Martin O Neill my overwhelming 1st choice but someone like Hiddink coming available is a real bonus. Both would improve us as a club completely. Lucaas - do you actually know anything about football?
Why do you say that? Because I don't think Hiddink is a good as he's made out? The only time he's actually exceeded expectation is with South Korea (dOWN MOSTLY to some extremely dodgy refereeing decisions in Korea's favour) and with Russia in Euro 2008, where he still needed extra time to get into the semis past a Dutch side who had lost Robben to injury. He took a Real Madrid side that won the European cup in the previous season to 6th place in February before getting sacked. He failed to qualify against a weak Slovenia side through the playoffs with Russia in 2010 and now he lost 3-0 AT HOME to Croatia meaning they didn't qualify. People talk about him as if he's some sort of world class miracle worker. I don't see why he's been elevated into some sort of demi god ? The only league he's had any type of consistent success is the Dutch league, even Steve McLaren did well there with a much smaller team than PSV.
Lucaas He has a European cup to his name as a manager, or are you just going to tell me he only achieved that because English teams were banned from Europe? He guided Russia from 34th to 9th in the Fifa world rankings in 3 years. He took to the Premier League like a duck to water with Chelsea after World Cup winner Scolari had flopped. Jupp Heynckes (the guy who Hiddink replaced at Real Madrid) finished 4th in the league the season they won the Champions League. The hype around Hiddink is that he's tactically better than the majority of managers out there. The fact that he has not achieved great success with the Turkish/Russian/South Korean national sides is not a reflection on this because let's face it even the greatest manager of all time, Sir Alex Ferguson probably wouldn't have guided any of those three national teams to success. Let's not forget he took Australia to the World Cup either. He took them to the last 16 where they were knocked out controversially by eventual winners Italy. Let's not just look at honours at major European nations and clubs because let's face it, there'd only be a few top managers out there if that was the case.
Its true Terry, he does have a European cup to his name, but that was a long, long time ago. I won't discredit him for winning it, that would be unfair, but what happened in the 80s doesn't have as much bearing on the here and now as the immediate past does. That's why I've focused on the last 12 years, rather than go back to 1988. You've just got to look at the managers who won the European cup around the same time as him. Emerich Jenei, Artur Jorge, Arrigo Sacchi, Ljubko Petrovic and Johan Cruyff. The game has moved on since then, I don't doubt he still has some qualities that make him a good manager, but one deserving of being one of the highest paid managers in the last 10 years and continuously linked with top jobs as he's hailed as some sort of miracle worker? Nah, not for me. How hard was it to actually get Australia into the world cup back then? Beating a desperately poor Uruguay side on penalties was hardly an achievement, especially when they had no Forlan for most of the two legs. As I said, they got out of a group in the world cup they should've qualified from anyway and lost after a decent defensive performance against Italy. Whats so remarkable about that? I wouldn't expect anything less from whoever was managing Australia. Credit where credits due he got his tactics right in the Italy game, but it ultimately ended in Australia losing in the second round, which is about where everyone expected them to finish. And on the Chelsea bit, Avram Grant was a John Terry slip away from being a European cup winning manager and 2 points off the prem champions, and we've seen how shocking he was at Portsmouth and West Ham. Is Avram Grant a miracle worker too? I'm not debating with you that Hiddink isn't a good manager, but as great as he's made out? I can't differentiate between him and Redknapp, Benitez, Leonardo, Pellegrini etc. They're all good managers, but why has Hiddink been elevated onto a pedestal as some sort of super manager who makes rubbish nations into world beaters?
