"During my 8-month spell here at Napoli I've realised there's a lot that can't be done here" - Conte. A bit early but not remotely surprising.
Napoli might win the league. It's still not going to stop Conte whining like a bitch. They spent lots of money in the summer, but selling Kvaratskhelia in January was ****. He'll probably have a meltdown and **** off soon.
Chasing the 'Ghost' - a superstar struck down by lightning s://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/cv2gd3jr For those that can remember an article about the late John White.
Guess what? The meltdown dropped https://www.reddit.com/r/coys/comments/1k49klz/conte_i_put_a_lot_of_pressure_on_myself_but_i/
Conte is a dying breed of manager from a pre-Covid generation who rose to prominence in the bling bling era of football where money simply wasn't an object for most teams. That isn't the case anymore. Most teams in Europe are skint and PSR, unless your owners are by complete coincidence connected to the hosts of the 2022 or 2034 world cups, seems to have some bite with its bark. Managers need to be much more pragmatic these days.
Conte appears to be incapable of managing a league title + CL campaign concurrently in the same season, money on tap or not.
Like I've said elsewhere, I think being able to juggle multiple competitions is the mark of a truly great manager. Very, very few have done it well. Poch was the closest we've ever had. Redknapp next. It's why I don't think Conte can ever be spoken about in the same bracket as Mourinho, Ancelotti, Guardiola etc.
It makes me happy that unless you are financially miles away from your domestic rivals (and can effectively afford to finance 2 sets of strong starting XIs) , most top flight managers cannot win the league + CL by default.
I think that clubs need to look at significant roles for assistants and expanded squads. There are so many games and the need for depth is greater than ever. Most managers still don't like large squads and are reluctant to pick youngsters. Guardiola's dropped the ball on his squad this season and they've been miles off the pace. If it can hit City that hard, then clubs with more limited resources have no chance. You have to plan for the unexpected and be prepared to use everyone available.
There's no obvious solution to it. Bringing back the reserve team approach might work, but Spain has circa 60 reserve teams playing in its lower levels and that doesn't appear to have helped much - although Barca may yet pull off a surprise and win the double. I'd also imagine there'd be an uproar if League 1 teams had to play Tottenham's B team, and rightly so. I'd also be furious if some up-themselves PL team started using my team's league as a glorified petri dish. The loan system is very hit and miss, as we've found out over the past 5 years. And FA/UEFA limits on loans, which apparently apply to everyone apart from Chelsea, make it very difficult for this to be a long-term solution. You can see why a number of teams have resorted to (very dubiously) buying other teams in leagues elsewhere and running them as professional-level extensions of their local youth teams. But fundamentally the sticking point with all of these solutions is that the vast majority of players who go these systems won't gain any experience playing football at a level even slightly close to one where the senior team manager would seriously consider using them. The stakes are so high and the margin of error so narrow. People (myself included) have criticised Ange for dropping Archie since more experienced (and worse) players returned from injury, but we've seen it before and the reason is obvious: If he starts Gray instead of Bentancur at CM and we lose, he gets slammed for trusting a teenager. If he plays the Uruguayan, the blame is deflected onto a player who should be doing better. I think all said, step one is to bulldoze the ridiculous international fixtures calendar and rethink that from scratch. Take a flamethrower to the League of Nations or whatever the hell it's called for a start. Then impose a quota whereby a PL-level player competing in 4 competitions can only be called up to x number of international camps. This will force the national team managers to pick their squads carefully and - in fact - quite creatively. Such that instead of Sir Waistcoat demonstrating to himself and the nation dozens of times that Harry Kane is a bloody good striker, he might have been forced to give others a run and we now wouldn't be stuck in the worrying space where Kane doesn't have an obvious successor.
Scott Parker has been named Championship Manager of the Season. They matched the Football League record for most clean sheets for a season on Saturday. If they shut out Millwall at Turf Moor on the weekend, then they'll break Port Vale's 71-year-old record. They could also match Reading's unbeaten run record from '05/06. They've currently gone 32 league games without a loss, having only been defeated twice. Their last loss was a 1-0 away defeat in November to... Millwall. Japhet Tanganga's side still have a shot at a play-off place too, so it could be tight.
But don't mention this on r/coys, you'll get a bunch of gammony dickheads screaming that Levy better not bring him in...
You'd think there'd be at least a small pool of people thinking defensive sterility has its advantages by now...
Only conceding 15 goals in 45 games is a ridiculous record, honestly. Amazing work. Leeds have played 1 game less and conceded nearly twice as many (29) and they're superb. 32 games unbeaten, a possible 100 point season and automatic promotion? All excellent. Parker hasn't demonstrated that he can replicate that solidity at Premier League level, though. Quite the opposite, in fact. He relegated Fulham, got destroyed at Bournemouth and flopped at Brugge. He does a very good job at Championship level and has been promoted twice in two attempts. Maybe he's learned enough now to do a job in the Premier League? Maybe he hasn't? We shouldn't be taking that risk, especially given the players we have. We're not set-up for more defensive football and the fans wouldn't welcome it, anyway.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/championship/table Dunno if the GF is typical for that league, but it does not bode well for non-regular promoted to the PL.
Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton scored 89, 92 and 87 respectively last season. Leeds finished 3rd, above the Saints, and scored 81. All of them conceded far, far more than Burnley though, to be fair. Leicester lost 11 games and conceded 41. Ipswich let in 57. Southampton conceded 63, which is only two less than 22nd place Birmingham, who went down. Your point definitely stands. We'll see if they address it.
Eric Dier is joining Monaco on a free transfer in the summer, apparently. They're currently 4th in Ligue 1, which is a Champions League qualifying round place. It's very, very tight in that division below PSG, though. 4 points separate 2nd place Marseille and 7th place Strasbourg. Close GD, too.
