Four of the seven British appearances were managed by British managers - Ferguson x 3 and Hodgson Just remind me how did the Italian Mancini fair in the Champions League despite having one of the most expensive squads of all time available to him? Just to be clear here before I am taken completely out of context, I'm not for a second saying that formations and tactics are irrelevant, that would be a ridiculous thing for me to say simply because it's not true, all I'm saying is that there is far more to winning games than having a rigid starting formation from the first kick-off. Rather simplistic of you to say that Lambert was successful in the only way he could be due to lack of funds isn't it? I have argued with others on here who to try to say that Lambert was some kind of tactical genius with a system unique to him. My argument was that he never had a rigid system, he would play different tactics against different opposition but even so more often than not it would be the tactical changes he made during games, rather than the ones he drilled into players on the training ground, that came up trumps for him
Firstly Munky, Roy Hodgson, while British, is vastly experienced in European football. He is far removed from your typical British manager. Which is precisely why he was appointed to the England job. That leaves 1 "British" manager in your seven, SAF, who is the epitome of a manager whose teams play a particular "preferred" style which governs game by game selection and the club's transfer policy. SAF's success has been founded precisely on stable commitment to a particular way of playing, plus a most wonderfully talented generation of academy products nurtured in the manager's style, and the ability to buy virtually anyone he wanted to augment the home-grown players.
So United hardly ever win games with goals in the last five minutes/ten minutes of injury time then, when the starting formation/"particular preferred style" is thrown out the window, midfielders have been swapped for additional strikers and the counter attacking style that SAF so loved had been replaced by pure pressure on the opposition's goal? Forgive me then, I clearly haven't been watching football for the past 25 years Oh, and I'd be very interested to see what Carrabuh has to say about your assumation that Hodgson is "far removed from your typical British manager", I think he might just disagree with you
I agree with you entirely about Lambert's lack of system. What I meant was that, being strapped for funds, he had to bring in what talent he could find and afford (even going so far as having to gamble on players with a history of injury -- Surman, Vaughan, Whitbread). As a result he had an almost randomly assembled set of players and had to do what he could with them. That he achieved what he did was truly amazing and, as you say, a testament to his tactical astuteness once a game was underway. We can all remember his experiments with "shape" in which we started with 3 at the back and were a complete shambles, or tried to defend deep and were 2 down before we knew where we were. However, he has not relied on the same approach at Villa and the jury is out on how successful he is going to turn out to be a more normal managerial circumstances.
Has anyone tried putting our potential team together in FIFA 2013?, I might give it a go later. I've even got FIFA 2011, so I can relive our days in the Championship
The style thrown out of the window? Not at all. The fact that Man Utd do win so many games late on reflects the fact that, far from anything being "thrown out of the window", the game is going pretty much to plan. SAF is well-known for his belief that the season starts after Christmas; you might say he also believes that teams are at their most vulnerable late in a game. Man Utd pace their games, just as they pace their season. Lambert understood that too.
Really? So SAF's masterplan was all about waiting until the last few minutes of games when the opposition are knackered before taking control and bagging the points? Blimey, you learn something new every day!
must take issue with this. lambert was, at the time, the norwich manager who had had the luxury of the most funds ever afforded to any norwich manager. in our championship season we were the fifth biggest spenders in the division. of course, when compared to other premier league clubs we were paupers (we still are in many ways) but lambert signed an array of players of similar ability so that he could be flexible and if one player was out, another could come in. there was still structure behind the signings in terms of how they would fit in but that's no different to how any manager operates (apart from 'arry redknapp)
Come on Munky, did I say it was "his masterplan"? What I said was that it is no coincidence that Man Utd score a lot of late goals and does not imply any throwing of anything out of the window. How about us leaving this now. Our fellow forum members can make of it what they will!
this is very true. where lambert was brilliant was his changes during games. there were a number of times we were totally outclassed early in matches and he would have to change it. he often misread opposition before games and experimented with all kinds of bizarre formations but he had the awareness to amend these errors during the 90 minutes as well as any manager i have seen to be honest. hughton simply isn't in the same class at doing that - but we can improve the quality of coaching and the quality of players and the preparation before games can be bang on, rather than need to be addressed so often and i think that's where hughton's strengths lie. he will also be helped by having better quality on the bench to make changes now.
can't argue with any of that. in fact, it shows how hard a job hughton had when he took over. he inherited a good bunch of players but there were flaws all over the park. easy to see why he might not have had full faith in some of the players.
OK, he had more money available than any previous Norwich manager. Well, when the Chairman pointed that out we all chuckled, because it was rather like someone saying to their kid, "I'm giving you 2p pocket money this year and don't complain, it's more than you've ever had before 'cos as we both know I only gave you 1p last year". I would guess that the point of comparison in Lambert's case was sometime way back in the 90s under Robert Chase. However, I own that I have rather overstated the cash-strapped bit.
Sounds like a good idea to me, I think we're going round in circles a bit here and I really don't want to fall out with anyone
we spent more than £4m in the championship. that's a lot of money on fees especially when you consider we only spent around £9m when we were promoted!
I'm still surprised that £4M+ made us the fifth biggest spenders in the Championship that year. With foreign owners buying up the bigger clubs like Cardiff, Leicester and Leeds, and the parachute payments for clubs relegated from the PL, I guess the financial landscape of the Championship is changing. Certainly the regular moans one hears from the chairmen of clubs like Barnsley suggest that. Longer term I think the quality of the Championship is going to improve markedly until we have a sort of de facto 2-tier Premiership and then a huge gulf between Championship and League 1.
difficult with undisclosed fees but a rough calculation throws up the figure of £15.3m spent on transfer fees so far this summer (not including RvW who was signed last season) so it seems we are going to spend more than i was told before the window opened! (i was told £15m was a good estimate)
