the nascent appeal of managerial competency

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

we're not finding the middle ground here

much like a big sam team with carroll in it tbf

yes adebayor is more of a football than carroll, but far worse in the air and as a central physical striking presence

these are aspects of the game you mightn't have much time for, but they exist

re rodgers -- i think he may have a slightly ~political~ idea of how football against my description of his supposed inspiration mourinho itt as' responsive to general trends and not at all prescriptive about how football ought to be played'

that said i don't think a more pragmatic manager could have any use for charlie adam who is just straight dogshit

they might try to use carroll, but only as a subtitute and not as the focal point, which thanks to his ludicrous price tag would be such an admission of failure that it would be preferable to try to preserve/enhance his resale value by putting him in the right downhome shop window

his suggestion of playing downing at lb may be unorthodox but if he does it, and it works even reasonably well, then he is using resources well

these are aspects of the game you mightn't have much time for, but they exist

― darraghback (darraghmac), Saturday, September 1, 2012 12:20 PM (6 minutes ago)

oh come on this is ludicrous piety

they exist in the championship, the 1980s and in international teams trying to emulate greece

adebayor is physically as powerful as carroll, while being a lot faster and more agile (probably the most agile 6'3 forward there has been)

he doesn't spend as much time trying to beat up defenders because he doesn't have to

the distinction between carroll, crouch, cole and other cunts and drogba, benzema, ibrahimovic, adriano is that the former basically succeed via 'knockdowns'

is there even a term for 'knockdown' in spanish idk?

someone like drogba is infinitely more valuable because they can actually CONTROL a 40 yard pass while fending off a defender

the idea that a top level centre forward can succeed by knocking down headers for an onrushing lil man and heading in crosses, with basically no speed, no control and limited shooting ability is not just a political one, it's simply how things are

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

― Number None, Saturday, May 28, 2011 10:39 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

re rodgers -- i think he may have a slightly ~political~ idea of how football against my description of his supposed inspiration mourinho itt as' responsive to general trends and not at all prescriptive about how football ought to be played'

yeah, absolutely.

i'd love for adebayor to be this centre forward you describe, as is he's as well to be 5' 10" for all he uses his height. losing out aerially to defenders isn't a badge of courage in playing the right way or anything

adebayor scored an amazing header vs fulham a few years ago, and when he played for madrid he only seemed to score headers iirc

A side more renowned for its grounded, flowing football than an ability to crunch headers into the net from crosses into the box have developed a new dimension with Adebayor, 6ft 4in but armed with the ability to hang in the air as if plucked from a Jet Li movie, offering a focal point.

His headed reward on Saturday was emphatic, the African towering above, first, the left half and then the right of Fulham's flustered back-line. "He's a monster," said Jimmy Bullard. "A standing jump as high as the crossbar? No one in the Premier League can mark that."

moot now rip big man

after croatia won 3-2 at wembley (then mclaren/umbrella game) bilic said he told his defenders not to worry about competing with kraaaatxi for headers, because he has such poor control once he actual 'wins' them, then they could make sure on collecting the second ball

lord knows if this shit was going to work, nikola zigic would be playing for real madrid

remember when 'bullard 4 england' was kind of a thing?

yeah, bullard briefly promised a golden future of cheeky chappy banter, third rate le tissiers and soccer AM uber alles

then landfill indie died

tbh idk why i've raised the q as i haven't time to answer nilmar, not even sure i have the answers tbf, good rebuttals all but i feel the drive behind them is in large part political, using your own descriptor

adebayor starts on the bench ffs

carroll will have a season in the next ten years where he scores 15+ epl goals, basically does as well as grant holt last season, and some other cunts will spend a fortune on him and the cycle will repeat

i'd love for adebayor to be this centre forward you describe, as is he's as well to be 5' 10" for all he uses his height. losing out aerially to defenders isn't a badge of courage in playing the right way or anything

― darraghback (darraghmac), Saturday, 1 September 2012 13:54 (4 hours ago)

did this just happen at spurs? his time in madrid he was killer in the air. at city he was really good too.

clearly he must have shrunk

he doens't really seems to challenge much in the air, i can only remember him scoring two or three headers last season and he's leaves cb's to it mostly. see his lack off challenge for the aerial ball that led to the norwich goal today, in fact.

tbh, he's never actually in the box nor at the end of a cross so it's maybe uncharitable for me to straight up denigrate his aerial ability, it's not like with crouch where any fool can see the cunt's just shit in the air for all his trying, adebayor is on some 'It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt' trip, but just re: heading a football

this isn't to be deemed a go at adebayor, he should have started today and we were even worse before he came on, like

i really dislike this thread title now

nah it's good imo

top clubs have mostly appointed competence even if it didn't appear in the form of technocratic determinists like avb

further down the pyramid they still appoint from the old boys club, hence steve bruce STILL getting a job in the championship, no sign that being completely fucking useless is any detraction

no denying any of it

this summer brought a huge leap fwd in the epl tho, in terms of a changing of the guard.

maybe

steve clarke seems to have surprised a lot of people but west brom have generally hired (and fired) well since, mowbray, di matteo and hodgson

swansea too did well to avoid panicking and giving it to curbishley or someone...but then they were building on martinez and rodgers

tottenham could have gone for a more old school manager in moyes but chose avb (though that neglects what an adaptable thinker moyes is)

i like the way domestic and foreign managers don't seem to be separate tribes any more, rodgers possesses the skills/ideology that you used to only find abroad, or you can appoint a lazy chancer like sven who is more inculcated into the english old boys club than anyone

yeah sven is p much archetype 'english' manager

oh hull, i never noticed you took on that prat.

bar hughes, pulis and big sam, the premiership is looking p decently stocked of intrestng managers imo, even the ones who look like they may have a shitty season (houghton, adkins, avb, lambert) at least seem to have a bit of integrity and understanding of what they are trying to do. it may not correspond with what i like about the game or anything near success for them, but at least it isn't a breed dickhead chancers

judgement reserved on avb tbph, chelsea may have been a fluke, but then so may porto

gotta admit i'm still struggling to list all 20 teams in the epl this season let alone remember eg clarke is a manager in this league. lots of 'oh...yeeeah' moments

stretching right now to remember who this clarke is.

oh that guy.

ikr?

gotta admit i'm still struggling to list all 20 teams in the epl this season let alone remember eg clarke is a manager in this league. lots of 'oh...yeeeah' moments

― Randy Carol (darraghmac), Saturday, 1 September 2012 19:46 (28 minutes ago)

really since venkys left i think we all just lost the love

bar hughes, pulis and big sam, the premiership is looking p decently stocked of intrestng managers imo, even the ones who look like they may have a shitty season (houghton, adkins, avb, lambert) at least seem to have a bit of integrity and understanding of what they are trying to do. it may not correspond with what i like about the game or anything near success for them, but at least it isn't a breed dickhead chancers

― a hoy hoy, Saturday, September 1, 2012 6:39 PM (35 minutes ago)

yeah pretty much

what about mcdermott? idk him at all

i really should have put him in instead of avb, but BANTAH and all

reading don't play esp enticing or exotic football but if it wasn't for a few gk cock ups and an offside goal they'd already look like a steady midtable team. mcdermott had a better season than reading or anyone last season, by which i mean he coached a kinda hopeless boring lot to an insane clean sheet record and winning games. he could turn out a moyes type imo - he won't bring any special new ideas or be even v memorable but he looks v good at his job

http://i.imgur.com/HUgwt.jpg?1

rmde at scandalized bawheids going on abt ~thuggery~ directed at fucking stoke players