions - he recommended them to Dein while discussing signing.

an ffs give them to him

How does the search function work on dis ting? Trying to find the first appearance of "in a good moment" on ILX just gives me a load of Ronan's posts from 2001 talking about Thing X being 'good at the moment'.

― Ismael Klata, Friday, 27 May 2011 16:12 (3 months ago)

steaua bucharest manager ronny levi says 'we are now not in a good moment' on romanian stream of porto/benfica

im too ineloquent to express what ive been thinking lately. well pondering. it's not an original thought, and even managers themselves sometimes hint towards it, perhaps in moments of false humility. essentially my musing is this: is the role of the manager in football greatly overstated, and in fact can they be credited in any major way with their teams success? you may answer yes, many managers perform well wherever they go, or perform well over a long period of time at one club with many different teams. there are lots of anecdotal examples which show that there is such a thing as managerial excellence. id counter by saying that equally there are a thousand examples of managers who go from the highest heights to the doldrums within a very short period of time. who are fabulous one season and shite the next, with very little visible change in the set-up/squad they're managing.

let's take the example of pep guardiola, one of the highest rated managers in world football. his style of play is the style of play of the club he is at, he's merely the inheritor of it, though perhaps if you were being generous you could say he's brought about the apotheosis of this quick passing, possession football. it is a style he was taught as a player, and which is inculcated in the players of the barca cantera, of whom he has many in his squad. he also has perhaps the greatest starting 11 in world football, and in xavi and messi two of the more or less undisputed top 3 players in the world. yet this season his team has a terrible away record, and barring a miracle is not going to win the league. is this his fault? and if so how?
marcelo bielsa on being praised as a manager: "they praise you for winning, not for deserving to win". are football games not often determined by luck? by a player, from either side, taking a chance or not? how is the manager to be praised for winning a game 1-0 when an opposition player has skied the ball inside the 6 yard box on 90 minutes? the team i support, celtic, have won something like 15 games on the trot in all competitions, in a number of those games they've been fairly woeful and the opposition has squandered chances that wouldve meant a draw or possibly defeat for the team. he is currently beloved by the support and won a manager of the month award, but i can't honestly say the team is playing much better than it was earlier in the season when we were dropping points and people, myself included, were calling for his head. e.g. in october we drew 0-0 with hibs at home, we had a few chances to win the game, we didn't take them. we recently beat st mirren 2-0 away, both shots were from outside the box, st mirren had the better play and the better chances. how can lennon be credited or blamed for either of those results?

avb: the subject of this thread, its inspiration. great at porto, highly rated, no-one can deny he's a disappointment at chelsea. we can talk of transition, of an aging squad, we can say that given time he may be able to introduce his ways of thinking, his style of play, bring in players he wishes to work with, get rid of the deadweight he inherited. but equally he may never fulfil his promise, and maybe having hulk and falcao up front is p much all you need to win the portuguese league and the europa league?

another chelsea example: avram grant. a bawhair away from being a winner of the champions league. did nothing more at portsmouth than embarrass himself being caught at a massage parlor. is now managing in serbia.

el flaco menotti, won argentina their first world cup, incidentally leaving the 17 year old maradona out of his squad, at the age of 39. he became something of a managerial journeyman. later in his career, yet not quite in his dotage or anything, he would have a stint of something like 6 weeks at sampdoria before being fired.

i know this is all really pretty remedial stuff but im just wondering out loud.

there's a book, which i think is somewhat trolling really, called "football, dynamic of the unthought" by dante panzeri, which i don't think has been translated into english, but which i might buy in spanish, if i can be bothered paying like £30 for a book, in which the case is put forward that managers are not an indispensable part of football. he says that managers can contribute around 10% towards a victory of their team, and that systems of play don't really exist. yes, this seems a little far, but his main thrust, that football games are won and lost by players adapting to and improvising collaboratively with the unexpected turns in play, which is not something the manager can inculcate or a system can dictate, appeals to me.

that football games are won and lost by players adapting to and improvising collaboratively with the unexpected turns in play, which is not something the manager can inculcate or a system can dictate, appeals to me.

I think the point about Brendan Rogers counts a huge amount here.(And remember BR studied under Jose.) Rogers didn't introduce a new tactic to Swansea or buy superstar players* and instead focused in training on making the right decisions under pressure. He comes across more as a motivational coach than a typical football manager when you hear or read about his tactics. And it has worked! Honestly, getting footballers to *expand their mind* and *think* has turned journeymen into team people love to watch and that are exceptionally hard to beat.

And part of the reason Pep is struggling now is that he has a bunch of players who have won everything. Pique is the poster boy of this, having supposedly stopped thinking abt how to play and just going along for the ride.

Another example is one I read in the paper today - Wolves had 8 shots on target and so did we. We scored 7 of them though and Wolves hung on by a thread. Arsenal have a long history of a manager known to work on decision making and thinking about what you are doing, whereas Mick isn't exactly the most high minded of footballing brains and I'm sure we've read NV go into detail abt this. This has been the art to Utd over the years - think about taking your chances with confidence and you'll get them. No other team in the country has that swagger to *feel* they deserve points regardless of how well they've been playing or how they've been tactically. Fergie has got to be the best long term motivational life coach about, in this regard. Celtic players surely have a similar swag.**

I don't think it must always come down to 10% - maybe that 10% is motivational dressing room speeches or tactical awareness. Sometimes I think getting dudes to actually *think* and prepare is the huge pink elephant in the room. Indeed, Pep got rid of Deco, Ronnie and co. because they couldn't give a toss and assumed natural ability would win them everything, while instead keeping maybe less naturally talented guys like Keita and promoting Pedro because they worked for the team, thought about what they were doing and were passionate abt it. Maybe he needs to have another shake up right now for dudes who have become as blase as Ronnie was.

*Scott Sinclair might count for Swansea, idk.
**Wonder how much of this is to do with the *club aura* too.

some good points. maybe it's more that managers matter more for the things youve talked about, working with the players, motivating them, rather than the tactics and substitutions etc.

then of course there's behaviour in the transfer market, although that of course differs from club to club, few managers truly have free reign i wouldve imagined? even someone like ferguson must be given a budget.

i am being a little simplistic here in many of the things i say, i have always conceded that i understand little about the actual mechanics of the game of football. i think i can understand individual player performances and such, but not the bigger picture.

management theory is basically all about, to a larger or lesser extent/mix, the installation of systems of decision-making, feedback and control, motivation.

across any sector or discipline

oh i think only jose and mancini have free reign in terms of both being able to spend what they want, on who they want and knowing they'd want to go.

i think it is more obvious in special managers what they do when managers can be important, as opposed to having importance just by being a manager, you know? Take McLeish. He doesn't seemingly *ADD* anything to a club that he manages. Not tactically, not mentally, he doesn't have a track record in improving teams technical ability or *development* of players and seemingly no real effect in duties like transfers.

this isn't to say McLeish is a bad manager. He's done more than most managers will ever do. He just kinda *controls* his team, makes sure he has 11 appropriate players to play and sometimes his team wins, sometimes they lose. Nothing seems to happen that couldn't happen with someone else. It is the McLeish's of the world that make being a manager look a little pointless to the process although I'm sure just having 11 appropriate players to play is a hard responsibility in itself.

But compare to O'Neill. We know Sunderland are field with some god-awful shite and yet isn't there a stat to say they'd be top if the season started when MON took over? And now they play a game worth watching? He hasn't radically changed the tactics and has only changed a few players. Most importantly, this seems like more than a new-manager bump before settling into 'oh well sometimes we win/draw/lose.' He has given the club overwhelming direction and spirit without having to spend loads of money and using most of the same people. There is more than 10% to O'Neill, he can't have just found McClean and Sissegnon locked in a cupboard being played by imposters. He must have done something tangible behind closed doors that proves him a great manager with these guys.

field? filled! my brain is more fried than usual.

O'Neill is certainly a prime motivator. Jim will know better than me, but I remember hearing about him introducing himself at Celtic by asking the players if they thought they could win the league this year, getting a lukewarm few hands raised; then telling them he knew they could win the league, before going on to convince them they could, to eventual great enthusiasm; all in the first session! I assume they did win the league that year, it'd be disappointing to find they finished eighteen points off the pace after that.

That his default mode seems to be in producing fairly lumpen football is a puzzlement to me. Aiui he's not a coacher himself - you'd think he'd be keen to seek out more adept coaches to work with, rather than the few trusties who seem to only produce variations on the same thing.

given that

(i) almost any player that reaches squad epl level has the ability to perform at least adequately in at least one

(ii) as alluded to, tactics will only really ever increase the chances of certain occurrences on the pitch, and will never decide the outcome of even one of thoseindividual occurrences

it follows that motivation is the most important of the functions of a manager.

o'neill has a template that he v rarely deviates from, probably because he is a first-class motivator and communicator and has found that tinkering about within his limited tactical abilities isn't worth the payoff for him.

mourinho has both, obv.

think pep maybe derives his legitimacy from his technical prowess? slightly different dynamic imo.

"in at least one position"

I always assumed that with most managers (big names excluded) they simply managed in the same way as a CEO manages a company - eg appoints the right people, decides what the general strategy of the team will be, impart a personality or style of play onto a team, then lets his subordinates actually do the work. We then have one guy who is responsible for tactics (one in-game, one pre-game maybe? I don't know if being able to look at numbers and patterns of play on paper would equal doing it in real-time looking at legs), one guy responsible for transfers, one guy for fitness, one guy for technique etc etc.

i'm sure i've said elsewhere that as a speculative rule 10 percent of managers improve a side, 10 percent actively worsen them and the other 80 percent probably don't make a lot of difference (cf. theories of the "good enough parent") here. to make things more complicated, i'd suggest that for most managers you can't guarantee which of those bands they'll fall into at any one club - there is also a question of "fit", plus external circumstances, financial mostly, often beyond a manager's control.

i've no doubt that in the Football Manager era tactics have become over-hyped in some quarters. but an historical overview of the game will tell you that tactics do evolve and mutate. maybe we could think of it as an arms race in which the team that innovates significantly in a way that unlocks opposition teams has a brief window of opportunity before the majority of teams either adopt or adapt to the new tactical orthodoxy. thinking about the development of Catenaccio or Ramsey's "wingless wonders" or Total Football or the flexible 4-5-1 - you could account for this partly as fashion but i think partly as the arms race i suggested.

(thinking about fashion without thought - how many EPL teams at the moment play with a high defensive line without pressing the ball, as if they know a high line is the thing but don't really know why they're doing it?)

perhaps tactics function most obviously and immediately as a method of negating the opposition rather than creating. there seem to be managers who are very good at that.

agree that the auteur theory is pretty bollocksy tho and that the manager's key role is to build a good team (backroom and players). most managers are probably skilled in 1 or 2 areas, motivating or talent-spotting or coaching. the secret is to fill the gaps in your own abilities.

i wanted to avoid dragging the Wolves into this but i wd suggest that McCarthy is a bad manager inasmuch as he tries to create a backroom in his own image - instead of covering his own deficiencies, he looks for staff who emulate them. players too, to an extent.

avb showing intelligence and competence aren't quite so well correlated

not an attack on lfc, so please

but

if rodgers couldn't use the bulk of talent lfc have spent such large amounts on in recent times, was it a bad decision to appoint him?

not is he a bad manager, more is he not the right manager for a club that find it politically/financially troubling to get rid of the players he isn't inclined to use?

yes this is a little about how awes andy carroll is when used correctly

srsly when was the last time a player as limited as andy carroll ever did anything for a team not trying for 14th in the epl in a good year

will answer all day, but idk if you'd consider any player of modern times as limited as andy carroll

he is just a £35m lodestone for the return of the repressed in english football, the basic and comfortable assumption that you don't need anything more to win than passion and relentlessness

all the worse coming from a team with adebayor who is so much more of a player than carroll it's untrue