Some of you have questioned my viewpoint that fans can see things that the manager can't as naive. I mean, how can somebody possibly be able to see something that a professional who actually does it for a living can't? Only an idiot who plays Football Manager could think that.
Except that argument falls flat on its face for two key reasons. Firstly, because if that were true then the entire management consultancy industry wouldn't exist. Sometimes, a fresh pair of eyes looking at things from the outside, without preconceptions and other factors that distort peoples perceptions of things, you can actually spot an awful lot. And secondly, because it assumes that this professional is actually good at their job. How many times have you seen on The Apprentice where the accountant fudges up the figures, or the salesman gets outsold by somebody who doesn't work in sales. Now obviously I can't claim to know more about electronics than a professional electrical engineer, but football management is an art not a science. There's no school to learn about this sort of stuff. You just go in, do what you think works based on your experiences and understanding of football and people, and try to be better at it than anyone else.
I know that football managers do a phenomenal amount of work outside of matches. Training, youth development, board meetings etc. But there are plenty of examples of somebody who was living and breathing this stuff not spotting the obvious for one reason or another. When Arnesen signed Carrick for us instead of Jan Koller who Santini had wanted, Santini described him as a "5th choice defensive midfielder", behind Pedro Mendes, Sean Davis, Michael Brown...and of course Jamie Redknapp. Santini's Spurs team really struggled to create chances - we had scored just 6 goals in 11 league games when he left. I wasn't the only common fan who could see we were making a big mistake in not playing him. When Santini resigned, we replaced him with a manager who realised that he had on his hands the most talented central midfielder we'd had since Gascoigne. His first move was to build his team around him, and hey presto, we became a team playing attractive, possession based attacking football, and a team that hadn't even finished in the top 8 for a decade challenged for a Champions League spot the following season. We'll never know Santini's reasons for not rating Carrick - probably because he heard he was a defensive midfielder, thought he was too scrawny to be your Roy Keane type and resented the fact that he was there, which blinded him to Carrick's true qualities. But it's a clear example of a manager, who saw more of the inside of our football club than any of us ever did, of not being able to see something us common fans could, for one reason or another.
Another example is Glenn Hoddle's use of the 3-5-2 formation. It's something that worked well in his early years as a manager, however it fell out of mainstream use as 4-3-3 became prominent. Reason being - if the opposition has wing forwards, your wing-backs are the ones who need to mark them, but if they are pinned back by marking the wing forwards, you have no width to support your attacking play. If they go forward, like Hoddle wanted them to, you get horrifically exposed down the flanks. The formation also requires a defensive midfielder to work, which we didn't have, and didn't sign. When we were regularly getting spanked in the latter part of Hoddle's reign, this was obvious to many a fan, but he never changed his ways, and it cost him his job. Pleat came in, and made a load of mistakes of his own (Poyet and Anderton in central midfield FFS!), but he picked a stable formation and signed Michael Brown to cover the gaps, and he managed to keep us up. Did Hoddle learn his lesson? No, he persisted with the formation at Wolves and got sacked from there too. Again - common fans could see this brick, the professional couldn't.
As for AVB, sure, he sees things we don't inside the club. But, he's made undeniable mistakes this season, that were clearly and obviously wrong. I'm pretty sure the reason he's picked Gallas so much is because he was a big personality in the dressing room and on the training ground - an inspiration to the younger players. Now we as fans don't see that side of things. What I have been able to judge him on is purely what we see on the pitch, which at the end of the day, is all that really matters. And what have we seen from Gallas this season? Slow, cumbersome displays, panicky clearances and a complete lack of composure. He was a top defender in his time, but I just don't see how it took people so long to realise that he's finished at this level. I remember reading once, I think Shearer said it, that Shola Ameobi was Saudi Sportswashing Machine's best player in training. Well guess what happened when it got to the actual matches. Regardless of his logic and reasonings, surely everyone can see that he's made some big big mistakes this season, mistakes that lots of common fans would not have made.
But hey, if you'd like to subscribe to the school of thought that all football managers are geniuses and that us common fans can never spot things that they can, then fair enough, you're entitled to your opinion and all, I just wonder why exactly you would post on a message board if us mere mortals don't know a thing?
