supercity88 said:
It is pretty basic business sense, nothing revolutionary or innovative with it. It is obviously crucial for us to increase marketing revenue etc but in terms of his football specific ideas - I think they need some work. He talks about a business model to run the playing side of things, but the trouble with football is that you cannot monopolise it like you can other industries, because you cannot control the fixture list, injuries, referees and those elements of chance and luck that can directly influence your output in terms of trophies. I completely agree that the authoritative manager of the Ferguson/Mourinho style is not good for the long term - unless they stay for a long time - but then where are you left afterwards? But in terms of success, both models can point to a lot of trophies. Whilst the Rags may be suffering this season because they have allowed Ferguson to effectively let the squad deteriorate, Barcelona aren't looking all that healthy and although you may be able to blame those issues on occurances since he left... he might not be at City forever either so will we go to pot then too? Unless that model is being implemented by Sheikh Mansour and any future Directors follow the mantra then it too, is only a short term model that could be equally as problematic.
Football is about winning trophies, great sides built on great tactics and long term thinking have failed to win things. Poor sides run by tough talking, authoritative managers have won things... the longer term view is only good in terms of developing future talent through the academy but it isn't like a conveyor belt where as one player ends their career they can be instantly replaced - some players are simply irreplaceable and for that reason, I think he is a little bit too unwilling to attach any weight to the uncontrollables like luck, injury and the fact it is a game... "The ball doesn't go in by chance" I would have to say, actually, quite often it does.
He mentions the element of chance at great length at the start, then talks about how you can improve the overall level of a club by good management.
It's not about having the same CEO forever, it's about having a system in place that doesn't collapse every time you are forced to make a change.
Mancini for instance wanted control of everything, like Ferguson. If he had been given that & then failed, we would have struggled like fuck to recover from it, possibly never done so with the problems of ffp thrown in.
If a big club is well managed at the top, it competes, forever. No it doesn't win every year & isn't immune to dips of fortune but it comes back. If it's badly managed, it can disappear into the lower divisions & win fuck all for decades, as we have proved.
If we'd had someone like Soriano in charge in 1968 we'd probably be twice as big as Utd now.
