The glass ceiling....truth or fiction.

[toffee matt]

How do you define a world class manager though? If he wins the PL this season, does that make him so?

Managers are very much a product of their environment and luck is hugely under-estimated. Clough was awful at Leeds for instance. Ferguson could have been sacked very early in his tenure, and quite possibly would have retired earlier than he did had they not fluked the first CL win in Barcelona.

Was Avram Grant a better manager than Mourinho because he got Chelsea to a CL final where Jose didn't? Quite probably not. Luck, y'see. Mourinho suffered from a iffy ref display against Barca. Avram Grant suffered bad luck in the penalty shoot out against United.

What makes Mourinho world class in my eyes, is that he built the team and the style of play which was used by grant and is still used today. Luck does pay a huge part in football people seem to forget if it wasn't for a dodgy ref barca would have never won the treble and be known as one of the greatest ever teams

 

[steken1]

And a £140m wage bill which got them about 12 more points than us last year with a £60m wage bill. There is such a diminishing rate of return on wages at that level of the table.



How?

Take Wenger as an example, he won loads, Chelsea and City came along and now he wins nothing. No club with a £60m wage bill will get anywhere near the league.

You'd need to double it to have any chance.

Yes mate I agree to some extent. My overriding point is that in a lot of ways Wenger has built the club up to the point of carrying that wage bill and by being canny in the transfer market helped his board massively in building the Emirates. That now allows them to compete with most clubs.

WHY??? As much as anything I'd say it was his style of play which grew them. They wen't from boring, boring Arsenal to the most exciting side in europe for quite a while. That brings sponsors, new fans, good players and the money that follows these.

 

[blue61]

The best thing that could happen in the premiership is for a so called 'unfashionable club' to win it, preferably us. Not holding my breath mind.

 

[Allezfan]

The dodgy ref was under hiddink not jose, anyway.

It was liverpool that spiked Mourinho.

 

[Allezfan]

Yes mate I agree to some extent. My overriding point is that in a lot of ways Wenger has built the club up to the point of carrying that wage bill and by being canny in the transfer market helped his board massively in building the Emirates. That now allows them to compete with most clubs.

WHY??? As much as anything I'd say it was his style of play which grew them. They wen't from boring, boring Arsenal to the most exciting side in europe for quite a while. That brings sponsors, new fans, good players and the money that follows these.

But that style of play, and the fitness nutritional stuff that allowed it, worked because it was a novelty. No other english club cared about training and nutrition and fitness and possession in the same way.

Now everyone does the same. You'd have to find something that no-one currently does now and do it.

 

[peteblue]

Money makes things a lot easier, but I can't be doing with this defeatist 'I haven't got money so I can't win' crap. Wigan, Swansea, even the RS won a Carling cup and they were seriously gash.....

 

[Brownie]

How do you define a world class manager though? If he wins the PL this season, does that make him so?

Managers are very much a product of their environment and luck is hugely under-estimated. Clough was awful at Leeds for instance. Ferguson could have been sacked very early in his tenure, and quite possibly would have retired earlier than he did had they not fluked the first CL win in Barcelona.

Was Avram Grant a better manager than Mourinho because he got Chelsea to a CL final where Jose didn't? Quite probably not. Luck, y'see. Mourinho suffered from a iffy ref display against Barca. Avram Grant suffered bad luck in the penalty shoot out against United.

Whilst luck obviously plays a role, I remember reading Guardiola saying something like, "You must be so much better than the opposition that luck doesn't come into it." It's not an excuse.

 

[steken1]

But that style of play, and the fitness nutritional stuff that allowed it, worked because it was a novelty. No other english club cared about training and nutrition and fitness and possession in the same way.

Now everyone does the same. You'd have to find something that no-one currently does now and do it.

Bridging that gap between talented 18-21's and premier league footballers??? There will always be opportunities and a great manager will always find them and build on them.

 

[Allezfan]

Money makes things a lot easier, but I can't be doing with this defeatist 'I haven't got money so I can't win' crap. Wigan, Swansea, even the RS won a Carling cup and they were seriously gash.....

Yeah, anyone can win a cup.

You can add pompey, leicester, boro, blackburn, birmingham etc to that.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

No, it wouldn't.

I agree about luck and I agree that some jobs are easier than others and some jobs require different skills and that it's sometimes easier to win eight trophies with a good team than keep a bad team in the league but the latter will never get the same praise.

But a world class manger is, to me, one who can transform a losing team into a winning team. And Moyes couldn't.

Well we had finished in the top 10 once in the decade before Moyes, and during his decade in charge we finished in the top 8, 8 times. I'd say that's a transformation of a losing team into a winning one. In Premier League history there are very few sides that have done that AND maintained it over several seasons without spending a lot of money.

 

[Michael Tsui]

If you want parity look at the MLS today. A mere 11 point difference between #1 and #15, two thirds in the season. Below that was the trash heap which there is a gap of 19 points between #15 and #19.

Financial parity is exactly the reason why there is a ceiling. From a business perspective, staying at #17 every season makes most financial sense.

 

[Allezfan]

Bridging that gap between talented 18-21's and premier league footballers??? There will always be opportunities and a great manager will always find them and build on them.

I agree.

All I'm saying is that the richer and better run that the rich clubs get, the harder it is to find something they're not doing.

Wenger was relatively fortunate in coming into a league that was a little backward compared to mainland europe.

 

[roydo]

Yes mate I agree to some extent. My overriding point is that in a lot of ways Wenger has built the club up to the point of carrying that wage bill and by being canny in the transfer market helped his board massively in building the Emirates. That now allows them to compete with most clubs.

WHY??? As much as anything I'd say it was his style of play which grew them. They wen't from boring, boring Arsenal to the most exciting side in europe for quite a while. That brings sponsors, new fans, good players and the money that follows these.

Wengers greatest advantage/talent when he first came to Arsenal was that he was streets ahead in terms of knowing young, untapped foreign talent. He bought them over young, coached brilliantly, and reaped the rewards. Fergie shared similar traits. Trouble is, Citeh & Chelsea dont need to bother with development/nurture of youth, but that seems to be changing with the massive investment in their youth set ups.

 

[Allezfan]

Well we had finished in the top 10 once in the decade before Moyes, and during his decade in charge we finished in the top 8, 8 times. I'd say that's a transformation of a losing team into a winning one. In Premier League history there are very few sides that have done that AND maintained it over several seasons without spending a lot of money.

A winning team would have won a cup. We were a middling team under moyes.

Which is fine, restoring repeatability to a losing club on a paupers budget is an excellent achievement and one most premier league managers can't do. But it's not world class.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

A winning team would have won a cup. We were a middling team under moyes.

Which is fine, restoring repeatability to a losing club on a paupers budget is an excellent achievement and one most premier league managers can't do. But it's not world class.

Surely by that yardstick then we have a world class manager now? I'm not sure that's the case.