Post by QPR Report on May 22, 2010 7:52:27 GMT
True for QPR...True for so many others. Rowlands seems like such an old timer...Ditto Stewart.
From The Times May 22, 2010
Model armies are paying the price for actions of mercenaries
Patrick Barclay
Of all the changes in football over the past 15 years — let’s call it the post-Bosman era — one of the most profound is the decline of team-building.
It used to be said of supposedly underachieving managers that they didn’t know their best team. And yet Sir Alex Ferguson presided over a trio of championships from 2006-07 without ever, I suspect, knowing or caring what his strongest team was; he just picked an ever-changing XI from the squad, weighing the opposition and giving rests to those in perceived need.
That United, because of Ferguson-instilled habits, almost invariably looked more of a team than most is testimony to their manager’s qualities, including his ability to adjust to changing times. But any good judge with a memory would have found Ferguson’s most recent generation less of a balanced footballing force, even with Cristiano Ronaldo, than the group who won his first couple of titles in the mid-1990s.
They roll off the tongue: Peter Schmeichel in goal; Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister, with Denis Irwin on one side and Paul Parker battling injury on the other; Roy Keane, Andrei Kanchelskis, Ryan Giggs, Brian McClair, Eric Cantona and Mark Hughes.
It is no slight to remark that they had a mechanical quality. For machines entertain, as Ferguson, who grew up with the great Celtic of Jock Stein, would require reminding least of all.
Today most managers have to build in haste, and it shows. To ascribe this wholly to “Bosman”, or the otherwise obscure Belgian footballer of that name whose legal campaign gave players the right to move without a transfer fee at the end of their contracts, would be facile, but it is true that Ajax, who won the Champions League in 1995, will never know what history they could have made if Louis van Gaal had been able to keep that exceptionally young team together.
Almost every player spent his peak elsewhere: Edwin van der Sar (still enjoying it with United), Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids, Patrick Kluivert, Marc Overmars, Kanu, Frank and Ronald de Boer. The process of gravitation to the biggest clubs may have happened before Bosman — after all, Johan Cruyff and Johan Neeskens went to Barcelona in the 1970s — but it would have been more gradual and less crudely disruptive to the rhythm of a great club.
Better for football, too, because the game is one of relationships: triangles, as it used to be said. Only a very few clubs can afford to build a team out of them today and, of course, the most glorious example is that of Barcelona, who have the twin hold of money and cultural identity over their players.
There are, from time to time, areas of outstanding football beauty at other clubs who strive for the long term, such as Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal — and to see Thierry Henry, Robert Pires and Ashley Cole in triangular operation down the Highbury left was truly a joy to the eye — but by and large the game is too much about compromise and cobbling because everyone and his agent forever seems in a rush to better himself.
Ask Wenger, who, just as a potent team come to maturity, faces the loss of the young man who holds them together. But maybe that is a bad example because Cesc Fàbregas, whom Wenger plucked from Barcelona in his mid-teens, wants only to return to his proper Catalan place. So let’s ask Martin O’Neill what he thinks of Manchester City preparing to relieve him of James Milner.
We don’t have to. We just have to put ourselves in the places of O’Neill, by common consent an excellent manager, and Randy Lerner, almost as widely acknowledged to be a model owner; their Aston Villa have no sooner got over the loss to City of Gareth Barry by moving Milner into his pivotal midfield role when City, with their Middle Eastern riches, come calling again for Milner.
O’Neill and Lerner don’t want City’s money. They just want to be left alone.
It is not going to happen. It would be more likely if Uefa were to carry through its plans for “financial fair play” — clubs being allowed to spend only what they earn — in the most extreme form, which would involve disallowing artificial injections of money such as gifts or suspiciously generous sponsorships.
This would mean regulation to a degree the Premier League regards as anathema. The League has a free-market philosophy that Richard Scudamore, its engaging and highly able chief executive, is only too happy to espouse and I confess that the thought of City proceeding to do to United and Chelsea what Chelsea, after Roman Abramovich’s arrival, did to United and Arsenal is an attractive one.
But must they succeed at the expense of Villa, who have the same ambitions — and a less inflationary, anti-competitive and anti-football way of doing it?
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/patrick_barclay/article7133350.ece
From The Times May 22, 2010
Model armies are paying the price for actions of mercenaries
Patrick Barclay
Of all the changes in football over the past 15 years — let’s call it the post-Bosman era — one of the most profound is the decline of team-building.
It used to be said of supposedly underachieving managers that they didn’t know their best team. And yet Sir Alex Ferguson presided over a trio of championships from 2006-07 without ever, I suspect, knowing or caring what his strongest team was; he just picked an ever-changing XI from the squad, weighing the opposition and giving rests to those in perceived need.
That United, because of Ferguson-instilled habits, almost invariably looked more of a team than most is testimony to their manager’s qualities, including his ability to adjust to changing times. But any good judge with a memory would have found Ferguson’s most recent generation less of a balanced footballing force, even with Cristiano Ronaldo, than the group who won his first couple of titles in the mid-1990s.
They roll off the tongue: Peter Schmeichel in goal; Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister, with Denis Irwin on one side and Paul Parker battling injury on the other; Roy Keane, Andrei Kanchelskis, Ryan Giggs, Brian McClair, Eric Cantona and Mark Hughes.
It is no slight to remark that they had a mechanical quality. For machines entertain, as Ferguson, who grew up with the great Celtic of Jock Stein, would require reminding least of all.
Today most managers have to build in haste, and it shows. To ascribe this wholly to “Bosman”, or the otherwise obscure Belgian footballer of that name whose legal campaign gave players the right to move without a transfer fee at the end of their contracts, would be facile, but it is true that Ajax, who won the Champions League in 1995, will never know what history they could have made if Louis van Gaal had been able to keep that exceptionally young team together.
Almost every player spent his peak elsewhere: Edwin van der Sar (still enjoying it with United), Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids, Patrick Kluivert, Marc Overmars, Kanu, Frank and Ronald de Boer. The process of gravitation to the biggest clubs may have happened before Bosman — after all, Johan Cruyff and Johan Neeskens went to Barcelona in the 1970s — but it would have been more gradual and less crudely disruptive to the rhythm of a great club.
Better for football, too, because the game is one of relationships: triangles, as it used to be said. Only a very few clubs can afford to build a team out of them today and, of course, the most glorious example is that of Barcelona, who have the twin hold of money and cultural identity over their players.
There are, from time to time, areas of outstanding football beauty at other clubs who strive for the long term, such as Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal — and to see Thierry Henry, Robert Pires and Ashley Cole in triangular operation down the Highbury left was truly a joy to the eye — but by and large the game is too much about compromise and cobbling because everyone and his agent forever seems in a rush to better himself.
Ask Wenger, who, just as a potent team come to maturity, faces the loss of the young man who holds them together. But maybe that is a bad example because Cesc Fàbregas, whom Wenger plucked from Barcelona in his mid-teens, wants only to return to his proper Catalan place. So let’s ask Martin O’Neill what he thinks of Manchester City preparing to relieve him of James Milner.
We don’t have to. We just have to put ourselves in the places of O’Neill, by common consent an excellent manager, and Randy Lerner, almost as widely acknowledged to be a model owner; their Aston Villa have no sooner got over the loss to City of Gareth Barry by moving Milner into his pivotal midfield role when City, with their Middle Eastern riches, come calling again for Milner.
O’Neill and Lerner don’t want City’s money. They just want to be left alone.
It is not going to happen. It would be more likely if Uefa were to carry through its plans for “financial fair play” — clubs being allowed to spend only what they earn — in the most extreme form, which would involve disallowing artificial injections of money such as gifts or suspiciously generous sponsorships.
This would mean regulation to a degree the Premier League regards as anathema. The League has a free-market philosophy that Richard Scudamore, its engaging and highly able chief executive, is only too happy to espouse and I confess that the thought of City proceeding to do to United and Chelsea what Chelsea, after Roman Abramovich’s arrival, did to United and Arsenal is an attractive one.
But must they succeed at the expense of Villa, who have the same ambitions — and a less inflationary, anti-competitive and anti-football way of doing it?
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/patrick_barclay/article7133350.ece