Are trophies a measure of progress?

LawCharltonBest

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Seen this debate pop up over the last few days due to Erik ten Hag's comments regarding his two trophies being a sign of progress. And Solskjaer's differing comments from a few years ago have resurfaced saying that trophies can mask a Club's progress.

Both were said when the manager in question was getting poor results, so both comments were criticised at the time of being said.

Where do you stand on it?

 
"Trophies aren't a measure of progress" - "YOU'RE feckING SHIT, WE WANT TROPHIES YOU cnut

"I won two trophies" - "YOU'RE feckING SHIT, TROPHIES DON'T MEAN ANYTHING YOU cnut"

Basically, anything that can be used against a United manager will be, as fans are, in the main, reactionary cnuts with no idea. Me included.
 
I think it depends on the trophies.

A club as big as United isn't content with being a cupfighter who is irrelevant for the top spots in the league (at least, I assume so). The fact is, United have regressed quite alarmingly in terms of league results last year and in the end winning the league (or at least contending) is the main goal and best measuring stick of consistent progress. Cup competitions are great, because the best team doesn't always win. So winning the FA cup is a nice feat, but says feck all about progress.
 
For me, league position is a much better indicator of progress than winning a cup. I remember people constantly bringing up how the experience of winning a cup can help us take the next step but nothing has really changed despite us winning a fair few cups since 2013.

We've won more titles than Arsenal since Mikel joined but no one in their right mind would say we've progressed more than them.
 
The league, yes. You can't really fluke that. At worst the league itself is in a bit a of a rut, leading to some fairly mediocre teams winning it (the PL from 2014 to 2017 for instance). But even then you're still the best of a bad lot.

The CL is also hard to fluke, but Liverpool has done it and Chelsea has done it twice.

Domestic cups barely mean anything up until the moment you suddenly find yourself in the final. But that is still only one game. So no, domestic cups are not a sign of progress. It was always a silly stick to beat Ole with and it's likewise a silly defence of Ten Hag.
 
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FA cup maybe. League cup is meaningless. Everything should be measured by progress to winning the League or UCL. FA cup and Europa can be decent stepping stones.
 
No one takes the League Cup seriously until the semifinals. Your FA Cup came after you came this close to probably one of the worst defeats in your history in the semis.

You can luck your way to a cup trophy if you play decent enough from time to time, even in the CL if the draw goes your way. But the league and the performances in that league should always be the reference. So no, most trophies are not a measure of progress.
 
Cup trophies are obviously way more likely than a league trophy if your team isn’t consistently good. Players can get revved up for knockouts, be lucky on the day, get favourable draws. If you win the league you’ve clearly been doing well well consistently.
 
hasanejaz88 said:
We've won more titles than Arsenal since Mikel joined but no one in their right mind would say we've progressed more than them.
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Wasn't there a thread after last season in which many posters argued that you had a better season than Arsenal because you won the FA Cup and they didn't win anything?

Some people are just wired differently I guess and only care about the silverware. If you win a trophy every season, they might be happy with that. But United's case is a perfect example as to why trophies do not equal progress at all.
 
altodevil said:
FA cup maybe. League cup is meaningless. Everything should be measured by progress to winning the League or UCL. FA cup and Europa can be decent stepping stones.
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It's not meaningless, or the winner wouldn't come from one of the top clubs 19 seasons in every 20.
Lowest priority of the 4 possible trophies yes, meaningless is utterly daft talk.
 
They can be a measure, yes. But certainly not the best measure.

Arsenal didn't win a trophy last season when we did, yet anyone with eyes in their head can see they've made much more progress over recent seasons than us. You could also look back to Mourinho's Europa League winning season with us, where despite winning that trophy it was clear that the trophy-less Liverpool were making more progress overall.
 
Sandikan said:
It's not meaningless, or the winner wouldn't come from one of the top clubs 19 seasons in every 20.
Lowest priority of the 4 possible trophies yes, meaningless is utterly daft talk.
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Meaningless as a measure of progress, in my opinion.
 
The best measure of progress is always league seasons.

A large sample size decreases the chance for anomalies.
 
The whole point of leagues and cup is to be the best and win them.
So yes.

And its the CL and PL that matter - the rest are second rate - nice to haves etc, but really dont stand up against the big two
 
League position is a better barometer, but even then it has to be viewed in conjunction with actual performances.

For example we finished 2nd under Mourinho, but only 6th for xG difference. And that warning sign in terms of underlying statistics was absolutely reflected in what we actually saw on the pitch, where we had a particularly excellent season from De Gea to thank for us overperforming in terms of results. Despite the league finish it was clear there were problems in the way we were actually playing, and it wasn't particularly surprising that this apparent progress turned out to be built on sand.
 
We had a stumbling route to the FA Cup final, and fair enough we had a great performance in the final.

But with the league and CL an utter disaster it takes away alot of the merit, imo.

FA Cup and a top 4 finish and we could have been happy with that.
But all things considered, it's mind boggling that ETH is still here.
 
There's two trophies that really matter and being able to compete in both will always matter more to me than the nice little bonus that is winning the minor trophies.
 
I think they show progress combined with your league position, if you are challenging for the league and pick up the odd cup here or there I would say the majority of us would be happy.
 
points and goal difference is a good measure.

In prestige
CL
PL
FA CUP
League cup

I don´t think winning a FA CUP or league cup while being shite in the 1st two is barometer of succes for Man Utd.
 
Trophies are not a measure of progress. Di Mateo won the CL.

But if you progress enough, trophies will come. Its like a byproduct of progress, but a benchmark of success.
 
I still hold the view that Football being a competitive sport, then winning the competitions we enter should be the main aim.

Sadly, in the modern era, any competition bar the PL and CL is dismissed as pretty insignificant. So if you've not done well in the PL and CL, it's deemed irrelevant what you do in the other competitions.

Personally, going 6 years without a trophy was unacceptable. And winning two trophies in two years is much better. I'd much rather finish 3rd and 8th and win a trophy each season than our previous 5 years - finishing 2nd, 6th, 3rd, 2nd, 6th but going trophyless each season.

Obviously, plenty of things need to be taken into consideration when judging a managers performance. And going from 3rd to 8th to currently 14th is a worrying decline in the league performance. Which is a big cross against him. But actually winning other competitions should be a big tick for him - rather than sneerily dismissed as trophies that don't matter.

They do matter. But managing Man United, with our finances, history and expectations, all the competitions matter. And with our resources and levels of expectation, there's no excuse to be doing so poorly in the league.
 
They can be.

They can also falsely give the impression that a team is progressing and a manager is worth keeping. That's not a dig at Hag, Chelsea have have done similar in the past.
 
The league and UCL trophies are those that really matter. FA Cup is nice to win, but by itself does not mean much, while the League cup is quite irrelevant.

Overall consistently doing in the league and reaching the later stages of UCL is the best measure of success. If you do so, winning the league/UCL becomes a matter of when, not if.
 
How you do in the league is the biggest indicator of progress. Cup competitions are nice to win but you can fluke those. The league cup only becomes important if you're not winning any other trophy, the FA cup isn't that bad but it isn't what is used to be.
 
DOTA said:
There's two trophies that really matter and being able to compete in both will always matter more to me than the nice little bonus that is winning the minor trophies.
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Completely disagree with this Arsene Wenger type 'Top 4 trophy' attitude.

The FA Cup, and all European trophies, used to be seen as major trophies. And still should be. Winning the FA Cup, League Cup, Europa League should be a far bigger thing at the time, and a far better thing to look back at, than a trophyless season finishing 2nd-5th and getting CL qualification.

I can imagine money-hungry owners being more worried about whether teams qualify for competitions that generate more revenue, etc. But the attitude amongst fans and players was always 'it's trophies you look back on fondly - it's winning competitions that give you the ultimate buzz in sport'. I heard so many former players say that in response to the early years of the 'top 4 trophy' attitude.

Nowadays, maybe with a newer generation of fans, there's a lot more adopting the 'so long as we get top 4 and are in the CL, who gives a shit about winning 'minor' trophies?' attitude

Absoloutely disagree with that sentiment in competitive sport.
 
altodevil said:
Meaningless as a measure of progress, in my opinion.
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Agree with this. Trophies are a measure of success but not necessarily progress. Especially if, as in our case, winning seemingly hasn't created a winning mentality or boosted our confidence. I'm not sure what kind of progress EtH is measuring.

I think Wigan showed in 2013 that winning the FA Cup and being relegated the same season probably wouldn't be considered progress even though I'm sure many Wigan fans will still enjoy the memory. For smaller clubs in general, winning a trophy could indicate a step forward in the club's development.
 
Are trophies a measure of progress?

The answer is easy but has a few aspects.

If you win trophies on a regular basis, one or two per year over timespan of say a couple of years, it definitely means you are doing something right. Right in the sense of "better than your competitors". So yes, trophies can be a measure of success (and progress as well) in such a scenario.

If you win a trophy occasionally, without being convincing too much, it isn't a great measure of success and not one of progress. Especially in cup competitions, you can always fluke a result, be lucky, the opponent be unlucky, you placing more meaning on the comp so you field a stronger team etc.

It is just the same conflict as the "is a good result an indicator of a good game from the winner" all over again. It can be. But it doesn't have to. But if you manage to get good results on a regular basis than it becomes harder and harder to explain, why you shouldn't be seen as good.

ETH using his trophies to act as if we are progressing is not ideal at all. Yes, he won something, it means something. But as a team, we aren't playing well, which is easily visible in the competition that takes the most games to "measure" - the league. So after all, I'd rather tend to agree to Oles stance in this question. If you play well but you have an overarchiver in the comp, then it doesn't mean, you didn't do a good job. Just that another team did an even better job. Ole collecting results and go deep in competitions is an achievement on its own - his issue was more that it was visible, that he didn't have it in him to get the team to the next level. But I guess that is a very essential difference among fans and how they perceive what is happening. Good example was the FA Cup win against City last year. Which was a well played match and every(well a lot of) praise was justified. But some conclusions drawn from it, weren't correct.
 
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Bertie Wooster said:
Completely disagree with this Arsene Wenger type 'Top 4 trophy' attitude.

The FA Cup, and all European trophies, used to be seen as major trophies. And still should be. Winning the FA Cup, League Cup, Europa League should be a far bigger thing at the time, and a far better thing to look back at, than a trophyless season finishing 2nd-5th and getting CL qualification.

I can imagine money-hungry owners being more worried about whether teams qualify for competitions that generate more revenue, etc. But the attitude amongst fans and players was always 'it's trophies you look back on fondly - it's winning competitions that give you the ultimate buzz in sport'. I heard so many former players say that in response to the early years of the 'top 4 trophy' attitude.

Nowadays, maybe with a newer generation of fans, there's a lot more adopting the 'so long as we get top 4 and are in the CL, who gives a shit about winning 'minor' trophies?' attitude

Absoloutely disagree with that sentiment in competitive sport.
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I don't think top four is a trophy.
 
Yes and no. Like most things, it should be a measure (in corporate terms "KPI") of what constitutes progress, because simply put, not everyone's starting point is the same, their expectations aren't the same and the amounts of money they can invest in their respective squads, are not the same (amongst quite a few other variables without even getting to "style of play" etc.).
 
No. League and Cup performance should be used as a collective to assess progression with league performance having more weight.
 
Context is important.

Despite ETH'S best efforts United still have one of the top 6 squads in English football.

So as a minimum you would expect United to be able to challenge for the domestic trophies.

You normally need a little luck in cup competitions, ETH has had spades of luck in the domestic cups in his tenure. From very favourable draws to massive moments of luck in individual games.

The domestic cups are not really a measure of a club like Manchester United because of our resources.

In fairness there are numerous clubs who manage to reach the fa cup final, some even win it who were then promptly relegated within 2 seasons, Leicester and Wigan immediately come to mind.

So to answer simply no there not a measure of progress. With enough luck not particuly good sides can go far and even win the domestic cups. United ironically a fantastic example of that last season.
 
No, definitely not. As we have proven, you don't need to be a particularly good team or have shown any progress to win a lesser cup competition. It's far more important to construct a team that is capable of consistently challenging for the league/Champions League. Then with a bit of luck, trophies will follow.
 
RobinLFC said:
Wasn't there a thread after last season in which many posters argued that you had a better season than Arsenal because you won the FA Cup and they didn't win anything?
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Havign a better season, taken individually, isn't correlated with progress. It's absolutely fine to say we had a better/more successful season than Arsenal's, and at the same time recognising their progress is more positive than ours and are in a better position to win trophies (and more relevant ones) going forward.

Not everything has to be absolutes and black and white.
 
Not in isolation. If it's backed up with improved league standings then it gives much greater belief that true progress is being made. Otherwise it can just look a bit like random variance, the luck of a cup competition etc.

A mid-table PL club that starts to qualify for Europe and wins their first trophy in a long time. A team that is regularly in the European spots (5th to 8th) and breaks the top 4 whilst winning a domestic cup. A top 4 club who puts in their first title challenge and wins the FA Cup etc. When you get the the two in combination things are looking good.

West Ham winning the Conference League was for me. First of all they had to do well in the league by their own sort of standards to qualify for that in the first instance. Even if they dropped off badly domestically the season they won that it was their first trophy for a long, long time. As a club they'd made progress.

Portsmouth winning the FA Cup too. Getting to the Premier League, finishing 13th, 16th and 17th in their first 3 seasons before breaking the top 10 with a 9th place then an 8th place finish whilst winning the FA Cup was for them. That it was all built on foundations of sand with their overspending doesn't take away from the fact that they were improving as a team and squad.

Even though Wigan went down the season they won the FA Cup it was sort of a culmination of how far they'd come as well over the long run. Before Dave Whelan started investing heavily they wouldn't have had a hope in hell.
 
One of many indicators that need context.
 
United will always be in the mix for cups, but measure success on league performance. This is the week to week bread and butter.
 
Both were pretty much trying to cover their backside just for different reasons (Ten Hag with his poor league form, Ole with the fact his teams kept blowing it once a trophy was in sight).
 
Gums said:
Agree with this. Trophies are a measure of success but not necessarily progress. Especially if, as in our case, winning seemingly hasn't created a winning mentality or boosted our confidence. I'm not sure what kind of progress EtH is measuring.
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In a way it is. Do you think Spurs would have won those cups United have won under EtH? You need some kind of winning mentality to pull off a cup win with such bad performances along the road.

Nonetheless you need both - the mental strength to win when it matters most and the foundation to consistently be in a position to pull it off. While EtH seems to have done well in the first part, he failed at the latter.
 
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