But you don’t hire Ange because you want a highly flexible, pragmatic manager who is going to adjust his plan based on the pieces he is given. That’s what you hire Thomas Frank for.
You hire Ange (and Bielsa or similar types) because you want to take a bet that if they can get enough of their perfect pieces in place for enough games, the uncompromising belief in that way of playing football is going to lead to incredible consistency and out perform financial expectations. And if they don’t get those pieces, it probably isn’t going to work.
As I said, I am completely fine with the idea that Ange is the latter and not the former. And I get why people and the club would rather the former. All I am saying, is that Ange has a way of winning that is proven to work. He makes choices about who he is as a coach and they bring him success, and he should be judged against that. And I think he deserves respect. I will always take issue with people saying he’s ’not good enough’ or something similar when I don’t think it’s that at all. He is deliberately uncompromising, but that’s not the same as not being good enough.