The 'If You Still Need to Purge Yourself Of Ange' Thread

[BrainOfLevy]

https://www.reddit.com/r/coys/comments/1ljfytu/anges_pre_match_speech_before_the_europa_league

Clear as day that the fact that the players stuck together through the ridiculous circumstances was not only a theme of his motivation, but a massive coaching achievement in its own right. When we ask for context, this is what we mean. Any other manager who suffered the league defeats that he did would have lost the dressing room. You cannot decouple the League from the Europa win. It is all connected.

 

[billyiddo]

This is what I find completely mad. Emirates Marketing Project, with their resources, basically get blown off course and have a trophyless season because Rodri gets injured.

Eddie Howe went from being under pressure, dealing with a lot of injuries and a PL + CL schedule at once, and then was back in good graces because he got players back, a deeper squad, and started getting results again.

David Moyes finished 17th with Everton one season, and the very next finished 4th.

I could go on. There's plenty of examples of managers stock being low, and then recovering. There's usually a lot of context around why they struggled in a particular season, and it's rarely that the manager just 'wasn't good enough.' Most of the time injuries play a massive part.

I think Moyes is actually an interesting analogy. I think it's fair to say for example that the job of replacing SAF was too big for him, and in that context he may not have been the right person. But so many assumptions about his tactical acumen or coaching preparation being bad when 17th would have been thrown out the window when he got 4th with Everton.

I don't think we have enough data to say that Ange would have ultimately failed, or was not good enough in the PL for Spurs. We have a 5th placed finish, and we have a season so ridiculous that I don't remember any club ever having to deal with a similar set of circumstances. And we still won a European trophy at the end of it! Most of the time, injuries and player quality dictate how successful a manager can be.

Saudi Sportswashing Machine & Eddie Howe suffered more injuries last season than we have this season and had 1900+ days lost to injury vs our 1500 from this season - they finished 7th, we finished 17th.

Pep is not a manager i would petsonally advocate for us to appoint, not unless we could supply him with 100m pound players in every position and in reserve - falling apart when losing one specific player despite his wealth of options elsewhere is exactly the type occurrence that would have me questioning how he would fare without everything stacked in his favour.

 

[thfcsteff]

Saudi Sportswashing Machine & Eddie Howe suffered more injuries last season than we have this season and had 1900+ days lost to injury vs our 1500 from this season - they finished 7th.

Pep is not a manager i would advocate for us to appoint, not unless we could supply him with 100m pound players in every position and in reserve - falling apart when losing one specific player despite his wealth of options elsewhere is exactly the type occurrence that would have me questioning how he could fare without everything stacked in his favour.

...and we're back at context and details. I will (for interest!) go and see who was missing that season for them with regards to key positions. You may well be right, and bravo, he did indeed finish 7th. But I wonder if you asked Howe whether he'd have taken 17th, finishing 15 points above relegation but winning a European trophy and getting Cl qualification? Who knows...

 

[billyiddo]

...and we're back at context and details. I will (for interest!) go and see who was missing that season for them with regards to key positions. You may well be right, and bravo, he did indeed finish 7th. But I wonder if you asked Howe whether he'd have taken 17th, finishing 15 points above relegation but winning a European trophy and getting Cl qualification? Who knows...

I don't think you can suffer 20-25% more days lost through injury than we had this season and not have it affect a considerable amount of your squad/team.

It's pointless though as you guys just think injuries is a get out if jail free card for any criticism - so I'm sure you'll find something to show why ours were arbitrarily much worse than theirs for reasons.

 

[thfcsteff]

I don't think you can suffer 20-25% more days lost through injury than we had this season and not have it affect a considerable amount of your squad/team.

It's pointless though as you guys just think injuries is a get out if jail free card for any criticism - so I'm sure you'll find something to show why ours were arbitrarily much worse than theirs for reasons.

LOL...it's actually just as pointless discussing this if that is your perspective. Needless to say, you appear to have hit a point where your frustration is now giving way to inaccurate observations (with regards to 'get out of jail free' cards)...

 

[billyiddo]

LOL...it's actually just as pointless discussing this if that is your perspective. Needless to say, you appear to have hit a point where your frustration is now giving way to inaccurate observations (with regards to 'get out of jail free' cards)...

It feels like every discussion regarding criticism comes back to context/injuries - what other conclusion are we to draw?

 

[BrainOfLevy]

I don't think you can suffer 20-25% more days lost through injury than we had this season and not have it affect a considerable amount of your squad/team.

It's pointless though as you guys just think injuries is a get out if jail free card for any criticism - so I'm sure you'll find something to show why ours were arbitrarily much worse than theirs for reasons.

Isn’t the point about when our injuries happened, and who they happened to? Like, they were mainly confined to a 3 month period where we also had the Christmas and European schedule to contend with. And it involved our first choice defence, both our strikers, our wingers, our top scorer, our creative midfielders. No other team has had to deal with what we had to deal with in that 3 month period that I can remember.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

I don't think you can suffer 20-25% more days lost through injury than we had this season and not have it affect a considerable amount of your squad/team.

It's pointless though as you guys just think injuries is a get out if jail free card for any criticism - so I'm sure you'll find something to show why ours were arbitrarily much worse than theirs for reasons.

Why would injuries not appropriate context to use though?

Why would a manager not having his best players available impact his ability to get results?

 

[Baleforce]

Context often only works one way in this debate BoL; you'll see amigo

Never a truer word spoken, fair play for admitting it.

 

[billyiddo]

Isn’t the point about when our injuries happened, and who they happened to? Like, they were mainly confined to a 3 month period where we also had the Christmas and European schedule to contend with. And it involved our first choice defence, both our strikers, our wingers, our top scorer, our creative midfielders. No other team has had to deal with what we had to deal with in that 3 month period that I can remember.

Yeah it was a tough period which is why i think everyone would be happy with adjusting expectations when evaluating the season.

 

[billyiddo]

Why would injuries not appropriate context to use though?

Why would a manager not having his best players available impact his ability to get results?

Injuries are an important context, of course. They are the reason you could say well we should be in the mix for top 4/5 but injuries mean we can accept finishing upper mid table /top 8.

But are they valid reason for finishing 17th over 7th, like Eddie Howe did at Saudi Sportswashing Machine with more players injured for longer in 23/24? No

Are they an excuse as to why we did not progress towards playing the managers prefered style of football? No - having key players missing can excuse poor results to a degree but why are the players that were available not showing any signs of growing together as a team and there being some progress towards a style of play being implemented - evidence of that can be be observed even if results don't go your way. We had poor results AND poor performances, individually and as a team - consistently right up until the end of the season.

Are they a valid excuse for there being no tactical adjustments made or implemented successfully to try and combat the repeated ways in which we coughed up chances game after game? No

Are they a valid excuse for our poor form after the injuries had returned to a normal level or our overall form stretching back way in to last season? No

 

[Raziel]

Clear as day that the fact that the players stuck together through the ridiculous circumstances was not only a theme of his motivation, but a massive coaching achievement in its own right. When we ask for context, this is what we mean. Any other manager who suffered the league defeats that he did would have lost the dressing room. You cannot decouple the League from the Europa win. It is all connected.

Within some context, yes

- I don't think anyone questions if the team was still on board with Ange and, 100%, the fact that he lost that many games (players don't like losing) and still had them with him, is an achievement
- The issue remains, even with a motivated side, his tactics/execution in the league was not just bad, it was record breaking awful, and that's why the league must be disconnected as a conversation from cup run.
- And the league must have context of injuries and priorities, but it effectively comes to the measure you give that context, I've said it repeatedly, had Ange come 12th (still worse Spurs finish in league in 20 years), he'd have a job right now.

In the end, as with all business (and yes, this will drive fans/people mad, and we will have the emotion conversation), the club had to make a risk/reward decision

- Was it possible that Ange with a fit squad, a few additions to team would have turned around the league form? sure
- Was it likely that the season would ever be as bad? no
- Could he make up 28 points, concede 20+ less goals, lose 12+ less games all while playing CL? unlikely
- What would the alternatives be now vs. if we were looking for a manager in Nov?
- What would the ability to back alternative manager if we had spent x amount this summer with Ange?

In the end, a not simple decision was made, on a pure data/logic level, it looks like the right decision (that will only be validated by the outcome of Frank's appointment), but the debate on this thread alone shows, it wasn't binary.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

Injuries are an important context, of course. They are the reason you could say well we should be in the mix for top 4/5 but injuries mean we can accept finishing upper mid table /top 8.

But are they valid reason for finishing 17th over 7th, like Eddie Howe did at Saudi Sportswashing Machine with more players injured for longer in 23/24? No

Are they an excuse as to why we did not progress towards playing the managers prefered style of football? No - having key players missing can excuse poor results to a degree but why are the players that were available not showing any signs of growing together as a team and there being some progress towards a style of play being implemented - evidence of that can be be observed even if results don't go your way. We had poor results AND poor performances, individually and as a team - consistently right up until the end of the season.

Are they a valid excuse for there being no tactical adjustments made or implemented successfully to try and combat the repeated ways in which we coughed up chances game after game? No

Are they a valid excuse for our poor form after the injuries had returned to a normal level or our overall form stretching back way in to last season? No

I genuinely think you don’t remember what it was like in those months, and I don’t think Saudi Sportswashing Machine endured something similar to what we did. To say that ‘injuries might be an excuse’ and say that maybe 8th would have been acceptable is just completely off of what exactly we were enduring.

But again, context. I am certain that once the players were back, if we didn’t have the Europa to run at. Maybe we would have recovered to 12th, or maybe higher. But Ange decided to willingly not play his best players in the league, in order to give himself the best possible chance of a trophy and CL qualification.

Why does arbitrarily 8th feel acceptable to you with that amount of injuries, but a European trophy and CL qualification does not?

 

[billyiddo]

I genuinely think you don’t remember what it was like in those months, and I don’t think Saudi Sportswashing Machine endured something similar to what we did. To say that ‘injuries might be an excuse’ and say that maybe 8th would have been acceptable is just completely off of what exactly we were enduring.

But again, context. I am certain that once the players were back, if we didn’t have the Europa to run at. Maybe we would have recovered to 12th, or maybe higher. But Ange decided to willingly not play his best players in the league, in order to give himself the best possible chance of a trophy and CL qualification.

Why does arbitrarily 8th feel acceptable to you with that amount of injuries, but a European trophy and CL qualification does not?

Finishing higher up the table is just a way of saying that soloutions were found to the problems we faced, 8th 10th 12th whatever - i can't abide by just throwing your hands up and saying sorry can't expect anything other than repeated poor performances and poor results and regression across the board because we had some tough circumstances to deal with - managers have to find solutions, that's part and parcel of the job.

Edit : we should have been able to find those solutions in the PL and win the EL. Why dies it have to be an either/or situation? I don't agree that resting some players around a few knockout ties means you have to accept defeat and the poor performances that came with it.

 

[Muttley]

The reality is that football seasons are 9 months long. Ange had 2 of them. He had 18 months of football playing months and 2 pre-seasons to embed a system across an entire squad, not just eleven players. He didn't have mitigating circumstances for the entire duration of his tenure. Even when he did, you could still measure his performance and take into account those areas.

Ange chose his tactical system and it needed to work with rotation even with a fully fit squad. This is my opinion, but I don't think the gap between first and second choices in the squad were really that great. That gap could have been closed even further with better coaching and more pragmatism and dynamism. So often I felt our starting eleven and subs bench were more than adequate to get wins and draws. As we saw from the record books, we didn't get them.

I'm still proud of my club for making a very strong football and business decision based on all the quantitative and qualitative data they had exposure to. More than us fans would have been exposed to.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

Finishing higher up the table is just a way of saying that soloutions were found to the problems we faced, 8th 10th 12th whatever - i can't abide by just throwing your hands up and saying sorry can't expect anything other than repeated poor performances and poor results and regression across the board because we had some tough circumstances to deal with - managers have to find solutions, that's part and parcel of the job

Urrrggghh we weren’t throwing our hands up and not expecting anything else though were we? We were winning the Europa League and qualifying for the Champions League!! That was his solution to salvage the season! Not some arbitrary charge up the table to some pointless league position that would have meant nothing.

 

[billyiddo]

Urrrggghh we weren’t throwing our hands up and not expecting anything else though were we? We were winning the Europa League and qualifying for the Champions League!! That was his solution to salvage the season! Not some arbitrary charge up the table to some pointless league position that would have meant nothing.

See my edit above - why was it an either/or situation? Why is it that in order to beat Bodo Glimdt Frankfurt AZ and the worst United team in living memory it requires us to see the league form we had? I do not accept that - that is poor management.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

See my edit above - why was it an either/or situation? Why is it that in order to beat Bodo Glimdt Frankfurt AZ and the worst United team in living memory it requires us to see the league form we had? I do not accept that - that is poor management.

I don't think it was either / or, I think it was risk / reward.

Ange said to these players that they would come through the hardship of the season, become legends of the club, and be winners at the end of it.

To achieve that, he optimised for results in the Europa League. If he had a normal injury run, he probably would not have made such a stark choice. But once it became so clear that there was very little reward for moving further up the League, and a potentially historic and seismic moment for the club in the Europa League, that is where he prioritised.

I would honestly have been furious had he risked VDV or Romero in a pointless league game and had them taken out of a crucial Europa game. Or if we had for example went out to Frankfurt but got a couple more wins around that tie, and finished 12th. But I really think it is that simple - he could have chosen to start VDV and Romero in more games together in the league, and we would have finished higher. This would tell us nothing about his tactical acumen or his coaching ability or lack thereof, it would simply be where he chose to play his best players.

There's also the question of motivation. He clearly had the players strongly motivated to win the Europa League, and they really wanted it. Had they gone out earlier, would they have been as motivated for a late season charge up to 12th? I actually doubt it. The whole point was that they could do something historic and salvage a terrible season. He could have quite easily risked his best players in the league, played them in the Europa, and earned more points, and still won the thing. But the risk of not winning the Europa would have been higher, and the reward of moving up a couple of places in the league is meaningless.

I am genuinely surprised that anyone would rather risk a couple more league places for less chance of winning that trophy. It doesn't compute for me. Especially after what we had to deal with in the middle of the season. I guess you are saying that it isn't about playing the best players, and our back ups should have been good enough / better coached to get better results when we were prioritising the Europa. Fine. I'm just not convinced that holding the guy to some standard around getting a handful more points with back up players tells us anything at all about his acumen. The risk / reward calculation was so obviously in the favor of trying to win the Europa League, and I would have supported any attempts to maximise our chances to do that.

 

[billyiddo]

I don't think it was either / or, I think it was risk / reward.

Ange said to these players that they would come through the hardship of the season, become legends of the club, and be winners at the end of it.

To achieve that, he optimised for results in the Europa League. If he had a normal injury run, he probably would not have made such a stark choice. But once it became so clear that there was very little reward for moving further up the League, and a potentially historic and seismic moment for the club in the Europa League, that is where he prioritised.

I would honestly have been furious had he risked VDV or Romero in a pointless league game and had them taken out of a crucial Europa game. Or if we had for example went out to Frankfurt but got a couple more wins around that tie, and finished 12th. But I really think it is that simple - he could have chosen to start VDV and Romero in more games together in the league, and we would have finished higher. This would tell us nothing about his tactical acumen or his coaching ability or lack thereof, it would simply be where he chose to play his best players.

There's also the question of motivation. He clearly had the players strongly motivated to win the Europa League, and they really wanted it. Had they gone out earlier, would they have been as motivated for a late season charge up to 12th? I actually doubt it. The whole point was that they could do something historic and salvage a terrible season. He could have quite easily risked his best players in the league, played them in the Europa, and earned more points, and still won the thing. But the risk of not winning the Europa would have been higher, and the reward of moving up a couple of places in the league is meaningless.

I am genuinely surprised that anyone would rather risk a couple more league places for less chance of winning that trophy. It doesn't compute for me. Especially after what we had to deal with in the middle of the season. I guess you are saying that it isn't about playing the best players, and our back ups should have been good enough / better coached to get better results when we were prioritising the Europa. Fine. I'm just not convinced that holding the guy to some standard around getting a handful more points with back up players tells us anything at all about his acumen. The risk / reward calculation was so obviously in the favor of trying to win the Europa League, and I would have supported any attempts to maximise our chances to do that.

That reads like you're coming at it from the angle that rotating players means accepting poor performances/results - to reiterate, imv we should have been able to rotate out for the EL or League or whatever way round he chose to do it and still be able to do better than we did in the 2nd priority - we literally done as badly as it was possible to do and you seem to think that is an acceptable trade off.

Even disregarding results that is still an awful lot of football to play and opportunity to further bed in tactics/players and to try and find solutions for the circumstances - i saw no evidence of progress in that regard. It's not even like we used the league games around the knockout phases to bed in the change in tactics we saw in Europe - this all points to me that he can't/couldn't cope with 2 games a week, it was feast or famine - we have CL from the start of next season, that means first team or the core of the first team being played 2 games a week - what happens if we pick up injuries there? Based on everything I've read it appears we would have to accept poor results and poor performances because he can't be expected to rotate and pick up results or pick up results without core players How is that sustainable or acceptable?

For clarification I agree with prioritising the EL once we got to the knockouts - i just don't believe it had to go hand in hand with what we saw in the league.

 

[thfcsteff]

It feels like every discussion regarding criticism comes back to context/injuries - what other conclusion are we to draw?

The ONLY reason that happens is because those factors are either greatly diminished or simply not acknowledged as being factors.
In fact, the rhetoric at that point brings us back to 'from game 11 on' in his first season, and how he is so obviously out of his league. Even the 5th place finish he did achieve is written off by some as a consequence of how we 'blind-sided' people in those first 10 games.

If those who diminish such factors so readily would accept their rather major role in what happened last season, there'd literally be no need to keep bringing it up. It actually prevents serious conversations about his stubborness, etc...