It depends on the situation really doesn't it?
But no.
But no.
Forget about 'strategic patience' at United, should we just adopt the Chelsea model?
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No, would a top level manager want to go anywhere if they didnt have the job security of 2-3 years at the very least. Chelsea lucked out with Tuchel, who was sacked by a short term team just like Chelsea.
Don't top level managers go to clubs like Bayern and Real Madrid? If anything top level managers have stayed away from the long term gang since they haven't been to Arsenal or United.
As much as I'd love to see Ole gone he's done the opposite of Chelsea managers that have been sacked. Our entertainment may be at an all-time low, but at least prior to this season (which is still young) the weighted results have been getting better with each season.
There isn't any model. Underperforming manager get sacked at every club including Norwich. Some quicker than others.
I would be fine with 'strategic patience' if there was something to suggest we had the right manager in place. We clearly don't. Ole won't become the right guy no matter how patient we are.
more like Real Madrid/Bayern model.
Bayern has 6 different managers since Fergie retired. Yet I rarely hear fans or pundits mocking Bayern to be a "sacking club with no mercy or continuity"
Bayern has 6 different managers since Fergie retired. Yet I rarely hear fans or pundits mocking Bayern to be a "sacking club with no mercy or continuity"
Yes. All the time. If you do well in a job, you last in that job. If you don't, you get sacked. That is how football management has always been.
Guess I'm speaking from Arsenals perspective then, there's no top level manager that would come to Arsenal if they weren't guaranteed time.
No club has the model of sacking their manager despite being happy with what he's doing and believing he will come good. You're nothing special, end of story.
That's because you are Arsenal, no top level manager will come even if you offer them a 200 years contract.
You need people in the hierarchy of the club who can oversea squad building continuity if you want to do this.
We don’t have that.
We don’t have that.
You need this regardless of any ifs and buts.
Sacking failed managers when it's obvious they aren't good enough is not a Chelsea-specific model. Manchester United one of the only organizations in the world that refuses to do this.
The fact Bayern have won their (highly uncompetitive) league for nine consecutive years may have something to do with no-one mocking their strategy.
The previous three managers would probably disagree.
It has more to do with the fact that "not a sacking club" is something that doesn't exist outside of a conversation involving United. I haven't even heard that narrative with Auxerre when Guy Roux finally left.
The sooner this club gets out of its past and class of 92 the better it would be. Look at Liverpool, they got rid of their legends and see how they have performed.
Clubs have a CEO running the money, a Director of Football, and a club manager. Thats all Chelsea do, and all SAF was was a Director of Football and a manager rolled into one.
We can change managers as much as we want, as long as we have a CEO who thinks he's a DoF and a DoF plucked out of obscurity, we will go nowhere. We need to get competent people in each position and keep them focused only on that position.
We can change managers as much as we want, as long as we have a CEO who thinks he's a DoF and a DoF plucked out of obscurity, we will go nowhere. We need to get competent people in each position and keep them focused only on that position.
True.
But changing managers regularly if you don’t have this makes things 10 times worse especially if the manager have different styles
Is that true though? To me it seems that our managers have been the de facto DOFs and they all happen to be not very good at it.
John Murtough is your DoF now, though. So you have a position and someone in it responsible for this, why is noone acknowledging this fact?
So Chelsea have appointed just 1 more manager than us in the same time span? And seeing as Ole might be out the door at any moment now, it's quickly going to be 5-5. The difference between Chelsea and us is that they simply capitalized on a particularly weak era of the PL. An era were Spurs and Leicester became top teams.
So why was Chelsea successful in this dark era and not us? Because we picked the wrong managers. And it's not like sacking Moyes and Van Gaal a few months earlier would have made a difference in terms of trophies either.
It’s simple really. You have to sack when the manager is not good enough. Nothing to do with Chelsea model or not.
City and Liverpool don’t sack because they have the two best managers in the World.
City and Liverpool don’t sack because they have the two best managers in the World.
I’m not a huge fan of what Chelsea do. Fans can and do support the team, who obviously have players who are directed by the manager. A team goes on forever (climate change permitting!) players can play 16-18 years but usually more like ten (at the very peak) so they come and go. Plus, there are very few one-club players these days, especially since player power post-Bosman. But managers can stay longer and become intrinsically linked to a club and it’s history. That’s a good thing.
Having said that and to get back to Utd. for a moment - as I have said elsewhere today, I think the club should drop this contract clause of a minimum target: top-4 or Europa Cup win. Because the club is essentially run by accountants it’s causing a problem: if Ole is sacked now it’s what? Twenty Million plus, as a payout? Wait till he can’t make CL next year and it becomes 6-7 million. But the trouble is the club then lose £40 million for not qualifying! so sacking him now on the bigger payout, might actually be the better thing financially and for stopping fans getting more and more frustrated as the season and the chance to win something, slips fades away.
Having said that and to get back to Utd. for a moment - as I have said elsewhere today, I think the club should drop this contract clause of a minimum target: top-4 or Europa Cup win. Because the club is essentially run by accountants it’s causing a problem: if Ole is sacked now it’s what? Twenty Million plus, as a payout? Wait till he can’t make CL next year and it becomes 6-7 million. But the trouble is the club then lose £40 million for not qualifying! so sacking him now on the bigger payout, might actually be the better thing financially and for stopping fans getting more and more frustrated as the season and the chance to win something, slips fades away.
That's not really a thing though, you are basically talking about a handful of managers at the highest level in the history of Football, it's not the norm and has never been. If anything it's more common to see players spend 10 years in a club than it is to see a manager stay 5 years in a club.
Yes indeed. They tried with Lampard and decided pretty quickly that it was not working.
So they recruited the very best coach that was available. And almost immediately won the Champions League.
As in everything, good management is about flexibility and decision making. Chelsea and the other top clubs do. And United don't.
Yep. If United had hired Klopp when he left Dortmund, RAWK would probably be talking about how well run we are in comparison to Liverpool.
Chelsea don’t have a model other than being ambitious. They bring in managers to win. If they’re performing well and winning trophies they stay, if they’re not performing well and fail to win silverware then they’re out the door. As it should be with any top club that’s competing for major honours.
Because at least from an outside perspective it appears like an internal appointment of a stooge made by Woodward to satisfy the fans an media demand to fill that position as the squad building had been a disaster in the post Fergie reign and it was clear that Woodward needed help.
plus people have minimal faith in murtough as he came in with Moyes and was present through that disaster of that first summer scatter gun approach to squad building since. He was present through the Sanchez signing and all the other nonsense, counter productive signings and awful contracts though the last 8 years.
plus since he has been in the position we’ve seen things like the near two year pursuit of Sancho, spend 70+ million on him just for us to buy Ronaldo and have Sancho utterly superfluous to requirements. The Donny transfer, signing a 3rd player for big money who wanted to play the same position as Bruno and Pogba so was never gonna play much. All the time the only real defensive midfielder we have in the squad was Matic who was clearly coming towards the end of his career.
So people don’t count Murtough, as he is appears to either be just a stooge of the hierarchy who didn’t want to give up power. Or some one who isn’t particularly good at his job.
either way doesn’t feel like the club has structure that can manage squad continuity if we kept changing managers.
They should have kept Rodgers to be honest, it wasn’t nice to sack him so early in the season.
He wasn't around at that time, he joined in November 2013 and focused on the youth setup alongside Butt.
It's about finding the right balance. You don't have to sack a manager for only finishing 2nd like certain top clubs do, but you certainly can't give a undeserving manager like Ole one of the biggest jobs in football, allow him to serve up 3 years of shite results and shite football and not replace him. It's just ludicrous.
Like I've said previously, the idea that Conte and Tuchel can have success at Chelsea but they're not a right "fit" for United is ridiculous and arrogant, and a major reason why we've not won a big trophy in 9 years.
Stop overcomplacating things, hire the best managers and some of them will bring you success. The ones that don't bring success, replace them with the next great manager. It really doesn't need to be any more complicated than that.
Like I've said previously, the idea that Conte and Tuchel can have success at Chelsea but they're not a right "fit" for United is ridiculous and arrogant, and a major reason why we've not won a big trophy in 9 years.
Stop overcomplacating things, hire the best managers and some of them will bring you success. The ones that don't bring success, replace them with the next great manager. It really doesn't need to be any more complicated than that.
So maybe we should aim for that model, instead of "throw shit at the wall until it sticks" model (which actually isn't a model at all)?
And the logic is generally backwards. Before committing to anyone long term you need to be have a relationship, know how you work together and it's only because that relationship is positive that you may be tempted to make adjustments and anticipate a long term relationship. If you take someone like Conte who is the longest tenured manager at a top club, he had no history of sticking somewhere for a long time, he has an history of having a bad temper and being volatile but after quickly succeeding at Atletico the club adjusted and made sure that Simeone could stay for a long time, they gave him more weight in their long term decision making and a lot of money.
One of the most surprising thing about fans being obsessed with long term appointments is that they are seemingly forgetting that you need to take crucial steps before talking about long term and it's a consequence of being a good fit for each others. None of these things can be accurately predicted, it's a process that you have to live.
Both models can work, but I feel like Man Utd's recent approach is similar to Chelsea's. Managers get given the chance, but if it isn't showing enough promise or direct results they get fired. Ole started as the latter and then showed signs of the former, but now both seem to not cut it and a firing seems close.
For a long term coach it's important to have someone who can build something up, while starting out with a strong base, but while also showing the capacity to reinvent themselves and alter their team's approach. A people's manager tends to work for a while, but not forever (i.e. Ancelotti can be great, but usually loses the spark after 2-4 seasons), a coach with a defined style seems to work for a single season or perhaps two MAX, especially in the past decade this seems to be the case to me. Mourinho or even someone like Bosz seem to be outdated if you're looking for a longterm manager, though they usually show great signs that make you think their best seasons are still in them. Wouldn't be surprised if both are out of Roma and Lyonnais sometime between the end of this season or halfway in the next.
What seems to work in an almost timeless manner is the adaptable but adamant coach. I think Ferguson was one of these, though he also had a good team around him. But even though United had a certain identity, SAF wasn't too afraid or narcissitic to tweak things when necessary, depending on the team's quality, balance, opposition and simply the nature of the current game. Nowadays there are a few as well. Klopp, Guardiola, Simeone and Ten Hag have clear views on football, but they're not as stuck to a very specific approach as people like Bosz, Koeman or De Boer (I'm Dutch so those examples get blasted in my face much more than other nation's coaches) are. Klopp has his fast-forward approach, but the way it's implemented exactly changes around every 2 seasons or so. Guardiola is more about possession and quick combinations, but during certain momentums it's a more classical 4-3-3 and other times players like Messi and Foden are strikers and Bernardo's are close to defensive midfielders. Ten Hag is somewhere in between them, and generally favors a 4-3-3 that can morph into a 4-4-2/4-2-4, but now figured an anchor man works better if you have shorter (though very talented and technical) center backs. Simeone says he bases it on the club's identity, and I've only followed him at Atleti, so I'll take that as his own identity for this discussion: he focuses on hard work and counter football with a solid defensive base, preferably in a 4-4-2 formation. However, he buys more offensively capable players every year since the Raul Garcia's and Saúls don't cut it as your offensive midfielders if you want to not just shake up the top, but become on if its members. Since last season he even implemented a much more possession based tactics (he argues to bring out the best of Suarez) and the 3-4-3s and 3-5-2s and even occasional 4-3-3s are something you couldn't imagine of him two years ago. Furthermore having players like Lemar as CM, Koke and Rodrigo de Paul as the defensive midfielders is something I didn't see coming, but it shows Simeone is willing to think about and try out alterations to his team.
All of these coaches' teams have had drops in quality for a season or so, but there were clear signs they were working on something, regardless of which players were bought or not. Last year Klopp's Lpool was rusty, but this season they're back. The season before that City was vulnerable and now they have two very solid seasons in a row. 17-18 Ten Hag was shaky, 18-19 was amazing, 19-21 seasons were a bit inconsistent and this season they seem even stronger than their 18-19 shake-up. I think I've talked too much about Simeone in the previous paragraph, but same story there (although they have lost their unsurpassable wall in defense, which I hope they can implement into this offensively very sound squad).
Ole seems to be the people manager type, especially the way he talks about his 'leaders' and the yadayada. I had faith in him, especially with the team he has behind him, but it's almost like he has a few tricks up his sleeve, but when the opponent isn't shaken, he's got nothing. You can't rely on a few tricks if you're here for the long haul, no matter how good those tricks are. You can't just keep your group of players happy and a team and then if the players are good enough that'll get you titles. Maybe that worked before, but it doesn't now. I know Ole means well, but I don't think he is a long term manager like that.
And when coaches start talking about necessary transfers instead of working with what they have... then what exactly do they add as the coach?
To be honest, I don't know which category Zidane belongs to. He did have his CL titles during his first spell and I think one LL title in the second? He did show differing tactics all the time, but general approach wise I'm still uncertain about his long term validity. Even with those titles, a lot of those seasons Madrid were pretty shaky. I don't think Rodgers is strong enough for a club as big as Utd, but he has shown more of the consistency, adaptabilty and flexibility that I think are necessary if you're thinking about long term managers. It's just that his Liverpool spell showed that he might miss the final touch that'll get you silverware instead of the silver medal peak.
So options wise I think Zidane would be a gamble, probably a better people manager than Ole, but still a risk in the position that Utd find themselves in. Ten Hag if he's a real option would be good I think, although so far his biggest club has been Ajax (if you don't count his stint at Bayern's second team, of course). But does he want to? Does he want to for a long time? Klopp, Pep and Simeone are probably not coming at all. So out of managers linked right now, I think only Ten Hag shows the promise of adapting the team and improving the players past the quality they already had when bought.
For a long term coach it's important to have someone who can build something up, while starting out with a strong base, but while also showing the capacity to reinvent themselves and alter their team's approach. A people's manager tends to work for a while, but not forever (i.e. Ancelotti can be great, but usually loses the spark after 2-4 seasons), a coach with a defined style seems to work for a single season or perhaps two MAX, especially in the past decade this seems to be the case to me. Mourinho or even someone like Bosz seem to be outdated if you're looking for a longterm manager, though they usually show great signs that make you think their best seasons are still in them. Wouldn't be surprised if both are out of Roma and Lyonnais sometime between the end of this season or halfway in the next.
What seems to work in an almost timeless manner is the adaptable but adamant coach. I think Ferguson was one of these, though he also had a good team around him. But even though United had a certain identity, SAF wasn't too afraid or narcissitic to tweak things when necessary, depending on the team's quality, balance, opposition and simply the nature of the current game. Nowadays there are a few as well. Klopp, Guardiola, Simeone and Ten Hag have clear views on football, but they're not as stuck to a very specific approach as people like Bosz, Koeman or De Boer (I'm Dutch so those examples get blasted in my face much more than other nation's coaches) are. Klopp has his fast-forward approach, but the way it's implemented exactly changes around every 2 seasons or so. Guardiola is more about possession and quick combinations, but during certain momentums it's a more classical 4-3-3 and other times players like Messi and Foden are strikers and Bernardo's are close to defensive midfielders. Ten Hag is somewhere in between them, and generally favors a 4-3-3 that can morph into a 4-4-2/4-2-4, but now figured an anchor man works better if you have shorter (though very talented and technical) center backs. Simeone says he bases it on the club's identity, and I've only followed him at Atleti, so I'll take that as his own identity for this discussion: he focuses on hard work and counter football with a solid defensive base, preferably in a 4-4-2 formation. However, he buys more offensively capable players every year since the Raul Garcia's and Saúls don't cut it as your offensive midfielders if you want to not just shake up the top, but become on if its members. Since last season he even implemented a much more possession based tactics (he argues to bring out the best of Suarez) and the 3-4-3s and 3-5-2s and even occasional 4-3-3s are something you couldn't imagine of him two years ago. Furthermore having players like Lemar as CM, Koke and Rodrigo de Paul as the defensive midfielders is something I didn't see coming, but it shows Simeone is willing to think about and try out alterations to his team.
All of these coaches' teams have had drops in quality for a season or so, but there were clear signs they were working on something, regardless of which players were bought or not. Last year Klopp's Lpool was rusty, but this season they're back. The season before that City was vulnerable and now they have two very solid seasons in a row. 17-18 Ten Hag was shaky, 18-19 was amazing, 19-21 seasons were a bit inconsistent and this season they seem even stronger than their 18-19 shake-up. I think I've talked too much about Simeone in the previous paragraph, but same story there (although they have lost their unsurpassable wall in defense, which I hope they can implement into this offensively very sound squad).
Ole seems to be the people manager type, especially the way he talks about his 'leaders' and the yadayada. I had faith in him, especially with the team he has behind him, but it's almost like he has a few tricks up his sleeve, but when the opponent isn't shaken, he's got nothing. You can't rely on a few tricks if you're here for the long haul, no matter how good those tricks are. You can't just keep your group of players happy and a team and then if the players are good enough that'll get you titles. Maybe that worked before, but it doesn't now. I know Ole means well, but I don't think he is a long term manager like that.
And when coaches start talking about necessary transfers instead of working with what they have... then what exactly do they add as the coach?
To be honest, I don't know which category Zidane belongs to. He did have his CL titles during his first spell and I think one LL title in the second? He did show differing tactics all the time, but general approach wise I'm still uncertain about his long term validity. Even with those titles, a lot of those seasons Madrid were pretty shaky. I don't think Rodgers is strong enough for a club as big as Utd, but he has shown more of the consistency, adaptabilty and flexibility that I think are necessary if you're thinking about long term managers. It's just that his Liverpool spell showed that he might miss the final touch that'll get you silverware instead of the silver medal peak.
So options wise I think Zidane would be a gamble, probably a better people manager than Ole, but still a risk in the position that Utd find themselves in. Ten Hag if he's a real option would be good I think, although so far his biggest club has been Ajax (if you don't count his stint at Bayern's second team, of course). But does he want to? Does he want to for a long time? Klopp, Pep and Simeone are probably not coming at all. So out of managers linked right now, I think only Ten Hag shows the promise of adapting the team and improving the players past the quality they already had when bought.
There is only one model when it comes to management - which is firing the manager who is incompetent. Sticking to higher standards.
Don't think that we are maintaining a high standard because we are sticking with Ole and giving him more time. It just shows our incompetence. We have no succession planning.
Any other clubs who knows little about the game, would have fired Ole by now. Just name one big club who had let their standards severely go down, yet Sticking to a incompetent clueless bunch of coaches ? Just name one club and I will stop posting in this thread.
Don't think that we are maintaining a high standard because we are sticking with Ole and giving him more time. It just shows our incompetence. We have no succession planning.
Any other clubs who knows little about the game, would have fired Ole by now. Just name one big club who had let their standards severely go down, yet Sticking to a incompetent clueless bunch of coaches ? Just name one club and I will stop posting in this thread.
I don't think anybody, either among fans or in the club, subscribe to a model of "strategic patience" such as you describe it, or even vaguely hope to find a manager that will last 25 years. If there's an issue, it's rather that there needs to be a certain continuity in the general philosophy and style of football, among other things because that is of great benefit to talent development and recruitment. That means you have to factor those things in whenever the manager is changed.
I think the Chelsea model is viable, but it requires certain things and comes with certain costs. You have to limit the manager's powers, obviously, if you want any kind of stability anywhere in the organisation. You have to be willing and able to spend on transfers to maintain a squad that fits the current incumbent, to an extent that really only works if you are also very good at selling players. And you're not really set up in a way conducive to bringing home talent through the ranks, because you won't have a manager who can expect to be around for long enough to reap the benefits. It's not a coincidence the only time Chelsea's really done that is when they were under a transfer ban. Also, I suppose you really need to take a more generalist approach to recruitment, and go for players who aren't too specific in what sort of style they need in order to be effective.
Genuinely curious - how is the Bayern model that different from the Chelsea model? I mean obviously the ownership is very different but both clubs never seem to make a change before it's too late.