No
Is Pep the greatest manager of all time?
- Thread starter Irrational.
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran are here to talk about a frustrating 2 points dropped at Crystal Palace. They then discuss the regeneration of Old Trafford. Finally, Nik is joined by special guest Michael Statham from the Football Oranje podcast - who gives us a more in depth look at our EL opposition FC Twente, and then runs through the (many) Dutch connections currently at United.
While the Glazers hold culpability, reality is once again this goes back to Woodward. The list of signings under his watch was horrible. The amts paid show he was out of his element on Maguire, Pogba, Di Maria, Sancho, Fellaini (Yeah remember Fellaini, 6'6" but could never win a header), Mata, Herrera, Sanchez and the list is as long as my arm. Reality is not so sure it was the result of City picking good players, some are good no doubt, but it is more lack thereof by United.
https://i.redd.it/vj4m076km4rd1.jpeg
ETH will point at this and say Utd's underperformance isn't his fault. Can someone make a similar coaching tree for Fergie?
ETH will point at this and say Utd's underperformance isn't his fault. Can someone make a similar coaching tree for Fergie?
"Coaching Tree"? What is this?
I get Maresca and Arteta as they were his assistants. Maybe Kompany and Xavi considering the long time they played for Pep. Everybody else just played for him a few years or worked barely in his vicinity like EtH, but not daily.
That is fair enough and totally true. The counter argument, however, is that it still takes a lot of skill to do what he has done because he has done it in at least two leagues and two teams - Barca and City. He didnt stay long enough at Bayern to do anything remarkable, but in these two teams you could have given the same to somebody else and they wouldn't achieve the kind of dominance he has
I also give him credit dor carefully choosing where to go and avoiding places where he wont be successful
Pep clearly had a chance to join United, it was said that SAF even travelled to NY to convince him but Pep was smart enough to stay away from the Glazers shitshow
In contrasr, at the top of his reign, Mourinho was as appreciated and sought after, but Mou never had the instinct to not get into shit situations
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I do agree. But with Aberdeen currently level with Celtic and 5 clear of Rangers, looking very good; we might not be able to have this argument in 7 months time. Sadly.
They have started the season well but Celtic will coast clear of them and have the title sewn up soon. Rangers will get 2nd once they get their act together. Doing well so far tonight against Malmö. Aberdeen favs for 3rd for me.
Why? Which European Competition are Aberdeen winning in 7 months time?
I was joking bud.
Threads like this should be banned on this forum.
Sir Alex was the Greatest, end of.
Please close thread.
Sir Alex was the Greatest, end of.
Please close thread.
I also think managers, like players, are respected "more" after they hang up their boots.
Malidini was widely considered one of the best players of his generation during his playing days. But, 20 years after he has retired, he is now widely acknowledged as the best left back to play the game and arguably, the best defender in football's history. His status has elevated with time. I think it is the same with SAF. His "greatness" has peaked post-retirement.
Pep will be regarded in better light 20 years after he is gone, when cheating and bribing allegations will surely fade, but records and trophies will stand out in Wikipedia pages and YouTube videos. How do you beat his "numbers"?
(Caveat: unless City are thrown out of the League and legally incriminated. Demonisation also works in the same manner post-retirement - e.g. Lance Armstrong).
How does that invalidate my point? Barca was already a dominant force before Pep took over. SAF literally had to park the bus Mourinho style with one of our greatest ever sides against them. I've followed United for quiet a few years up until that point and I've never seen anything like that from SAF. Even when we faced off against Pep's sides, we didn't give them this much respect.
Clearly, even before Pep, SAF already viewed Barca as one of the apex teams in the world of football.
Again, how does that invalidate my point? That 2008 Spanish side was very beatable, it was the later iterations that looked invincible. And yet Spain's dominance coincided with Barca's dominance. I wonder what that NT had in common with Barca at the time?
As for Giorginho or Chiesa, when the 2 of them when 3 NT tournaments on the trot, then you get back to me.
Is there a semi-final trophy by any chance? The point is, 2 of his trophies where achieved with that cheat code Barcelona team, the heart of which also won 3 NT tournaments on the trot. Not downplaying Pep, however looking at his post Barca record, I'm more inclined to believe that the guy has overachieved over there.
I don't state this anywhere.(the bolded part)
Saying Ancelotti managed the teams with the most resources is also not true. He managed Milan which at the time was in Juve's shadow, he managed Real who was in Barca's shadow, and he managed Chelsea who was in our shadow. The only team where he was the alpha dog was Juve and Bayern, but even then he didn't have the same luxury of throwing cash to the wind that Pep has at City. His main strength was getting the most out of aging players. That team that won the CL in 2003, reached the final in 2005 and then won it in 2006. It still had the likes of Maldini, Nest Costacurta, Serginho, Seedorf, Stam most of which were past their 30s.
Meanwhile Pep can spend 100 million on Grealish and then bench him, or Dias, or get a new set of fullbacks and a new keeper after the one he got last year didn't pan out and still get people excusing his inability to dominate the CL. Zidane literally came in and won 3 on the trot, meanwhile mighty Pep can't even retain his CL despite having an unimlimited access to resources. The crazier stat is that it took Pep longer to win a CL after he left Barca, then for SAF to assemble his team and win his second one.
Hence I don't consider him a GOAT. Amazing manager mind you, but his success just like City's has an asterisk next to it unlike the other names we are comparing him to.
You did state that he never needed to do a massive rebuild, while Carlo and Mourinho needed to, which is clearly untrue.
Anyway, most resources seems to mean whatever it needs to mean for you to make whatever point you are trying to make. Milan had incredible resources, they spent an absolute fortune during his first seasons there. Just look at the teams he had that made the CL finals, they're some of the most stacked teams of all time. Real definitely had more resources than Barca at that time (you could argue Barca had a better team, but Real spent far, far more money around that time). The idea that United had more resources than Chelsea is an absolute hilarity. There's no one argument that would fit all these clubs.
Sure Pep can spend a lot on Grealish and bench him. But there are literally multiple teams in the PL that has done the exact same thing in the past years. Zidane did brilliantly in Real, but he came into a team that was more stacked than the team Pep inherited at Barca. It might have taken Pep longer to win his third CL than it took Furgeson to win his second. But tell me, who won the second CL faster after winning the first?
Reading this thread you’d think Pep is a one trick pony. While I agree that he probably wouldn’t be suited for a club fighting relegation and that the cheating and Saudi shit show taints him badly, he has evolved a lot over the years.
He has successfully incorporated tiki taka, total fussball, gegenpressen, Bielsa-style and more recently directness into a combination that hasn’t been seen before. Yes, he has the players, but you can’t take away his strategic and tactical vision and genius.
There’s a reason why other top managers acknowledge that he has changed the game like few others.
He has successfully incorporated tiki taka, total fussball, gegenpressen, Bielsa-style and more recently directness into a combination that hasn’t been seen before. Yes, he has the players, but you can’t take away his strategic and tactical vision and genius.
There’s a reason why other top managers acknowledge that he has changed the game like few others.
He's right up there with one of the best of all time and only at the end of his career can we really judge where he really ranks vs. the legendary managers.
What he can claim though is that he's had a big influence on how football is played during his reign, which not a lot of managers can .
Personally I don't think it was for the better though... he's taken a bit of the flair and magic out of the game and turned teams / players into very efficient systematic machines to achieve those goals
What he can claim though is that he's had a big influence on how football is played during his reign, which not a lot of managers can .
Personally I don't think it was for the better though... he's taken a bit of the flair and magic out of the game and turned teams / players into very efficient systematic machines to achieve those goals
When he's been at City for 26 years we'll talk. Until then.
Absolutely. He’s made football a lot more boring. That’s an undeniable fact.
Barcelona struggled the season before pep came, were not close to RM. They came 3rd, 18 points off RM, and if they lost one of the games they won they wouldn't have qualified for CL. They were a mess.
For Pep to make Barcelona the top team it was he changed a bunch of players, big names. Which included Ronaldinho, eto'o, and Henry. He didn't inherit a dominant team, he made one.
Against Peps Barcelona we basically had to defend the whole game, with 37% possession and 4 shots, only 1 on target.
City did spend 100m on a benched player, but he's the most expensive player they have, their first 11 isn't crazy expensive, they are generally reasonably priced. They just have a very deep squad, but it's not superstars or even close. If you were going to put the best players in the world onto a team, not many would be city players, most wouldn't be in the discussion.
Agreed! They can go on Berties site and laud him all they want.
Prime Jose also spent £240 million in his first stint at Chelsea, in comparison United, Arsenal barely spent £50-60 million each. He was bankrolled to his eye balls at Chelsea. This amount was in 2000s, where it was insane.
Same with Inter, after Juve's relegation Inter were the only team in Italy. The rest had fallen off. Real were hardly beggars either. And yes he won at Porto, when the final four were probably the weakest ever, even now when you consider it.
Its hilarious how Chelsea get under the radar as some plucky underdogs as if they were beggars scraping for every pound. They were a nothing club league wise, just like Spurs winning the odd domestic trophy (did they even do that?) and the occasional top 4 run. They were so bad they had never beaten us at Highbury uptil the 0-2 in 2005 and only won a title due to money they spent in 2 years then, the amount which even TODAY would be insane never mind in 2000s. They set the trend in the league for sugar daddies to follow if you want persistent success.
Doesn't take away the fact Pep is a cheat, he knows what City have been upto. No way he doesn;t.
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That's probably because SAF was simply not that great at European competition relative to his strenghts as manager in English football.
Me too
It was fairly customary for Ferguson to come to Anfield and play for a draw.
Strong arguments can be made for different managers.
I think the issue is when people go from "Manager X is the best because they did A, B, C" to "Manager Z is not the best because they did not do A, B, C like Manager X." The managerial career paths are very much dependent on culture and time period; different managers cannot follow the same path.
Alex Ferguson is Scottish, which greatly influences his career trajectory as a manager in Scotland and then England. Pep Guardiola is Spanish and a former Barcelona player, which greatly influences his career trajectory as a manager in Spain and elsewhere.
Spanish managers often begin their careers, or get an early job, at the B or Youth team of their former playing clubs. Guardiola, Luis Enrique, Alguacil, Lopetegui, Del Bosque, Xabi Alonso, Benitez all had beginner or early jobs like this. Many of them get the senior team job directly after this (Guardiola, Del Bosque, Alguacil, Valverde), or sometime after (Luis Enrique, Lopetegui). Guardiola's early career was unlikely to be all that different than what it was. One can maybe imagine him moving from the Barcelona B team to a smaller Spanish team, but if he'd showed a modicum of talent there, then Barcelona senior team would have snatched him up sooner or later.
I think the issue is when people go from "Manager X is the best because they did A, B, C" to "Manager Z is not the best because they did not do A, B, C like Manager X." The managerial career paths are very much dependent on culture and time period; different managers cannot follow the same path.
Alex Ferguson is Scottish, which greatly influences his career trajectory as a manager in Scotland and then England. Pep Guardiola is Spanish and a former Barcelona player, which greatly influences his career trajectory as a manager in Spain and elsewhere.
Spanish managers often begin their careers, or get an early job, at the B or Youth team of their former playing clubs. Guardiola, Luis Enrique, Alguacil, Lopetegui, Del Bosque, Xabi Alonso, Benitez all had beginner or early jobs like this. Many of them get the senior team job directly after this (Guardiola, Del Bosque, Alguacil, Valverde), or sometime after (Luis Enrique, Lopetegui). Guardiola's early career was unlikely to be all that different than what it was. One can maybe imagine him moving from the Barcelona B team to a smaller Spanish team, but if he'd showed a modicum of talent there, then Barcelona senior team would have snatched him up sooner or later.
How quickly will Pep jump a sinking ship should City be rightly punished for the 115 charges?
I also do wonder where and who Pep would be managing had City not basically won the billionaire lotto with their current owners choosing them. In the seasons before they took over City finished 14th,15th,and 16th in the Premier League and 1998–99 season they were a third-tier club and the latter is where they are hopefully heading to once a verdict is reached with their current trial.
I also do wonder where and who Pep would be managing had City not basically won the billionaire lotto with their current owners choosing them. In the seasons before they took over City finished 14th,15th,and 16th in the Premier League and 1998–99 season they were a third-tier club and the latter is where they are hopefully heading to once a verdict is reached with their current trial.
If I remember correctly others were in contention - Laudrup at least - but Pep came with a 50-page plan for how he would develop the team and probably everything else at the club - back room staff, La Marcia etc.
I hope so too, but it’s not really relevant to this discussion. Even if we take away his time at City, he’s done what few others have - changed the way the game is played. Also, he actually improves players.
He hasnt changed the way the game is played, he isnt really doing anything that waant being done at Ajax in the 70's and Barca in the 00's.
Also claiming he improves players is a bit desrespectful to his expensively assmebled backroom staff who are the ones that put the hard work in the training ground.
The utter control his teams display, to the point of boredom didn't exist before. Every manager is emulating that to some level from Ipswich to Burnely.
Doesn't take away the fact he MUST know City are cheating hence his outbursts time to time but let's not reinvent everything else.
That’s because half the time we had to put up with playing weakened sides due to players like Giggs and Irwin been classified as foreigners and teams had to have x amount of home players in them a stupid law that was eventually thrown out. Then of course English clubs were banned for several seasons due to you know who so that was another disadvantage when we were finally aloud back in the players had little or no experience of European football.
Alx didn’t have it easy in Europe if the above hadn’t happened I’m sure he would have won at least one more European Cup.
Of course it existed before, he copied it from the managers that managed him
It's not a criticism of him, but I think there's more to the control/dominance thing than it just being because of his specific vision.
He came through as a manager at the right time to take advantage of talent being consolidated like never before by a small number of clubs, and when a statistical/use of data revolution was taking hold at the higher levels of football. Doesn't mean what he did wasn't still great and better than anyone else of his era managed that had similar circumstances, but its hard to compare to managers from 90s/early 00s and earlier who simply didn't have the sort of extensive support network that allows for the granular analysis that makes sophisticated modern pressing/control of space and figuring out the most efficient pass and move automatisms possible to employ.
The end of the 2000s and 2010s was when it had become common to see most of the well enough run/managed big teams have more possession dominance than ever before; the days of third and fourth pot seeds often having between 40-50% possession and being good enough to sometimes take the attacking/controlling role at home had decreased significantly even from 4-5 years before Pep took over Barca. Greater regular control was far from unique to his teams and tactical approaches, he just emerged as the manager with the tactical ideas that best exploited what was making that shift for stronger teams possible...the increasingly lopsided financial situation in the sport and ever increasing use of data/stats and sports science. The globalised nature of things by the 2010s and ease of information available meant that whoever the first truly great team led by a "systemic" minded manager were, they were both going to have a much wider influence on the sport than similar earlier great manager/team combinations.
Ferguson achieved a pretty high level of consistency in Europe. This was in an era where super-teams stacked with talent weren't so prevalent. Most of the ueropean top clubs paid more in salary and transfer fees up until early 2000s-ish too. In 19 campaigns, SAF's teams made the quarters or further on 12 occasions. United were always competing for the league until the final stretch in every one of those seasons as well. Every time his teams made the final, they also won the league; we didn't have wilderness years like a lot of the other big clubs. It is a bit lazy to suggest he "wasn't great at European competition", even relative to his success domestically, because it is kinda silly to use 13 PL trophies in 20 years as a yardstick to measure his European success. He did absolutely fine in Europe over the length of his career. From 1993/94 to 2012/13:
Winners x2
Finalists x2
Semi-Finalists x3
Quarter Finalists x 5
During the same time period, from a quick check:
Real Madrid winners x3, semis x5, quarters x4
Barcelona winners x3, semis x6, quarters x3
Juventus winners x1, final x2, semis x1, quarters x3
Milan winners x3, final x3, semis x1, quarters x3
Bayern Munich winners x2, final x3, semis x2, quarters x5
Who are all these teams that did so much better in Europe?
Winners x2
Finalists x2
Semi-Finalists x3
Quarter Finalists x 5
During the same time period, from a quick check:
Real Madrid winners x3, semis x5, quarters x4
Barcelona winners x3, semis x6, quarters x3
Juventus winners x1, final x2, semis x1, quarters x3
Milan winners x3, final x3, semis x1, quarters x3
Bayern Munich winners x2, final x3, semis x2, quarters x5
Who are all these teams that did so much better in Europe?
Foreigner rule definitely make things tougher over the first half of the '90s, but the exits/defeats were often actually against underdog teams United would have been favourites against. They were put out twice by financially destitute Russian teams (Torpedo Moscow, Rotor Volgograd) relying on very small, mostly domestic squads, plus Galatasaray/Gothenburg were hardly swimming in financial or squad advantages compared to United at the time. It's balanced out by a Cup-Winners Cup win when that tournament was still respected, though.