Yeah it's meteorology that's the reason why we won't beat the best team in the country and not because they are better than us all over the pitch
Yeah it's meteorology that's the reason why we won't beat the best team in the country and not because they are better than us all over the pitch
100%This isn't true, we had plenty of fires to put out in that squad and Ndombele + Lo celso addressed two of them. Arguably if he was taking a long term view to Roses replacement Sessegnon addressed a third. Much like last summer we couldn't cover all bases in one window
We're better than Brighton all over the pitch. And Palace. And Fulham. And Zagreb. And Arsenal.
Hasn't meant much at times this season.
Those teams have a way of playing that makes them greater than the sum of their parts
We're better than Brighton all over the pitch. And Palace. And Fulham. And Zagreb. And Arsenal. And Saudi Sportswashing Machine.
Hasn't meant much at times this season.
Which is my point. We don't. We go into our shells. Doesn't matter who the manager is, we've shown that time and time again when it matters. Weak meteorology.
Or even in our own leagueI'm not advocating for Poch but he got us to a CL final when we weren't the second best team on paper in Europe
Which is my point. We don't. We go into our shells. Doesn't matter who the manager is, we've shown that time and time again when it matters. Weak meteorology.
A lot of fires, some of them could wait for longer term solutions, some of them definitely couldn't.This isn't true, we had plenty of fires to put out in that squad and Ndombele + Lo celso addressed two of them. Arguably if he was taking a long term view to Roses replacement Sessegnon addressed a third. Much like last summer we couldn't cover all bases in one window
A lot of fires, some of them could wait for longer term solutions, some of them definitely couldn't.
None of Ndombele, Lo Celso and Sessegnon were short term solutions. It's obviously easier to say in hindsight than before. Probably it was hoped that one or two of them would hit the ground running. That's fair, a gamble worth taking perhaps.
Even if it had worked that would have required several other players to step up massively. Aurier/Foyth, Sanchez, Winks and Sissoko. Gamble on one of them stepping up, fine, but almost all of them? And new signings from abroad to hit the ground running... You'd need very good reasons to.
With Clarke we spent around £150m in a situation with plenty of fires to be put out. In the short term no fires were put out.
Mourinho similarly had many fires to put out, with a lot less money to spend. He actually put out some short term fires. Without spending money on players aged 29+ he fixed some issues.
We still have fires to put out come the summer. A few too many for the liking of any of us however you look at it.
Another summer like 2019? Or another summer like 2020?
Regardless of the manager, and despite my fondness for a long term approach, we have to put out some fires short term or we'll suffer too much to make the long term viable.
We spent £150m! We could have signed long term solutions for some issues, and signed some short term solutions to our most pressing issues.
We had no real DM at the start of the window, and none at the end! Having spent £150m Moussa Sissoko was still starting in central midfield... How? Why? What?
That's where we differ, you overrate Spurs massively and especially certain players. We overperformed and did very well but we were never the finished article. I disagree that we folded in the title runs because we were never in front, we always chasing and neither Chelsea nor Leicester dropped the points necessary for us to overtake them.I think we were already one step away, we folded on two title chases and lost the CL final, we had laid the first 999 pieces of the jigsaw.
What other holes though? There were just the same holes. Ndombele, GLC, Sessegnon and Clarke filled no holes for Pochettino. If they had perhaps he would have gotten better performances and kept his job.Hindsight is a wonderful thing - had we done things differently who's to say the other holes in the team wouldn't have been more costly? It was a big job and we left too much to do there was always going to be some fallout or drop off - we didn't have the gonad*s to see it through.
What other holes though? There were just the same holes. Ndombele, GLC, Sessegnon and Clarke filled no holes for Pochettino. If they had perhaps he would have gotten better performances and kept his job.
None of them filled any holes in that first half of the season. GLC was the only one doing any hole filling (on the pitch at least) at all that season, and that was only after half the season had gone and Pochettino with it.
Ironically, today's football marks the triumph of Lobanovsky's ideas in the 70s and 80s, when he was at Dynamo Kiev. The system and patterns are so important that all the successful sides play the same type of football, with minor variations. I don't think you'll ever see such varied philosophies as we had in the late 80s and 90s where people like Ferguson, Cruyff, Bilardo, Ivic, Sacchi or Beckenbauer, to name but a few, had very contrasting ideas about the way football should be played.
The similarities mean spending power and being able to find the right personality for your squad are the most important things to look out for when hiring a new manager.
I kept reading that we should find a manager who can make the team better than the some of its part. To me, that's just a cliché. Yeah, we should also find a successful manager, who'll be successful here too. How about that? But the sad truth is that I'm not sure Guardiola or Zidane would do much better. We got lucky with Pochettino: he was the right man in the right place and the players were the right ones for his system. It worked incredibly well for a couple of seasons but when things started to unravel, it all went downhill very quickly. That's modern football for you.
Maybe I'm pessimistic but I'm pretty sure we could try a hundred managers and still get it wrong every time. You can hire a guy with all the right ideas - if you're outspent by all the other PL sides, you can only hope he clicks on with the players and over-achieves, at least for some time. Ranieri is both a good example and a counter-example. He didn't play an 'orthodox' brand of football but he found the right words and he got lucky. How long did it last? A year, a year and a half maybe?
On the other hand, Marcelo Bielsa is considered by all the top managers as one of the most important football thinkers of the 21st century. And yet, I can bet you that hardly anyone will remember him in 50 years' time.
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