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Housequake
Player Valuation: £8m
Check edited post above before you posted that
Arteta didn't join until January mate WTF?
Again, check edited post above.
what date did arteta join?
Feb 05.
bluejock
Boss coat aficionado
Sorry but that season in 2005, the league table did lie. We're the only team in the history of the Premier League to finish in the top 4 with a negative goal difference. Hence why we promptly finished 11th the season after, with pretty much the same squad
I'm not a big Moyes fan, but you have to give him credit for that season, he pieced together a system that worked, got Graveson playing the best football of his career, his transfer of Cahill was vital, and used Big Dunc very well off the bench. Its probably one of the only times I've seen Moyes ahead of the curve tactically in the league, but he seemed to get stuck in that mould for a good while after
The league table never lies. It's 38 games.
Also, it wasn't exactly a competitive league below us - it wasn't a case of "plucky little Everton" amidst a load of financial powerhouse teams. Bolton finished 6th, Middlesbrough finished 7th. Man City were not the financial powerhouses they are today, Tottenham were lacklustre. Liverpool were distracted heavily by the Champions League campaign.
Obviously we did well but the state of the league meant that anywhere from 6th to 17th was contentious if a club could have a good run and do well in the market over the summer. We were tipped to struggle by the idiotic media because Rooney left but we were a really solid squad on paper when set against a lot of the dross around us.
Foot Long Hot Dog
Player Valuation: A packet of pork scratchings
We'd escaped relegation by 6 points at the end of the previous season, we lost the best kid of his generation in the summer & brought in Marcus Bent & a midfielder from Millwall. It's no wonder the press were tipping us to go down that season, we had no right whatsoever to finish in the top 4 with that squad.
Well how many managers have actually achieved something honestly impressive in the english game in the last 20 years?
You reguarly get smaller team winning the league cup or reaching a final or finishing 6th or 7th but mostly the rich clubs finish at the top and the poor clubs at the bottom and everyone basically does about as well as you'd expect.
There's been three hugely impressive feats at the top end (Ferguson maintaining Man U's domination over a 20 year period, Wenger going unbeaten through a league campaign and Benitez winning the CL with the crap that Benitez won the CL with) and there's been three impressive feats with poorer teams (Royle winning the FA cup with the crap Walker left him, Martinez winning it with the wigan squad and Moyes finishing 4th with a team that finished 17th the previous year while every other team in the league outspent him.)
Otherwise there hasn't really been any top managerial achievements. No clough or shankly who brough a team up from the lower leagues to the top of the european game. By and large most premier league managers are about as good as each other. It's only in the lower leagues where the difference between the good ones and the bad ones is really obvious.
Foot Long Hot Dog
Player Valuation: A packet of pork scratchings
It depends on what you class as impressive tbh. Everything is relative.
The gulf between the haves & have not's has widened significantly over the last 20 years & it's therefore made 'coming out of the pack' to challenge at the peak, neigh on impossible unless you have someone prepared to throw hundreds of £m's at it.
The game is more polarised financially now, so it makes managers achievements more relative to the resources they have at their disposal. Some of the managers of promoted clubs who've kept their sides up & then established them in the division, probably deserve as many plaudits as Matteo got for winning the CL.
Probably but I don't think either are that impressive.
Jewell and Houghton keeping Norwich and Wigan up on very low budgets is impressive, but they only needed to better other struggling teams. And Di Matteo inherited a european powerhouse. Both of them did well to win their weight categories but they were only competing against slightly better teams.
It's not the same as reaching the level above what is to be expected of you. The six examples I used won a weight class they shouldn't even be competing in.
But you're right, that the skill to win trophies with rich successful teams is one we prioritise more than the skill to keep poor unsuccessful teams competitive. And that might not be fair. Both are difficult.
Foot Long Hot Dog
Player Valuation: A packet of pork scratchings
It's just life mate, you can't polish 15th place & you'd not have an open topped bus parade to celebrate it, despite the fact, that in relative terms - it could be viewed as a tremendous achievement to a newly promoted club.
It's a real shame that the financial chasm is now so wide, it was never like that when I was young, most clubs would start the season thinking they had a chance of achieving something.
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