19 Dec 2013 16:40:29
I'd like to give my two cents on an issue raised by RedMan yesterday.
The issue is with the term stability and what I think it means in modern football.
In my opinion stability means something different to every club, but ultimately it refers to the ability of the club to maintain the status quo(and not the 70's rockers. lol).
By this it means for a club such as ours, then it refers to the clubs ability to maintain the success the club has had in recent years and if possible build on it.
Now there is a key element to that and it is the financial side of our club which in the last few years has become a key bone of contention among fans. Due to the take over of the club by the Glazers and the financial restrictions the club have felt since have had a direct effect on the clubs ability to maintain the stability at the club by no longer being able to compete with the top clubs for the top players. Thus this has had a direct effect on the quality of the first team and the squad as a whole. There are several players currently at the club who maybe wouldn't have been given the chance to be say 10 years ago.
In fairness to the Glazers the big issue has been the emergance of several teams such as Chelsea, City, PSG, Monaco ect who were never in contention for the best players but due to their new found and unexpected financial power are now able to compete for the top players. This isn't something that could have been planned for, but it still has to be dealt with. But it is fair to say that had Chelsea or City not been taken over and had such huges sums of money lavished on them then we would have been far more able to compete for players that are currently playing in blue in the Premier league, certainly we wouldn't have had most of our transfer targets stolen by a certain former chief excecutive when he jumped ship to Chelsea.
The other side to it is the playing side, now certain clubs will not accept let's call it less attacking playing styles. And as such they only hire managers who fit that criteria.
Now we have been exceptionally lucky to have been blessed with a manager so great that he has been able to change his playing philosophy as times have changed, thus limiting the amount of disturbance caused when change is needed.
Unfortunately there is no other Sir Alex Ferguson to take over, there have been many managers who have stayed at a club for a long time, but none have been able to set such a high standard and maintain it in the way Sir Alex has. So we need to look to a different way of running the club moving forward.
Now we need to look at other clubs who have managed to maintain a high level of success and see how they have managed it.
Real Madrid are one of the most successful clubs in the world and are always there or there about come May, now they change their manager almost fortnightly. Yet if you look at why they can maintain success and you can't look much further than their huge debt which they have accumulated in signing the best players regardless of whether they have the funds, being backed by the Spanish royal family have placed Real Madrid in a catagory all on their own and their own and a management style we will not be able to copy.
So we need to look at clubs who are self sustaining.
This brings us to Real Madrids great rivals, Barcelona. This is a club that for the most part has always had a high success rate. Recently this is down to a fantastic youth set up that seems to endlessly churn out world class youngsters. Yet this hasn't always been the case, int he late 90's and early 00's Barcelona had dropped rigth off the pace in Spain with teams such as Valencia taking over the mantle as Real Madrids main contenders for the title. But Barcelona have long since had a style of playing football, and when they realised that they could no longer compete financially with teams such as Madrid they instead turned to their youth set up, they focused highly on that system and here we are 10 years later and they are reaping the rewards with world class young players who have not only got the talent but also have had the club mentality breed into them. They also have a loyality lacking in most modern footballers.
So this is something we should look at for the future of our club, we have a proud history of producing our own players and this is something close to the club which we must look to maintain and improve. instead of spending 50-70m a year on new players how about we look to spend 30-50m with the excess 20m being ploughed into our academy. 20m when signing a player is peanuts in the modern game, yet 20m at youth level will dramatically improve our youth set up and enable us to bring 2/3 potentially world class players into the first team every year or two. It is a long term solution though and we aren't likely to see any benefit from this investment for between 7-10 years. But once done this would give us give us a huge advantage over our competitors as we won't have to compete for the best players as we would have produced them.
The only slight flaw in this plan is we won't be able to have a B team like the top teams in Spain do thus making it harder to bring young players through as we will either have to loan them out thus we won't be able to monitor them as closely or we keep them at the club but they have to play substandard youth football thus slowing their development.
This is a problem but not one that couldn't be over come with enough investment, we could loan players out to clubs and maybe send a member of staff with them to monitor them more closely or we could set up two youth teams and play them against each other to give them higher standard competition, we could also play youth competitions with the best youth teams from around europe.
So we need to invest in out youth more as a long term investment to help secure the clubs future.
We also need to look at how the club is run, for this I think the best example is Bayern Munich.
At Bayern they keep their former players at the club, the ones who have a flair for coaching are kept at the club in a coaching capacity, the ones who maybe have other strengths are kept at the club as ambassordors and even on the board, they are given jobs running the club. This has had the advantage that many people working at the club have an emotional attachment for the club and there for more people working at the club have the clubs best interests at heart. But at the same time they have made sure that they do bring in the best people in other key roles which are more specialised. This gives them a good blend of talented and commited people working at the club for the best of the club.
We should look to this model of running a club to try and immetate the same kind of success Bayern have had both on and off the pitch.
Finally the club need to stay true to its roots, and at our club we have a history of playing football in a cavalier and exciting manner. This has normally come though electrifying wing play. Now this may leave us too open in the middle but their is a way of keeping a high attacking style that echos our past while accepting the current state of football and blending the two together, to bring a modern take on our style of old.
Now when it comes to who manages the club well I think we may have to look at a different way of how the team is managed. In our recent past we had one manager who ran everything from the top to the bottom. This worked because we had possibly the greatest manager the world has seen. We will never have as good a manager as Sir Alex ever again. So we need to maybe look to restruture the club, maybe with a sporting director type role, and a seperate head of youth development thus allowing the manager to focus more on the team. Obviously everyone will have to work closely together, but there really isn't a manager out there who can do everything that Sir Alex managed to do and to the same high standard.
Also we will have to accept that there is unlikely to be a manager who will be able to build a winning team, then dismantle it without any emotional attachment and rebuild it while maintaining success. we may have to accept that every 5/6 years we will need to bring in a new manager who will have some new modern ideas who can rebuild the team without any attachment to the players and move the club into a new era. This will mean accepting a period of transition every 3/4 years and accpeting that we maybe won't be able to challenge for the title for a season every 4/5 years.
Now with this in mind we get back to the current state of the club, I think Moyes is the right man for the job atm. We won't be able to bring all the changes we need overnight, Moyes is a step in the right direction in that we will be able to make a lot of the changes needed behind the scenes without him causing to much of an opposition, he is also able to manage in a similar way to to Sir Alex thus meaning less friction with the current playing staff. This means the club will be able to make several changes over several years thus keeping a certain stability at the club while doing so. Moyes won't be at the club in 10 years time, but by the same token the club will be run in a totally different way in 10 years time.
For me Moyes is the buffer between the old style of running the club and the new, he will allow the club the make the changes needed. The key is he needs to win something and learn quickly thus allowing the club to focus on the other changes needed rather than wondering on whether they need to bring in a new manager and sacrifice the long term stability for short term stability.
In the long run Moyes and the club needs to be given more time, and we need to get behind the manager and the club and ride out what was always going to be a tough season or maybe even two.
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Ah, for brevity! - But a good read nonetheless.
A couple of issues to qualify what is an excellent analysis.
1. Notwithstanding the admirable job they have done developing their youth academy, Barcelona now pay their players maybe 25% more on average than do United and, moreover, when push comes to shove they are prepared to fork out 50m on a class player like Neymar. The paychecks help to guarantee the loyalty.
2. I have a hard time having any sympathy for, or allowing any credit to the Glazers. The debt they saddled the club with has been integral to the problems we now have on the field. One Ronaldo transfer per year has gone out of the coffers to pay for it and its restructuring, and we still have 360m owed. There is no way they could not have anticipated what that would do to the club - but let's be honest, that was not their main concern. What should have been more difficult to have anticipated was the continuing success SAF enjoyed, without which the boat could have sunk into oblivion by now.
c) Add half of the cash that went out in financing costs, to the amount spent on purchasing mediocrities, and then spend the combined sum on a) youth development, b) one great player a year, and c) more competitive wages, and we would be the club we want and ought to be given our crowds and global audience.
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I'll read this later when I have a spare half an hour :-), i'm sure it is a good read, you rarely let us down.
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Good analysis shappy particular about the newly rich clubs. But, don't forget to say that Real are out there in a class of there own is a bit far fetched. 6 of their very earliest European cup wins were pretty much down to the dictator Franco in Spain who pretty much and possibly corruptly got those cups. Take away this early 6 and they have 3 all be it many league titles etc but they'd infact have less than AC Milan or Bayern. They are really not that well known for bringing through young players apart from the odd exceptions (Raul, Hierro not much else of note apart from Casillas, etc in recent years, most promising youngsters have been sold on). Barca have had a golden decade a bit like we had but they've also not had as many come through the ranks historically as some people may think and it will be interesting to see who comes through soon as I'm not too convinced of any of them. Alcantara went to Bayern and Bojan went to Roma and disappeared a little. We are not as far away as you might think. What the Glazers should have done although I hate to say it is gone out and blown a lot of money on at least 1 or even 2 big names who we know would have delivered. Had Bale arrived (if we did actually seriously bid & not a token bid) or someone similar, or say a Gotze then I think many fans may have started to think differently. But they didn't, instead we've had some questionable transfers (apart from De Gea that I can think of recently) and that's it.
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Shappy, I would agree with most of that. The only quibble I would have, is in referring to Real as successful.
It's all relative, but with the money they've spent on their Galacticos policy, if money really does buy success, then I would think they've underperformed.
Being there or thereabouts come May, considering their buying policy, wouldn't be enough for their fans IMO.
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19 Dec 2013 19:04:07
Peashooter, Barca can afford to spend huge sums of money on one or two players a year as they never have to sign a squad player. All their squad players come from their academy. If we had an academy equal to Barca's then we wouldn't waste money on players such as Bebe, Buttner, Young, Obertan, Lindegaard ect. We would have better players come through our academy then these players then the fees, agents cost and wages spent on these players could be better invested.
I have never given any credit to the Glazers, what i'm saying is no one could have predicted the global financial collapse that happen not long into the Glazers ownership nor could it be predicted that so many clubs would be able to live outside of the global financial restrictions.
The Glazers get slated on here and rightly so, but I do feel if Chelsea and City never got their injection of oil money then we would have only had Arsenal for title challengers over the last 10 years, also who would have challenged us if we were to try and sign players such as Essien or Robban, or Toure or Nasri? We may well have been able to get those player despite the financial restrictions placed on us by the Glazers had City and Chelsea not push up the market or had the money to challenge us if we were to move for those players.
Thats not giving the Glazers any credit, its just looking at everything involved in the situation and having a balanced view.
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Shappy
In many ways United is like Bayern with people who have been players at the club maintained in key roles to continue the manchester united ethos.
On the Barcelona discussion, I think spanish football in general are producing a wealth of talent in the last 10 to 15 years with Barcelona being the leader of the group.
The difference is as peashooter pointed out Barcelona even with their wealth of talent still fork out large sums for the right player.i.e David Villa, Neymar and also raid the other clubs of their up and coming talented youth because many are forced to take the money due to financial constraints.
Our issue is that the youth system does not produce genuinely class players who are good enough to play at the highest level i.e. CL. If you look at the top clubs in the premiere league their first 11 is now almost all imported foreign players with hardly any british players in there. We are probably still the most british club around.
The reality is to compete at the highest level nowadays you have to import players and they cost a lot more than they used to because of clubs like city, chelsea, PSG, Monaco as they are willing to pay the extra dollars where we are not or can't.
I do agree with you 100% that we need our academy to produce players but I also think we need to change the training and how these guys are coached.
The reality is we did not make it through the group stages of New CL competition for youth and teams who are minnows compared to us, Sociadad and Leverkusen if I am correct went through and that should be enough evidence that our youth set up is not where it needs to be.
I think City are building an incredible youth academy and a few Pl coaches who were vacationing here were raving about some facility that is under construction that will be bar none the best in the world and our noisy neighbors are doing so many things at the grassroots level. They were also telling me those guys are going to have great youth coming through plus the luxury of owners that will buy the right players for any amount of money. In a way they are trying to replicate barcelona, financial muscle with great youth academy. I know the chairman of that club and he is an extremely bright guy, highly educated and quite strategic in everything he does.
All in all the next 5 to 10 years will be very interesting and we need to change our set up to compete at the highest level.
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19 Dec 2013 19:15:22
Supasub and Steve, it matters not when Real have won their titles or how, the fact remains that they have won more than nearly any other team you care to mention, obviously they're a few team that have won more than them but not many. They also have the benefit of being based in the capital of a hot country with a good lifestyle and have always be able to be one of the highest payers. This combined have allowed Madrid to purchase the best players. They rarely bring players through their own academy, in fact several Spaninsh internationals have come through Madrids youth system but have been unable to get a game and have moved on. Isco for example came through Madrids own youth system, but they didn't give him a chance so he moved on. He then began to show his class and Madrid bought him back at a huge cost. But the Madrid fans are happy with that as they don't care how much a player cost, just that they have the best ones playing for them. And it is that attitude which stops young players making it at Madrid. You need to be world class at 17/18 to make it at Madrid, such as Casillias, Hierro and Raul.
But like I said we can't look to Madrid for inspiration as they are a special case in the way they are run.
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Shappy
My point encompasses the philosophical beliefs of the club and it's whole youth and reserve set up. At Barca they have a philosophy and the whole club is set up to produce players for their system. Actually Dortmund would have been another interesting review as well. However, my point is that by bringing a new all powerful manager ostensibly for a long period of hopeful stability means they may want to change the philosophy, change the set up. The kids who have grown up with one methodology and one person guiding them suddenly could experience a change in direction. Then what happens if it doesn't work? To give them a chance we should set a philosophy, a structure, that doesn't change based on a sudden change in management and build seamlessly towards it. A new manager should only have the power to change first team matters not the whole club because it could be very risky if the wrong direction is taken. There is nothing to say tactics can't be changed to meet needs of games but the youth progression would be stable to ensure the club try to develop the type of players the first team need.
I posted quite a few weeks ago about Dortmund's youth approach and it was refreshing. The club is what should be stable with the coach or manager remaining as long as successful, even so, SAF apart, a club could benefit from fresh impetus and ideas a new coach could bring and this ethos could bring that. SAF, it should be remembered benefitted from new ideas from McLaren and Quiroz.
I believe we missed a trick when replacing SAF and my belief is that it is the club infrastructure that should be stable and the coach transitory, their tenure based on appraisal of the level of success both in football standard and results.
Let us remember that Moyes came in and changed the coaching and I believe possibly the scouting set up. Whether it is the right direction only time will tell, which is not ideal.
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Shappy mate have you been looking at what United have done with the youth set up of late its easily the best in England and we should start seeing the rewards from all the extra investment in that area.
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Katef
Chelsea has better talent in their youth system and city is not far behind. We were the only english team who failed to qualify from its group stage in the CL youth competition. I just checked, shaktar and sociadad went through.
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19 Dec 2013 20:15:03
I totall agree Redman, but I feel the transition from the old way we did things under Sir Alex and the new way the club will need to be run will require a longer period of transition.
If the club were to intantly change everything then that could hugely upset the apple cart, and if things went wrong then the people running the club would have to take the brunt.
I feel a slower transition with Moyes having the job for awhile while changes are made slowly will allow for a smoother transition. And if things go wrong during this period then it'll be hung round Moyes neck and he'll be hung out to dry.
Kate, although our youth teams have been performing well our youth set up is not the best in the country, Southampton, Liverpool and City are making huge strides towards having fantastic academies. Atm I would say ours in on a par with them, but the changes they are making will mean in five years time unless we make changes too then we will be far behind them. As Shahram has said the things City are doing at youth level will soon be the blue print to follow in a few years time, but by then City will have had the jump on everyone else.
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The ambition from City is an eye opener when it comes to the youth. Whilst we have focused our energies on the next sponsorship deal they have taken a lead on the youth side plus have invested in many initiatives to attract young fans. At the same time we are starting to see empty seats whilst focussing on short termism and profit, ignoring the need to continue to build and replenish our fan base because of an arrogance that our fans will just keep coming and spending. City have tried to underpin their presnt team by building the next generation and we need to wake up and invest not just in the first team. The only thing I see as an issue for City is if the youth don't get a chance.
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As well as the 1st team I watch a few u18 and u21 games and we have definately improved our academy to what it was a few years back.we have got a really good group of players in both age groups with 4 or 5 at least in each group capable of being brilliant footballers.we have a wealth of potential talent in every area def.midd, attack and 2-3 excellent potential goalkeepers.as good as people are saying city and chelseas academys are I can't think of any players they have given game time to over the last 2 seasons.
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Over the next two or three seasons we will have five or six first team players that have come from within, were as city and Chelsea will not maybe two or three each tops and the players coming through here will eclipse anything they have in there teams homegrown or imported, and how does any body on here know what the plans will be when Carrington is redeveloped in the next few years we have excellent training ground and now that Butt and Scholes are controlling the youth system I predict it will stay just as strong as any of our rivals stronger in fact Butt and Scholes do not do things by half and you can eat humble pie When Januzaj Wilson Perrira the Keanes are ripping teams to pieces in a few years time
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Excellent initial post and subsequent discussion which covers a lot of the points I would have made.
Johndenton - you're about Chelski and City over the past couple of years but they're diametrically opposed in what they're doing. Obrama wants it now, wants a manager to deliver now and the academy players won't get a chance. To their credit (puke!) City are building the Barca of the north. They want it now so are spending to raise their European and global profile which is zilch compared to United but seem to me to be fully committed to bringing their own players through Barca style in the future.
Irrespective of whether you wanted Moyse, what's the view of those who follow youth football on what he's done at Everton with their academy? On the face of it he's brought quite a few through - Wayne Rooney, Leon Osman, James Vaughan, Victor Anichebe and Jack Rodwell spring to mind.
I think our DNA ( & USP) as a club harks back to Sir Matt and I'd sum it up as:
1. Produce and develop our own youngsters - examples too numerous to be needed.
2. Buy outstanding young players we can develop - Rooney, Jones, Smalling, DDG even OGS.
3. Buy Game Changers - Cantona, RVN, RVP etc.
You're never going to get it right in any of those categories all the time but giving youth a chance is what sets us apart from many other of the bigger clubs.
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20 Dec 2013 00:42:33
Kate we have some good young players coming through, and we have historically given our young players more playing time than a lot of our rivals. But i'm saying we need to do more.
At Barca they could pick any player out of the Barca B team and he could step in a do a decent job for the first team. So when they have a couple of injuries in a position instead of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by making a player play out of position they just pluck a youngster out of their B team who knows the role and play him instead. We couldn't do that, but we should aim to be at a point where we could.
As for our academy in the short term we have a good group of players who are benefiting a lot from the cutting edge training techniques that have been put in place by Rene before he left.
I don't doubt Butt or Scholes commitment or their ability or that if Warren Joyce who is and excellent manager/coach. But neither have ever shown to be as cutting edge as Rene was, and in football unless your moving forward your dropping back. At Dortmund for example they have a new machine that fires balls at players from many different angles and speeds, then the players have to return that ball in one touch to a specific target area. They can change the amount of balls they have coming at the players, and they can change the size of the target area. Then the players are tested at how many balls they can get into the target areas, and then the test are made harder and harder. The players arw scored and challenged to inprove their score. At present Dortmund are the only team to have this machine, but City are having one built for their new training complex. Mario Goetze has said the machine help develope his technique and made him a much better player.
We need to be investing is such devices and ideas if we want to at least keep up with the curve. New training techniques and programmes are there to develope players into having the current skills needed to be a top player.
At under 18 and under 21 level we may have some of the best young players in the country, but at under 16 or under 15 or 14 or 13? Well those players seem to be playing their football at othe academies such as Chelseas and Citys, and with the amount of time and money they are spending on these kids they will have great teams fulls of homegrown players in 10 years time, and where will we be then? Just as Januzaj, Wilson and the Keanes are reaching their 30's and we have no quality players coming though our academy to replace them.
Youth football is all about looking 10 years into the future, and when I look around at our rivals they all seem to be spending more time and money on those players than we are.
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19 Dec 2013 11:52:12
Does anyone have any clue into these lavezi rumours? Also Lucas from psg? I'm sure it's all rubbish but both would be good buys that would fit straight in to the squad!
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Lavezzi has not reached the level that was expected of him at PSG, and neither has Pastore. He is not good enough for a top team.
Lucas is young and talented, and he plays for one of the richest clubs in the world, who he chose over us.
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They are good players but not worth what psg paid for them. Pastor can be sublime on his day ala Veron but not sure he can take the physical style of the pl week in week out.
Lucas plays right wing and I don't think we need more players there unless we sell someone, i.e Nani
The player who is absolute class form PSG is Verrati and you sometimes wonder what are scouts are up to and how can they miss guys like him by not even making a bid to get him.
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19 Dec 2013 17:10:41
Lucas has not made any impression at PSG who have dominated a poor league, i'm not sure he would be able to do better in the EPL
I would rather us go for mainly spanish or German with our recruits For midfield 2 from
Herrera Gundogan Koke. wide 1 from mata reus draxler. Up front if rvp or rooney leaves Lewondoski (ok Polish) defence Baines.
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{Ed007's Note - It was Ed003 that found it but I'll take the plaudits :)