I'm a bit wary of brief good form, obk. It is easy to assign responsibility to the manager, but that gets him the sack if the results stop coming. If he's responsible for success, he's responsible for failure too.
And in this league, they must stop coming.
Either we stay down, and he gets the blame for failure, because we know this League isn't all that. Or we go up, and end up out of our depth. The average tenure at a Premiership Club is 17 months. Better than QPR, of course, where it is usually 17 weeks
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Of course, the great managers, who achieve success for years on end, are the exception. But I'd struggle to name more than 10 of them over the last 50-100 years. Based either on stupendous achievements at small to modest Clubs - Ramsey, Clough/Taylor - or turning struggling sides into top teams for 15 years of repeated and even near-continous success - Busby, Shankly, Revie, Paisley. And Ferguson.
In our case, I give the credit for everything to the Club. Assigning it to the manager may be well-intentioned, but it piles the pressure on him.
Me, I'd prefer to pile the pressure on the players. I get the impression that at the very least, the managers work hard, long hours, long weeks. Things may have changed, but the impression is that the players don't do anything like as much. Few of them can do anything at 30 they couldn't do at 13. Few have admirable technique. And nobody seems to think they can be taught it.
And just as directors and supporters turn against managers very quickly, the players rarely come forward to remind us that it was THEY who lost the matches, not the manager. Especially when his job is on the line.
Assigning all the credit/blame to the manager may be a historical hangover from the era when the English game discovered tactics. Chapman devised the stopper centre half, and was the great pre-War master. Ramsey stunned the football world twice, once by winning the World Cup, and even more stupendously, by winning the League with Ipswich. I think that is the greatest achievement ever in the League. Ipswich! I went to Portman Road for one game in that season, and saw them stuff Chelsea 5-2. Jimmy Leadbetter, their playmaker, was at least 90 years old, and as fast as a tortoise. 'You don't have to go past the man, Jimmy, you can pass the ball'. Go past the man, he could barely stand up.
In the early sixties, tactics arrived with a vengeance, especially when Ramsey had won the World Cup.
Like spending borrowed money nowadays, though, tactics didn't actually increase the amount of success available. If one tactician wins, all the others lose. Tactics, generally speaking, don't work. Just as spending, generally speaking, doesn't work.
Another reason why I think it is unfair to be too quick to praise anyone. Once they've been winning for donkey's years, it's OK, because hardly anyone ever does that, so they're immortal, even if, like Clough once Taylor left, the success itself never returns.
Liverpool were all hard running (and defensive play). Leeds were all hard kicking (and defensive play). England were all hard shooting and heading (and defensive play). And Clough's teams combined all these qualities, kicking sides off the pitch - my dad was disgusted at Derby's performance down here in the early seventies against a young Rangers side (I was disgusted at their kicking Keegan all over the pitch in the European Cup Final) - while they ran them ragged and defended implacably.
It all worked, for a time. But once everyone had absorbed these lessons, and started doing the same things themselves, and especially once the League of One - Ferguson - established itself, where Ferguson's know-how or, failing that, loadsamoney could BUY the required talent, there was little or no scope for a Ramsey or Clough.
True, we are spending, but we're spending QPR's money, not the investors'. Abramovich has lost £736 million of Chelsea's money, and Chelsea still aren't one of the big three, and nowhere near the Big One. But Chelsea are something like the 5th best supported side of all time, so, like United, Liverpool, Arsenal and others, they have a lot more money to lose than QPR.
Another factor to consider is that we, as supporters, can be a little inconsistent. No, I know what you're saying, we ARE all but perfect, but occasionally a little lapse can be detected.
For example, when a manager is at another Club, we think he's definitely beatable. We certainly thought that of Magilton when he was at Ipswich. Or Gregory, when he was anywhere. Then, when they come to QPR, we change our tune. We see their flaws when they're somewhere else, and ignore them when they're here.
Perhaps they have no flaws. Judging by recent results, they're going to sweep this division into the Thames. The Arno, or the Yenisei. I hope we keep it up, but I wouldn't want them to stand condemned because they couldn't keep it up.
And inconsistency is to be expected if we get our players and managers from the other Clubs. Either we were wrong not to have them in the first place - in which case we've been deluding ourselves foryears - or we're mistaken in thinking they're any better than we thought they were, so we're deluded now.
It's not a no-win situation, not at all. It's just a nearly no-win situation. I'm sure we're going to win, but I can afford to be. I won't get the sack in 17 months.
The upside is that we're scoring goals and winning 'for fun', but we are spending the Club's money at an unprecedented rate, so all credit to the Club rather than the managers, for our present success, and to the Club rather than the investors, too, as it's the Club's money the investors are losing, not their own.
That's more or less what I meant
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