Almost no manager who has been successful in the English top division has had a prior record of success in managing big clubs. Pep Guardiola is the obvious one but before this century I can't think of anyone.
Ferguson managed Aberdeen. Before this century is a bit of a cut-off, especially if you're defining big clubs in a limited way. Who qualifies?
Before this century? Not sure why that's relevant, to be honest, but still. Conte would apply otherwise. Wenger, Mancini, Ranieri and Pellegrini have all won the Premier League, too. Benitez? Won La Liga with Valencia and picked up a number of trophies with Liverpool.
And the there's Felix Magath ...wait, did they have to be successful in the Premier League too? Bugger!
Before this century the game was a very different animal, before the premier league how many overseas managers were there in this country? Between 1970 the first season I have some recall of, and the start of the premier league in 1992, off the top of my head the league was won by - Harry Catterick , Bertie Mee, Brian Clough, Don Revie, Bill Shankly, Dave Mackay, Bob Paisley, Ron Saunders, Joe ***an, Howard Kendall, Kenny Dalglish, George Graham and Howard Wilkinson, so some Englishmen and a few Scots - which must mean that Wenger was the first 'foreigner' to win it and that Howard Wilkinson remains the last Englishman!
Debatably Bob Kyle with Sunderland in 1912/13. He was Irish, but the timing makes that one rather messy. I'd say he counts.
Romano is a tap-in merchant who repeats what other journos say and then tries to add a twist so it isn't as obvious, so what we need to look for is either Dan Kilpatrick or Alasdair Gold at our end, or a reliable Italian source at the other Gold was certainly talking about Paratici a couple of days back, so something was in the works then
No, I meant whether having Paratici as a DoF is good or not. Obviously anything that removes Hitchens from this side of the business is possibly good!
The point I was trying to make (badly it turns out) was that if you look at the most successful managers they usually have their first big league success at a big club (working definition...a club who has won Serie A, La Liga, Bundesliga or English top division at least 10 times overall or five times in the last 25 years). So looking to appoint someone who has won the League elewhere would have excluded a lot of successful managers.
Antonio Conte is reportedly ‘unconvinced’ by the Tottenham Hotspur project and is now leaning towards a rejection, which could affect Fabio Paratici’s decision too. According to Sky Sport Italia, the situation is increasingly tense and Conte is more and more likely to turn down the offer. He left Inter because he was unwilling to accept a club that required cuts to the squad and wages, so as Spurs are not in a much better situation, the move raised a lot of questions. Transfer expert Gianluca Di Marzio notes Conte is now leaning towards a rejection of Tottenham, as he fears they will not have a competitive squad following sales. The biggest concern is the probable exit of Harry Kane and the inability to bridge the massive gap between Spurs and the other top Premier League clubs. Tottenham are also trying to bring in former Juventus director of sport Paratici, but if Conte doesn’t take the job, then that could also affect his decision.
I mentioned it a couple of days back, but Paratici's approach at Juve was bringing in younger players with upside (Pogba, Dybala, Coman, Alex Sandro) with one or two experienced players like (Pirlo, Llorente, Dani Alves) who were often brought in for reasonable fees or, quite often, frees (Pirlo, Pogba and Alves were all free transfers, so a start) which built upon the team's spine of Buffon, Chiellini, Bonucci, Marchisio so the team were adding both long-term replacements and also players who would add instant quality even if they were only able to do so for 2-3 seasons tops Does this mean Hitchen is going? No, since he's our chief scout - but what it does mean is we stop this idiotic witch hunt against Hitchen while all comes from him saying the January transfer window is a pain in the backside in the Amazon documentary and has snowballed into him being the guy who signs off on dud transfers (even the ones when Paul Mitchell was DoF) and turning down ones who have prospered elsewhere (even though Dan Kilpatrick is on record saying Poch did that) because the Lunatic Fringe are completely deranged at this point
My immediate thought was to check who Dynamo Kyiv's coach is ...and then say "Bloody hell, what's the retirement age in the Ukraine?"
