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Mister Chops

Managers - the luck of the draw?

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Watching Burnley win the playoff final today was interesting.  Here''s a club with the 2nd lowest playing budget and 3rd lowest attendance in the Championship winning their way to the Premier League with decent passing football.  Hats off to Owen Coyle, who has done wonders with a small playing squad and limited transfer budget (they spent around £3.5m on players last summer which was funded by selling Lafferty to Rangers).But when appointing Coyle, the board must have realised this was a huge gamble on an untried and untested manager.  Which is my point.  It''s the same thing that Ips**t did with Magilton and we did with Grant, and later, Gunn.When you appoint "proven" managers in the Championship, you are only ever going to appoint managers who have been proven to be, at best, okay.  If they were better than okay, they''d be Premiership managers.  So is the real gamble on appointing an unknown manager who may do you an Owen Coyle but might be as likely, if not more likely, to do a Peter Grant?I''ve met Peter Grant a few times.  When you speak to him, you realise he is a very likeable, passionate and quite articulate man.  I''m sure he played well in interviews, hence his appointment at our club.  But I sincerely believe his appointment was the key in Norwich City now being a League One team.  He brought in a job lot of dross, many on high paying long term contracts, and alienated the majority of the players who couldn''t understand or relate to him.But from meeting him, I can understand why the board saw fit to appoint him.  The alternative was to take a mediocre, "proven" manager.  It''s not the same thing as buying a centre forward from Bury, say, or a left back from Cheltenham.  Players can be sold on or buried in the reserves.  The biggest gamble is trusting an unknown and unproven quantity to run your football team.  Coyle has the right stuff, clearly.  Grant didn''t, and I don''t believe Gunn does.  I''m not arguing that the board have been unlucky.  Far from it.  I''m arguing that, given what everybody should have learned from Grant''s disastrous appointment, why in God''s name have we given Gunn the job on a full time basis?  He has already proved himself to be lacking tactically, lacking in motivation and organisation, and that he hasn''t got much of an eye for a decent player.  We''re in League One, Burnley are in the Premier League, and we''ve given the team''s day to day management to a fading legend on the grounds that "he might do better next time."  I think that''s the main issue with the board of directors.  They just don''t learn.

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But Coyle wasn''t untested - he had done well in Scotland at St Johnstone. Albeit it''s not much experience he had, he still had much more than Grant and Gunn had when they were appointed. It was still a gamble but it''s perhaps slightly less of a gamble when the manager has already shown signs of being competent elsewhere and is keen to step up a level or two.I think that''s something we''ve always failed to do (take a young, promising manager who has done well at a lower level and wants to go further) and I was hoping we''d go down that route now but obviously - as you say - we don''t learn.

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Mister Chops, I agree with a fair bit of your post, but Coyle was not a completely unknown quantity as a manager. He''d had a few games in charge of Falkirk as player-manager, and 70 as manager of St Johnstone, with a better than 50 per cent win record.By contrast, Grant had only ever been a coach, and Gunn not even that. I understand that Grant did indeed go down a storm at his interview, but when the buck stopped with him his inexperience showed. As has Gunn''s total lack of any kind of experience.

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I think you''re spot on Mr C. I have to say I think the board are trying to learn, although D- only on their report at the moment! They went for what looked on paper like a good untried prospect in Grant. That didn''t work out, so they went for an experienced manager who had saved other teams from relegation in Roeder - and to start with this worked. When Roeder''s regime went t*ts up, the loudest complaint was that he didn''t work the "Norwich way" so they picked someone who bleeds the proverbial yellow and green. If/when Gunny goes, what''s left if you''ve tried promising untried talent, experienced talent and talent that loves the club? Perhaps talent proven at a lower level?

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[quote user="Nuff Said"]I think you''re spot on Mr C. I have to say I think the board are trying to learn, although D- only on their report at the moment! They went for what looked on paper like a good untried prospect in Grant. That didn''t work out, so they went for an experienced manager who had saved other teams from relegation in Roeder - and to start with this worked. When Roeder''s regime went t*ts up, the loudest complaint was that he didn''t work the "Norwich way" so they picked someone who bleeds the proverbial yellow and green. If/when Gunny goes, what''s left if you''ve tried promising untried talent, experienced talent and talent that loves the club? Perhaps talent proven at a lower level? [/quote]Yes, I think so.  I hadn''t realised Coyle had previous form, and good form too in the Scottish leagues.  Perhaps Norwich''s future policy should be the same with managers as with players - look to the lower leagues at people coming through and go for the best you can afford.  The difference is you can always sign players and put them in the reserves to develop.... you can''t really do that with a manager!

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I don''t know if you can say it luck as such, as surely both Grant and Roeder were interviewed and employed not only on their persona''s, but also their gameplans. Having finally sacked Worthy, the board then signed Grant, who had a gameplan of signing some poor players from the Scottish leagues. The thing is, he must surely have been asked in his interview what his gameplan was, and therefore if he answered with the degree of depth that such an important interview would require, the board were extremely naive in thinking that such a large number of gems were waiting to be uncovered. Surely they should have asked themselves why Worthy had not uncovered them? I can understand them thinking that Roeders loan gameplan could work - due to the success of the Huckerby triumvirate - but despite this success, surely they should have had doubts as to whether such major changes would destroy team camaraderie as it did with Grant.

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[quote user="astrodyne"]I don''t know if you can say it luck as such, as surely both Grant and Roeder were interviewed and employed not only on their persona''s, but also their gameplans. Having finally sacked Worthy, the board then signed Grant, who had a gameplan of signing some poor players from the Scottish leagues. The thing is, he must surely have been asked in his interview what his gameplan was, and therefore if he answered with the degree of depth that such an important interview would require, the board were extremely naive in thinking that such a large number of gems were waiting to be uncovered. Surely they should have asked themselves why Worthy had not uncovered them? I can understand them thinking that Roeders loan gameplan could work - due to the success of the Huckerby triumvirate - but despite this success, surely they should have had doubts as to whether such major changes would destroy team camaraderie as it did with Grant.[/quote]The irony is that is exactly what someone has suggestd as strategy for finding a manager - an undiscovered gem.Let''s be honest about it, interviews are largely a lottery, particularly if the people doing the interview know less about the subject matter than the people being interviewed.

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So whats the solution Mr Chops.... you missed that bit out.According to your reasoning we cant take a punt on another unknown and a ''proven'' manager would only be ok. Doesn''t leave much room for the board......?

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[quote user="astrodyne"]The thing is, he must surely have been asked in his interview what his gameplan was, and therefore if he answered with the degree of depth that such an important interview would require, the board were extremely naive in thinking that such a large number of gems were waiting to be uncovered. Surely they should have asked themselves why Worthy had not uncovered them? I can understand them thinking that Roeders loan gameplan could work - due to the success of the Huckerby triumvirate - but despite this success, surely they should have had doubts as to whether such major changes would destroy team camaraderie as it did with Grant.[/quote]So you would rather the board, none of whom had a footballing background, make the decisions on which players should have rejected? Yeah, the fans would have loved that........Roeder had a 3 year plan before even attempting an assault up the table, he recognised there was a massive amount of work to be done. Iversson, Ameobi, Caroll, Taylor.....he had some reasonable targets, it just wasn''t to be. Sometimes in spite of your best efforts, shit happens.

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[quote user="Mister Chops"]  Perhaps Norwich''s future policy should be the same with managers as with players - look to the lower leagues at people coming through and go for the best you can afford. [/quote]

This was the past policy when we appointed Saunders and Bond. But I think we had to pay "top dollar" for those times.

 

 

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[quote user="IBS"]So whats the solution Mr Chops.... you missed that bit out.According to your reasoning we cant take a punt on another unknown and a ''proven'' manager would only be ok. Doesn''t leave much room for the board......?

[/quote]I was throwing out a question, namely why the board are so keen to gamble on another unproven manager despite the Grant lesson.  I''m quite certain the answer is a financial one rather than a question of ambition.As for the answer, if the club would like me to join as a consultant, I''d be happy to help them out.

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[quote user="Mister Chops"]I was throwing out a question, namely why the board are so keen to gamble on another unproven manager despite the Grant lesson.  I''m quite certain the answer is a financial one rather than a question of ambition.As for the answer, if the club would like me to join as a consultant, I''d be happy to help them out.[/quote]But seriously, I''m not looking to be awkward, but if they can''t take a punt on a Grant and cant take a ''proven''.....whats left?Seems they cant win.....

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[quote user="IBS"][quote user="Mister Chops"]I was throwing out a question, namely why the board are so keen to gamble on another unproven manager despite the Grant lesson.  I''m quite certain the answer is a financial one rather than a question of ambition.As for the answer, if the club would like me to join as a consultant, I''d be happy to help them out.[/quote]But seriously, I''m not looking to be awkward, but if they can''t take a punt on a Grant and cant take a ''proven''.....whats left?Seems they cant win.....[/quote]No, it seems they can''t judge... as I said, Grant is a persuasive and passionate guy and I can understand why they were taken in by him.  But Gunny?  Really?  In my view, the club would have been better to approach a "known quantity" at management level, someone who would have at least had experience of management and who would have been new to the players and staff, rather than the professional Mister Nice Guy we''ve had on the books for years, who everyone knows, and likes, but do they respect him?  Given the players'' performances, I think we can say respect was in short supply.Did you think Gunn was the right appointment?

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Tricky one this isn''t it?  In 50 years of managers - and I''ve lost count - I cannot ever remember thinking that the incoming man was guaranteed to do a good job.  Some did, some didn''t, some were disastrous.  Yes you always "hope" they will do a good job but there is absolutely no way of knowing so far as I can see and I cannot really see how a club can know either.  I would think that the list of managerial failures in football is probably three or four times as long as the success list.  Over 30 were fired last season alone.

Here''s the funny thing about football.  By and large it operates in a way that no other business does.  If you want someone for a pivotal role in any other business, such as a Manager, you head hunt him from somewhere else where you can probably see that he has done a very good job, perhaps at a competitor. In nearly every case in football you are selecting someone out of work because his previous club has decided, for whatever reason, that he wasn''t up to it.

The one advantage Gunn might have this season is scrapping the loan system and, in Butterworth, having someone alongside him who ought to know all about League One and what sort of players to seek.

I am inclined towards believing that quite a lot of it is "the luck of the draw" or, perhaps, just luck - that and a combination of decent players who gel and who stay injury free. 

 

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[quote user="Mister Chops"][quote user="IBS"][quote user="Mister Chops"]

I was throwing out a question, namely why the board are so keen to gamble on another unproven manager despite the Grant lesson.  I''m quite certain the answer is a financial one rather than a question of ambition.

As for the answer, if the club would like me to join as a consultant, I''d be happy to help them out.
[/quote]

But seriously, I''m not looking to be awkward, but if they can''t take a punt on a Grant and cant take a ''proven''.....whats left?

Seems they cant win.....
[/quote]

No, it seems they can''t judge... as I said, Grant is a persuasive and passionate guy and I can understand why they were taken in by him.  But Gunny?  Really?  In my view, the club would have been better to approach a "known quantity" at management level, someone who would have at least had experience of management and who would have been new to the players and staff, rather than the professional Mister Nice Guy we''ve had on the books for years, who everyone knows, and likes, but do they respect him?  Given the players'' performances, I think we can say respect was in short supply.

Did you think Gunn was the right appointment?
[/quote]

I don''t understand the Gunn appointment at all. Not even  as "the cheap option" because Butterworth is already here and so I assume Butterworth/Crook would have been cheaper (and in my view better) than Gunn/Butterworth/Crook.

 

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[quote user="Camuldonum"]

Here''s the funny thing about football.  By and large it operates in a way that no other business does.  If you want someone for a pivotal role in any other business, such as a Manager, you head hunt him from somewhere else where you can probably see that he has done a very good job, perhaps at a competitor. In nearly every case in football you are selecting someone out of work because his previous club has decided, for whatever reason, that he wasn''t up to it.

[/quote]And that was one of the four main arguments I encountered from Carrow Road for keeping Gunn on. That if it wasn''t to be him then the choice would effectively be limited to the kind of manager Cam describes - someone with a failure on his record.I don''t actually think that is necessarily true. In Norwich''s history Saunders, Bond and O''Neill came with unblemished records. And there are probably managers out there now with similar records.But even if you have to take someone who has failed somewhere, there are failures and failures. Jewell''s disaster at Derby looks ominous, whereas Boothroyd''s later fall from grace at Watford can be explained away.The three other arguments, by the way were:1. Gunn will work well with the academy coach, which will be useful because of the need to use youth players.2. Gunn will have learned from his mistakes.3. We cannot afford the disruption of another change, with all concomitant comings and goings of coaches, fitness staff etc.

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I agree with much of the original post - it is by no means an easy job picking a Manager and there are no guarantees regarding success. However, what really gets on my bosoms is whatever did the Board see in Gunn''s performance over the eighteen matches he was in charge to make them think that he was capable of doing the job on a permanent basis? Which boxes, pertinent to the job of Manager, did he tick during that time? At least Grant was a virgin manager and there was no hard evidence that it wouldn''t work whereas potentially the Board have dug a hole for themselves that a bus could fall down with the appointment of Gunn following his demonstrated failings during the time he was in charge.

I find comparison with Blackpool interesting. They had a caretaker manager who kept them in the Championship but the Board took a hard line that he wasn''t the man for them on a permanent basis so they disposed of him and then appointed Holloway for goodness sake!

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No IBA, that is not my point, I don''t expect the board to be choosing players. What I do expect the board to do, is realise what type of players are going to be brought in, and the effects that will have on the club. Surely the board have enough football knowledge to know that if Grant wanted to bring in scottish journeymen, then he wasn''t the man for the job.Likewise, if those names were the targets that roeder mentioned to the board during his interview, then they should have made sure sufficient funds were available for him to secure those players services. IMO its not luck - it simply requires some joined up thinking and planning - heaven forbid.

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[quote user="astrodyne"]IMO its not luck - it simply requires some joined up thinking and planning - heaven forbid.[/quote]Simple is the last word I would use! look at how many clubs, of all divisions, make a mess of it.

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There is an element of luck but most of the time this can be removed.

Grant was an edcuated risk.  He was an up and coming coach well respected in the game as a first team coach making a very good impression.  As we have seen with many coaches the transition to manager is a bigger step than most can cope with.   Unlike coyle he had no previous.

Coyle is like a couple of our most recently successful managers - O''Neill and Worthy.   Both were young and ambitious but had spent a year or so managing smaller clubs.  On a budget.   They had learnt their most costly mistakes elsewhere and were keen for a bigger challenge.  That is the model we need to repeat.

Not once have city taken a big name manager and been successful - they come here because their ability is on the wane and other bigger clubs wont employ them because they have seen that fact.  These are the things that the board need to learn from

  • That manager is a key role and prior experience is essential
  • managers like players have a natural cycle,  we need to sign them on the up.
  • we know we are on a restricted budget,  ex prem managers have neither experience of the lower league or controlling a truly small budget.
  • if a big name manager is out of a job there IS a reason why other teams dont want him
  • use the past to learn for the future,  drive desire ambition are key supporters for talent.

Appointing any of the last three managers - esp Gunn - flys in the face of all of this.  Appointing BUtterworth and Crook would also be a mistake given the vast lack of management time but at least they have some football coaching background. 

Jackett, Robins, Gannon were all viable alternatives to Gunn,  particularly Robins. 

Cheap Gunn is - but that comes at a cost.

 

 

 

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[quote user="Badger"][quote user="astrodyne"]IMO its not luck - it simply requires some joined up thinking and planning - heaven forbid.[/quote]Simple is the last word I would use! look at how many clubs, of all divisions, make a mess of it.

[/quote]You take my point of of context I''m afraid. Let me restate it for you to make it better. ''(...) - it requires joined up thinking planning and planning - heaven forbid''. I believe this is the kind of thing boards do?Only 12 clubs get relegated from the top 4 divisions and many of those go back up at the first time of asking - I don''t think thats many making a mess of it tbh.

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[quote user="astrodyne"]You take my point of of context I''m afraid. Let me restate it for you to make it better. ''(...) - it requires joined up thinking planning and planning - heaven forbid''. I believe this is the kind of thing boards do?Only 12 clubs get relegated from the top 4 divisions and many of those go back up at the first time of asking - I don''t think thats many making a mess of it tbh.[/quote]I agree with much of what you said in your original post and I imagine that such strategic issues are discussed. However, I still don''t think that it "simply requires some joined up thinking and planning."If it were that easy, there wouldn''t be the huge number of managerial sackings each year. I don''t know what the percentage was this year but it must have been at least 30%.Secondly there is a difference between having a the right strategy and be able to successfully put it in place. A knowledgeable person who is coherent should be able to identify a potentially correct strategy. The interview process does not really test how successful the person would be at putting this into practice.My guess (and it is only that) is that Grant/ Roeder were able to put forward joined up, coherent strategies and said that they could deliver within the identified financial constraints. They were not able to do what theysaid they could do - at least partly, I suspect, because of their personalities.

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[quote user="ZippersLeftFoot"]

There is an element of luck but most of the time this can be removed.

Grant was an edcuated risk.  He was an up and coming coach well respected in the game as a first team coach making a very good impression.  As we have seen with many coaches the transition to manager is a bigger step than most can cope with.   Unlike coyle he had no previous.

Coyle is like a couple of our most recently successful managers - O''Neill and Worthy.   Both were young and ambitious but had spent a year or so managing smaller clubs.  On a budget.   They had learnt their most costly mistakes elsewhere and were keen for a bigger challenge.  That is the model we need to repeat.

Not once have city taken a big name manager and been successful - they come here because their ability is on the wane and other bigger clubs wont employ them because they have seen that fact.  These are the things that the board need to learn from

  • That manager is a key role and prior experience is essential
  • managers like players have a natural cycle,  we need to sign them on the up.
  • we know we are on a restricted budget,  ex prem managers have neither experience of the lower league or controlling a truly small budget.
  • if a big name manager is out of a job there IS a reason why other teams dont want him
  • use the past to learn for the future,  drive desire ambition are key supporters for talent.

Appointing any of the last three managers - esp Gunn - flys in the face of all of this.  Appointing BUtterworth and Crook would also be a mistake given the vast lack of management time but at least they have some football coaching background. 

Jackett, Robins, Gannon were all viable alternatives to Gunn,  particularly Robins. 

Cheap Gunn is - but that comes at a cost.

 [/quote]

I agree for the most part Zippers. And although I can see that there are other more proven managers out there I do feel that a manager needs to be judged on two things - players signed and then what he can get out of them. Sometimes the managers are that good that they can work with what is already there or the players are that good that they can play under almost anyone.

On this basis if you look at the players that Gunn has brought in and others he has quite clearly worked with I think you can see progress. The progress was not enough to save us but I think we saw the best of several players under Gunn. The problem we had at the end of last season is that many players seemed to have their heads elsewhere. I personally think Marshall knew that other teams were interested in him and Croft defenitely knew as he could have signed a pre-contractual agreement from January onwards when he is allowed to speak to any club. Fotheringham we knew was a gonna and the same as Croft really.

The players that Gunn did bring in for the most part were a drastic improvement on what we had. Gow, Lee, Mooney and MacDonald are good examples. The only problem for me was that Gow had played a handful of games since the 2006/2007 season and Mooney had hardly played a game of English football and at times it showed especially with consistancy.

Now like I said - there is no doubt more experienced managers out there who have demonstrated more success but then there is no sure bet that they would work. Some of the managers that have been bandied about are beyond us where as some others are not. I would have loved Boothroyd but the papers say (much as I predicted at the end of the season) that he is gunning for the QPR job. Ince for me is actually a big risk. He has done well with a struggling league two club and a wealthy league one club and then flopped in the premiership. To me it seems that as long as he has a competative, or better, budget to work with he does well but that is no good for us.

I would like to see what players Gunn gets in over the summer before I start to even consider to judge his ability as a manager. I think people are allowing their anger and frustration at the board spill over to Gunn. One thing is for sure, it doesnt matter what manager we had in they would still have to do what the board said and work with the same budget and the same players that are already here.

I am not willing to give the board a chance - just Gunn. The board still have many questions to answer and many misstakes to be held accountable for. But I think there is a lack of direction amoungst the fans to know what to do about it.

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*sigh*

Peter Grant had only ever been a coach, and hadn''t managed anywhere. Owen Coyle was a coach at two different clubs prior to becoming St Johnstone manager. The whole of Scottish football took serious note of what he then did: he transformed them, and was hideously unlucky not to reach two Cup Finals, and be beaten to promotion in the final seconds of the season by big-spending Gretna. That Saints have gone up this season is down to the groundwork Coyle had done: he was a gamble worth taking based on his prior record.

Sorry - but it''s the board''s job to know what''s going on throughout British and arguably European football, and who the hot managerial properties are. Burnley''s did - and yesterday, they went up. Ours didn''t - and having already seen plenty of evidence that Bryan Gunn is no manager, appointed him anyway. Go figure.

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