14 Nov 2017 05:26:32
Hi Eds and fellow readers.
I saw something interesting on the comment section of BBC Sport's article about Everton's approach for Silva as their new manager.
Has there ever been any discussion about a transfer window for managers? I. E that you can only approach a manager from another club during a transfer window? It may be a good idea in giving managers a bit more time to find their feet rather than sacking them as soon as results start to turn.
What do you all think?
Red Sandman.
{Ed001's Note - I think it would help, make it just during the close season that you can change managers. Then players would have to just get on with it until the summer.}
14 Nov 2017 06:23:28
Excellent idea, it would stop some of these clubs like Sunderland changing mangers every 5 minutes and give players less power and mangers more of a chance to actually do their jobs.
14 Nov 2017 07:35:24
Difficult one.
You can look at it with Crystal Palace and De Boer. They made a judgment to sack him in the hope that bringing a new manager in will save them from relegation and keep them in the elite financial table of the premier league.
That’s the business to our beloved game
On the other hand, in trust in what you sought. Again using De Boer, he was seeked. Interviewed and deemed suitable for the job. Only having a handful of games to prove himself isn’t good enough. With answers at finger tips now. There is no patience in anything. If that’s Crystal Palace’s philosophy. If Roy Hodgson goes on a four or five game losing streak will he lose his job too?
Personally, I thought that was a prime job for a young manager to come in and prove his worth.
14 Nov 2017 07:42:33
I agree with Ed001, although I would add that the manager can not be sacked in the first 2 years of being at a club.
14 Nov 2017 07:46:50
No way. We've of had 2 years of Hodgson.
14 Nov 2017 08:28:45
I actually regret the way we fans treated Hodgson.
He had absolutely bugger all to spend. Meireles, Jovanovic, Konchesky, Poulsen and Cole! How was he supposed to turn around a team that had just lost Alonso, Hyypia and Mascherano? No to mention he had Gerrard, Torres and Agger on the treatment table.
Hodgson took a hit that every manager in world football would've taken in the same situation. There is literally nobody who could've turned us around with what he had to deal with.
Dalglish took over just as we got our injured players back fit, and just before we got new owners who signed Suarez and Carroll that January.
Did Hodgson really stand a chance taking the job in the midst of the club being sold with no investment?
I'm not sure It would've changed much at all if he'd stayed for 2 years. He was the scapegoat for a transitional period and i regret the way we (myself included) treated him. He is a lovely bloke and nowhere near as bad a manager as the press make out at times.
I doubt we'd have won anything with him, but would we have done much worse than the mid table finishes we got in the next 3 years with Dalglish and Rodgers? Probably not.
14 Nov 2017 08:57:23
Manager window is a tricky one - everyone agrees till their team is sinking and their manager looks to blame, then they praise the lord that they can act!
MK - Really? Roy was awful. He chose those players he bought in but even with our injuries, our team wasn't a relegation team and that's where he had us playing. It wasn't just the players, the tactics he demanded were basically Fulham in Red. We would not only have done worse with than with KD and BR (remember, KD won a cup and got to the final of another, and BR almost took the league for all his faults) we almost certainly would not have gotten the players in and through like Suarez, Coutinho and sterling in that period either. Seriously, can you imagine him looking at the scrawny little kid struggling at Inter and seeing the potential? Or a player like Suarez seeing the slow, cautious build up play he refused to leave behind and thinking 'yep, that's for me! '. I'm not sure even Sturridge would have chosen us if he had stayed in charge - Ricky Lambert would have been the limit of his potential, not his squad backup. He was a disaster and his complete ineptitude to even try something different when what he was doing was clearly destroying us very much earned him not just the sack, but the enternal disrespect of the fans.
14 Nov 2017 09:04:27
Exactly what I said at the time. With the injurys the squad had he had no chance.
I think that if he had Gerrard etc fit he would of done just as good as king Kenny and Rodgers. Really nice bloke and gets undeserved stick. I hope he keeps Palace up.
14 Nov 2017 10:24:00
I don't really want to get sucked in on a big debate about it hijkle, but if somebody said to you "the board and the fans expect to finish top 4, your 3 best outfield players are aging and injury prone, but you are only allowed £15m to spend" would you take the job?
I know i wouldn't. Hodgson was negative in his tactics, but so was Rafa. The difference was Rafa always had money to spend. Hodgson also took his 'Fulham in white' to a European final so they weren't exactly a bad team.
He was set up to fail to be honest. Never the right man for the job as we needed somebody with fresh ideas and charisma to inspire a fading group of players. It took 5 years of mediocrity before we got Klopp though. I just think Hodgson gets an unfair amount of stick. Nobody would've achieved top 4 with the resources he had. Not when United, Chelsea and Arsenal were at the top of the game still and Spurs and City were becoming forces domestically as well.
14 Nov 2017 12:41:05
rafas tactics were negative but he was the guy who smashed 4 goals at old trafford and after few days 4 mire at anfield against Madrid. so even if he was negative please don't put Rafa and Hodgson in the same sentence. one felt his friendship with fergie was very important and the other cried in the Hilsbrough prayer.
14 Nov 2017 13:57:45
Think you misunderstood Crazy horse. I'm only comparing their tactical approaches, not them as people. Rafa is the joint nicest man to have ever managed Liverpool in my opinion; joint with Dalglish.
Hodgson just didn't deserve the dogs abuse he got. Neither did Dalglish the following season. They both had to work in extremely difficult circumstances, but Hodgson was the main fall guy.
I think everyone is misinterpreting my point. Hodgson literally got hounded out of the club, threatened, abused from the stands etc. Then the managers who followed him have won 1 trophy in the last 7 years and qualified for the CL twice. I am not saying Hodgson would've done better, but if you'd given him that amount of time and money i wouldn't mind betting he'd have won a trophy.
My argument was purely to counter the point made by Hugh Mungus that we'd have been stuck with Hodgson for two years. Because i don't think it would've made any difference if we had been. If that rule existed, Hodgson probably wouldn't have got the job in the first place because the club would've taken more time to choose a manager. I like the idea of a rule that managers can't be sacked. Players don't get sacked for (subjectively) underperforming. Teams would just stop handing out such ridiculously long contracts and it might save the clubs some money (and ultimately the fans who fund everything in the game either directly or indirectly) .
Managers should only be sacked for breaching their contract. If they sign a contract which stipulates they have to reach a certain target, then they can't complain if they get sacked. Because they would've contractually agreed to it when taking the job. No manager should be sacked after less than 1 season though. It's frankly ridiculous.
If managers weren't allowed to be sacked we'd probably still have Rafa in charge today and still be one of the best teams in England and Europe. Sacking Rafa and appointing 3 managers successively who weren't good enough has set us back behind our rivals by half a decade. Klopp looks like putting us back on the map but it's still not a given.
{Ed001's Note - Rafa and Hodgson were nothing alike tactically. Rafa played a deep defence with the intention of drawing opponents in and countering. Hodgson played a deep defence with the intention of playing as many players as possible blocking off the goal to stop the opponent scoring. Hodgson got abuse because he was more concerned with being Fergie's buddy than beating United and said the most idiotic comment ever "a draw with Everton would be a good result" after a defeat at their hands. The guy did not understand LFC or Liverpool or the fans. He should never have got the job.
He is too arrogant and stupid to change his ways because he has always done it that way, which is sheer idiocy. It is akin to rejecting keyhole surgery because they always used to do it with invasive surgery. If he was in charge of things we would still be on horseback because there is no need to move on to cars as we always rode horses.
By the way Hodgson's training methods never involved any work on attacking play at all. Not one bit. It was all about shape work. Constant drilling on defending. Rafa used to work on attacking play as well as defending.}
14 Nov 2017 14:05:12
RH was not negative in his tactics. He was naieve at best and woefully underprepared at worst. The difference between Roy and Rafa is that RH didn't know or care where the goal was coming from, he considered it a bonus if it happened and was prepared to take draws as a decent result against anyone. Rafa was very defensive but the team still knew how to score, even if it was nothing more complicated than quick balls on the floor to get Torres behind the defense. Not to mention he started with the basic tenant of 'build a world class defense' - not bring in players barely making the grade at fulham.
Like I said, it might be the case that anyone we had in his position would struggle. But we were not just struggling with him. We weren't failing to secure a Europa league place. He was after 10 games telling us to prepare for a relegation battle.
I love your posts MK but I genuinely believe that some of the unearned arrogance we've seen over the past few years has endeared you to simple Roy's gent modesty. I really think you have forgotten just how awful we played every game, how badly even our best players were trying to make sense of instructions they knew would never win a game and how utterly without ideas, inspiration and drive we were while he was a manager. We had plenty on the field despite a lot of injuries - Maxi, Kuyt, Johnson, Agger, Miereles, Carra, Skrtel, Reina, Aurelio, Gerrard and Torres for some of the time etc. It may colour his record as worse than it would be if he finished the season, but there is no doubt that his record was not 'par for the players'.
14 Nov 2017 16:12:26
Hey Ed01
Based on the Rafa way of setting up his teams and the training and tactical side. do you think based on the players we have currently he would have a successful team if managing us now?
Just based on how quick we attack. if we had the deep lying defence well prepared and drilled with lighting quick counter would it work in your opinion?
Cheers.
{Ed001's Note - not really, he would look for a different midfield.}
14 Nov 2017 16:25:06
Feel like everything is lost in translation here Ed001 😂 I'll break my points down
1. I never said they have similar tactics, just that they both use defensive tactics. Obviously (just like you can have different attacking styles) you can have different defensive styles. You explained the differences perfectly in my opinion so no need for me to rehash your point.
2. I do not like how easy and habitual it has become to go through managers. It is far too easy to chop and change. Liverpool have had 5 managers since 2009. Rafa, Hodgson, Dalglish, Rodgers and now Klopp. I will take a guess right now and say that aside from Dalglish the 4 preceding Klopp had some kind of pay off to terminate their contracts. Let's conservatively estimate that at £5m each? That is £15m wasted as long managers. What do they say in these board meetings?
"oh he looks alright. Shall we carry out due diligence? "
"Nah, just give him a 5 year contract. If it goes wrong we'll just pay him off and cover the costs by raising ticket prices"
It just doesn't sit comfortably with me.
3. In the 7 years since Hodgson left we have spent over half a billion pounds on players and won a single League Cup. I personally think Hodgson probably could've managed that. In fact i think any average manager could given that much time and money. The constant transition has just set us back years though.
4. I wanted Hodgson sacked at the time and i don't disagree it was the right thing to do. All I'm saying is that if we had been obliged to give him 1-2 years i don't think we'd be in a too dissimilar position to what we are anyway, and that if there was that obligation to give managers more time, the boards at football clubs might take more care when picking a manager and we may never have ended up with an appointment as careless as Hodgson.
5. Hodgson worked in such difficult circumstances that he could've been anyone and still failed. Thus, he takes abuse which isn't warranted amongst the criticism which is justifiable (such as the things you pointed out) . He seems to be the most hated manager in the clubs history mainly for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Another disastrous product of the H&G era.
I'm not really defending Hodgson, though he did take some unfair stick such as the threats that some of our fans are so good at. I'm Just arguing the case for a law to protect managers from being sacked so easily so that we don't end up with managers like Hodgson, and managers like Rafa don't end up sacked after 1 bad season in 5 years at a club. I don't know what the solution is, but i just don't think a rule that managers have to be given 2 years is that bad of an idea, or a rule where managers can only be sacked for breaching contractual obligations. that way you don't end up with managers (who are human, believe it or not) like Bilic who look like a quivering mess because their futures are completely undecided and completely out of their hands. Owners can literally sack a manager just because they don't like his style of play and that to me is disgusting. You picked him, you back him. If they want a get out clause, stop giving out massive contracts that us fans end up paying for, and put it in the contract what is expected of managers so that the decision to sack someone isn't completely subjective. Perhaps some clubs already do that and we just don't hear about it though.
I doubt even most managers will agree with me ultimately because they probably love the huge pay outs for failing!