OLE GUNNAR SOLSKJÆR’s job at Manchester United is under constant surveillance: by the media, by the fans and by the club’s owners and board. If you believe all you read, then OGS is just one more big defeat away from the sack. Every week that passes, the popular Norwegian’s future appears to hang by a […]
HOW do you sack managers like Pep Guardiola, or replace parts of the furniture like Frank Lampard? There’s an assumption that clubs will not fire people who are football luminaries or club “legends”. But it would be wrong to believe Lampard and Guardiola are untouchable, at best they will be left in a room and […]
HOW OFTEN have you heard someone explain away a poor title defence with a comment like, “They needed to turn things over….they needed to rebuild”? It is true that nothing lasts forever in football and sometimes, a title winning team burns itself out in lifting the big prize. A manager gets the best out of […]
THE THREE men who have managed a European Cup/Champions League winner on three occasions are well known to all: Bob Paisley, Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane. Unsurprisingly, most of Europe’s biggest names have won the competition and some equally notable managers have not – Bill Shankly, Don Revie, Arséne Wenger and Franz Beckenbauer, for example, […]
THE RECENT Soccerex Football Finance 100 showed that English football is the dominant force in world football at the moment. Of the many clubs from the Premier League and Championship, there was one name that certainly made you look twice to ensure your eyes were not playing tricks – Barnsley, the 65th strongest football club […]
TOTTENHAM Hotspur were supposed to be different, a club that didn’t follow the zeitgeist of football as a rich-man’s plaything. Spurs were committed to developing players, providing the hub of the Southgate project, and they resisted the temptation of throwing money around. They had also kept faith with a coveted manager that was popular, played […]
MANCHESTER UNITED are going through what amounts to something of an identity crisis. The astonishingly high standards set during the Ferguson era meant that whatever followed him would be an anti-climax, but the club has made a series of poor judgement calls, partly in desperation to return to winning ways – and that means league […]
HOW OFTEN have you heard someone explain away a poor title defence with a comment like, “They needed to turn things over….they needed to rebuild”? It is true that nothing lasts forever in football and sometimes, a title winning team burns itself out in lifting the big prize. A manager gets the best out of […]
REMEMBER when Chelsea went left-field and hired André Villas-Boas, the 35 year-old Porto head coach? It was meant to be bold, innovative and – with absence making the heart grow fonder for the man who brought two league titles to the club – a Mourinho-lite appointment. It all turned sour and inexperience, over-expectation and tactical […]
