the nascent appeal of managerial competency

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

otm

Nevertheless, it is interesting to consider that a club such as Porto readily appointed Villas-Boas while Burnley discarded him as too cerebral. Fletcher's explanation that Villas-Boas's language and concepts were too complex to be understood by the club's players appears to be based on an assumption that football is a simple game for simple people. It's not just that his ideas were deemed overelaborate, it's also that the players were not considered to have the faculties to understand these ideas.

From this perspective, Burnley's dismissive attitude towards Villas-Boas's language may be more reflective of a clash in footballing culture. And this culture clash is not necessarily one that opposes the British to their continental counterparts. The same attitude can be seen with regard to Brendan Rodgers, a manager who only last season had been praised for his progressive views on football, but whose insistence on sticking to a particular tactical philosophy in post-match interviews appears to be wearing thin with some fans.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/dec/20/andre-villas-boas-avbinglish

that's a really good article, the comparison with mourinho is quite succinct too

yeah i'll read the rest of it later, but it's a little too fukn succinct to cosily/smugly suggest that the reason fans are falling out with rodgers is that they are pigshit-ignorant of how awesome his philosophy is as opposed to being more than sufficiently cognitive to spot that it's not fucking working and he's not proving in any way adept at adapting it.

avb's vocab is immense

The British press's favourite managers, Redknapp and Fergie, pretty much never talk about tactics, but no one gets mocked as mercilessly as a loser who also doesn't appear to know what they're doing - Keegan, Ince etc.

Rogers is doing alright.

deems its not about rodgers' success or otherwise it's about the communication

most managers in his position would be giving it the digging in no surrender etc stuff but he is just sticking to a script, which may be brave or foolhardy or neither but is still fairly distinctive

so would be the wearing of a green feather boa in all public engagements, no reason to laud it at the expense of the perceived footballing intelligence of the masses

P'shaw, perceived footballing intelligence - this is just the rules of the playground. Christian Gross would've been bullied in any British school, Tony Pulis would not. Mourinho would be the pied piper anywhere. Sure you can do it differently, but you're pulling off a highwire act and when you stumble, the little rats pounce.

lol deems you are too clever to be giving this the fanfare for the common man treatment

the article is about the language used by managers, it has nothing to do with whether joe allen is worth £15m or jose enrique is a winger, nor is it laudatory about rodgers (though it is guardedly so re vyash bwash)

you will have known this by the time you have read the damn thing

article also implies that those avatars of plebeian knuckle dragging, the players themselves, are more intelligent than the mill-owner ideology of trad british fitba hierarchy would allow

ffs ok i'll read it