Greenlizard0 Weekend Football Thread ** spoilers ** [3rd - 5th November 2017]
- Thread starter Cosimo
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Only 1 team in the last 5 years (10+ years is also true) have won the league without having one of the 3 most expensive squads.
How much you spend clearly is a factor.
Of course but not the only factor.
People constantly say things like 'They spent more than anyone else so should be winning the league' or 'Their squad cost twice as much as ours so they should win' or 'He cost £100m so should be best in the country' etc none of that is factually correct as far as I'm aware.
Money helps but doesn't guarantee anything.
People constantly say things like 'They spent more than anyone else so should be winning the league' or 'Their squad cost twice as much as ours so they should win' or 'He cost £100m so should be best in the country' etc none of that is factually correct as far as I'm aware.
Money helps but doesn't guarantee anything.
I agree it doesn't guarantee anything but it more than helps. It's a prerequisite. One season from Leicester aside, the league winners have been one of the 3 most expensive squads and the gap between 3rd most expensive to the 4th has typically been pretty large.
As for the 'should win' argument, it's not unreasonable. When you spend more than 99% of the league the expectation should be to challenge for the title, not finish 6th or 7th. Yes it doesn't always work out like that because teams can spend poorly but that's not an excuse.
Caporegime
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This is really the problem imo, he is a coward, and his teams become cowardly. If you rock up to all the big games telling your players essentially I don't trust you to play your game, you'll lose, play this anti football negative crap you don't enjoy playing because then we might get a point (though 50% of the time you just lose or get embarrassed). You can't tell players that then expect them to improve over time.
Conversely if you say hey, go out there and play your best, you might lose but we'll keep playing this way till we're playing the best football you can produce and we win titles, that gives players confidence and they also aren't trying to learn two ways to play. If you want them to be attacking in 70% of the games but in 30% of the games you tell them to fight those instincts then they aren't learning to just play naturally. Someone gets a ball in midfield and his brain rather than saying turn and drive forwards is saying, should I turn and drive forwards or protect the ball... I know the boss screams at me when I lose the ball so I guess I'll protect it. Have 7-8 players on the team thinking that way and you kill the offence. This is Mourinho's teams to a T, he buys in new offensive players but after 1-2 years they play negatively, they play carefully, they protect the ball more than they should and shut down attack after attack.
Is Micky being anonymous in games because he's bad, or is it because Mourinho screams at him about every time he loses the ball so he's fighting his natural instincts and playing way way too conservatively which just isn't his game. Pep on the other hand does that other thing, gives players confidence says okay we might lose now but you'll never get better if you keep fighting your own game and playing negatively. It takes time but look at the confidence of his players now and look how well they are playing.
If Mourinho wasn't constantly changing his style against tougher opposition and instead trained his players to be the best players they can be rather than the best defence they can possibly achieve, it's very likely that they wouldn't have lost nearly as much in the past 8 games(2 of those 10 I believe are for Chelsea, same thing applied then though).
I mean fundamentally it's the same situation with Moyes, with a 1-0 lead he pushed the team deeper, played like a bottom 6 side holding on to a lead and that rubbed off on the players. That squad wasn't great but they had the winning mentality to believe they can play better, as soon as Moyes started again basically telling them he didn't trust them to go turn a 1-0 into a 3-0, the players lost confidence and began to play worse and worse.
This is why I think Mourinho teams have a short shelf life, take a good to great team, a season or two of hey, lets just not lose this one game, buying in some offensive form and doing well works but after a certain number of games the players don't buy his "it's just for this one game" mentality, they stop trusting him and lose confidence. If Pep said to his players for one game, or even a few games hey, lets defend the hell out of this as i just don't want to lose this one, they'd be fine, but you do it 8-10-15 times in a row and the players realise the manager just doesn't believe they can win those games.
I’m not sure Mourinho’s a coward or big games are a weakness of his, he’s just a manager that plays the percentages. His philosophy has been to get through the big games with as little damage as possible and then be the most consistent side against the rest of the league. I mentioned the other week, the problem he now has is there isn’t 4-6 big games per season but 10 and it’s very difficult to win the league in the other 28 games without picking up a decent amount in the other 10.
Given the level of competition I don’t think you can ever say a side should win the league but at the least they should be competing.
It doesn’t just help though. Leicester aside, only the richest clubs with the most expensive squads win the league. Money is a prerequisite of winning the league and if a club has a £400m squad, there are no excuses for them not to challenge for the title.
Given the level of competition I don’t think you can ever say a side should win the league but at the least they should be competing.
Caporegime
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A 400 million side should at least he able to play football and strong a few passes together.
Caporegime
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But he isn't playing the percentages, 10 away games with a 50% lose 50% draw rate is not playing the percentages, it's failing badly. If they actually tried to win games even if they only won 2 and lost 8 he'd have more points let alone if he won a couple, drew a few and only lost a few.
It also is a weakness, a massive one, he's giving up a huge number of points and often letting his direct opposition get a lot more points. But again, it's not just the percentages, it's the mentality, it's the confidence, it's how his teams react to constantly being told to stop playing because he doesn't believe they can win.
How can you as a player not win in 10 away games against your direct opposition while your manager tells them not to play their real game not lose your faith in the manager? How do his teams drop off so massively and seem to stop playing for him. Again I'll mention that story about Terry, playing in significant pain for a whole season, again when a manager says something like get us through these next 3 games then we can rest you most players say yes. But when instead of rest it's "well this next game is important, what about one more". If a player doesn't kill himself on the pitch and play in pain he'll come out and say you're not being man enough which again really gives a player little incentive to go the extra mile for him.
He's just not getting through the big games with little damage, there is a huge difference between playing defensively but getting goals on the break and winning a few of those games and winning none at all.