Tomous wrote:BTB wrote:Just saw Pep got manager of the season. Which I kind of get as 4 in row hasn't been done before... but isn't the expectation for them to win the league? Feel like Emery is much more deserving breaking into the top 4 and getting CL football for Villa!
Yep. It should be Emery without a doubt.
I think Pep is a brilliant coach - if you can get the players in and build a coherent and highly effective system, he is possibly the best there is. Though he's had the dice well and truly loaded in his favour at City, with their financial doping, he could still have flopped and underperformed. He has done very well to keep the team so hungry and driven, as well as repaired the team steadily over each season, reducing the need for an extensive rebuild.
However, I pause when people call in the greatest ever.
Firstly, it's obviously the money with City. Yes, other teams are super rich and may have spent more over Pep's tenure, but no-one can really compete with City's resources. I think he's also been blessed with a great recruitment side for the past 7-8 years (they might spend money, but how many flops do they have? Just look at Chelsea...)
But the main thing with Pep is - has he ever had a project? At Barca, they had won the Champions League in 2006 - with a team that had a backbone of Spanish players that would go and dominate internationally in 2008, 2010 and 2012. Oh, and he had possibly the best player that's ever lived on his books. He went to Munich, who I believe had won the CL the year before he arrived (and were narrowly pipped on the 2012 final) and who didn't really have any competitors in the league. That Munich team also had some players who would lift the world cup on 2014.
He goes to City and who had won 2 or 3 titles and quite a few cups in the 4/5 year spell before this arrival. He's embedded success much deeper at City (I think they'd have won titles.without him, but not four in a row) but he's landed at his clubs already in a privileged position.
I would give him so much more credit if he had built something. Though lighter on trophies, I find Klopp's era at Liverpool more successful - bar the Rodgers title run, that club were a joke when it came to titles. "It's our year" was the deluded bleat of the fanbase each August. Klopp built up a culture around the club and made them serious contenders for every trophy. They were probably the best team to watch for 2-3 years. The "only" won the title once but, let's face it, in any normal situation without nation states bankrolling a club and fudging the system, they'd have had at least two more and we'd have been looking at a dynasty similar to Wenger or Mourinho - one which wins titles and shapes the culture of the league at the same time.
Likewise, had Arsenal won the league this year or last, I'd have found Arteta's job much more impressive. He's build Arsenal up for under achievers to a team that looks like it should win things. Again, on a normal situation, they'd have won the last two league titles and you'd have them as the team to beat. We'd have moved from the end of the Liverpool era to the Arsenal one. Instead, we've got City winning 6 out of 7 or something like that. Depressing. Yes, Pep took the side at the top and did make them better - but they were ahead of competitors already in an unfair race.
This is before we even get started on managers that built from even further back. Ferguson stands out as the ultimate example, in how he turned it around and brought success.
For his next project, I'd love to see Guardiola at a club akin to, say, Villa or Spurs He's not going to go to a minnow but he should go to one which is a bit down on its luck, but a sleeping giant, or on a long winless run, but with history, a decent squad and a bit of money.
. We all know that Chelsea have underachieved for a while now, but it seemed like the manager had started to get the team performing a bit better over the past couple of months?
