I don’t particular want to stay with 3ATB but Amorim’s style against us with that formation was pretty enjoyable and he’s had decent success with it at Sporting. It’s a lot more free flowing and attack minded than the 3ATB we’ve had this season and the 4ATB we had with Nuno and Jose.
Ive challenged him already before. I don't think myself and himself need to go through the motions again although PS does contradict himself to me as hes saying at one point managers don't make a difference but then there are some legendary managers who do make a difference and even that there are super poor managers like fat frank.
Its interesting seeing his views and whilst i general disagree with him there are things he articulates that i can take on board. As you say, at least it keeps the board active
Debating is good and it would be boring if we all had the same views and opinions. But to come out and say things like managers don’t make a difference etc is next level nonsense imo.
With respect, these two comments contradict each-other. It's one thing if someone comes out spouting genuine nonsense, e.g. trying to convince people that the earth is flat, but an opinion that might hold at least a kernel of truth shouldn't be dismissed as nonsense, or the debate we all want will quickly stagnate. I personally disagree (often strongly) with almost every position PS takes on here, but he puts across his points politely and articulately and therefore I do enjoy reading them and they allow me to think about an opposite opinion to my own.
If you quantified "difference" , say on a scale of 0-100 *** (where 0 = no difference and 100 = god like) , I contend that over all managers you would see : 1. a Pareto distribution 80:20 with the 80% having a "difference" less than 20. 2. the likes of Fergie/Clough etc will be far into the "long tail" . *** you would in reality need negative values, in order to be able to measure those you make things worse
To compare Sam Allardyce to Pep and Klopp is ridiculous and nonsense though. And to say managers don’t make a significant difference to football clubs is even more bizarre Just my opinion.
When Sam Allardyce took over Bolton in 1999 they were lower mid table in the championship, that season he got them into the play offs. and he got them promoted in 2001. When he left them in 2007 they were 5th (having finished 6th the season before) in the premier league, they had played in Europe reaching the knock out stages and reached a league cup final. Now I am not saying that Klopp and Pep couldn't have done this but sustained improvement over a number of seasons such as Big Sam achieved at Bolton is not easy and is worthy of praise. He keeps being given jobs because he is good at what he does and whilst I am not a great fan (the same can be said of Klopp and Pep too), his achievements should not just be dismissed.
It’s not at all comparable to winning multiple league titles in multiple countries and winning domestic cups and the Champions league though. He’s absolute levels below Klopp and Pep
Maybe one day Pep will manage a championship club and take them into Europe and not just manage the richest club in whatever league he chooses then we might be able to truly compare. I would choose to watch Peps team over any Allardyce side any time, but you have cut your cloth accordingly, and I tell you what if he keeps Leeds up this season that will be another significant achievement because currently they are awful.
I don't disagree but there is only one way to know for sure and that is to conduct a social science experiment and have Sam and Pep swap roles for a season. Like wife swap but for football. So while common wisdom does suggest that they are worlds apart, we can't know for sure until they walk in each other's shoes. Sometimes our fate hinges on infinitesimally small moments, like Pep getting the Barc job when he did, or Kane's late winner against Villa in 2015 (incredibly, also the last time he scored a free kick) - a goal that supposedly saved Poch's career by the latter's own admission.
What does need to be said about Allarshyte is there was a lot of smoke and mirrors about the image of the club punching above their weight The likes of Ivan Campo, Youri Djorkaeff, Fernando Hierro and El Hadji Diouf all had weighty wages compared to a lot of teams in Bolton's strata at the time, which is why their wages to turnover ratio was a pretty goddamn alarming 72% by Allardyce's final season there, plus there was some dodginess with sports agencies best summarised with how (admittedly after Allarshyte left) they signed Gavin McCann from Villa for £1m - and the agency showed up at the last minute, charged a £300k agency fee and then backdated the paperwork And that's the thing about everything that Allarshyte achieved at Bolton: he was just as much a FFP cheat as Fraudiola is, but he got away with it - although Bolton didn't, because when the wheels fell off they fell off hard
Good achievement if he keeps them up but it’s still not comparable to winning leagues, cups or champions leagues.
Why do all the rich clubs want Pep though? Because he’s one of the best. Why don’t none of them go for Big Sam? In fact why didn’t Chelsea or even Spurs go for him this season?
I don't have any findings though. I've made no recent* claims about relative managerial performance. I simply pointed out that the data I can see doesn’t give any support to your claim that Klopp and Guardiola are better than Allardyce. *Following a prompt from @The RDBD I reviewed @lennypops calculations on significance and concluded that the data don't show significant differences between managers.
Mourinho and Conte have also been on the wanted list for a lot of big clubs. Having seen them at Spurs, what edge do you think they have because I couldn't see any.
You are misunderstanding my point. I am saying that the data doesn't seem to show any significant difference apart from in the extremes. I am a bit surprised that that is true but it's not really a major shock because it is consistent with the very strong correlation between money and success drowning out other edges. It's actually more surprising that few managers have multiple successes with mid table or lower league clubs. The money effect is much less important there.
Yes, that is true. But the point is that the data can't tell you whether the few % is really down to the manager. If you had a coin that was 51% likely to come down heads you would have a major advantage in a betting game, but to prove that coin was biased needs many 100s of tosses.* So if there was a manager who had a 2% edge it would be impossible to see that in the data since few managers have >1000 games. *An unbiased coin is very likely to be in the range 450 to 550 heads for 1000 tosses. The 51% biased one should be in the range 460 to 560 heads. Those ranges overlap so much that it is clear you need a lot more than 1000 tosses to identify the biased coin.
The main observable advantage we got from the ubermensch was the floor of our signings rising (but not necessarily the ceiling) and a chunk of that comes from his name value It's harder to say if similar can be said for Conte, though, due to Paratici doing the work - especially considering Romero, Gil and Sarr being signed for Nuno
