Managers or Moaners
September 19th 2008 04:30
Unfortunately, those days are long gone and we’re now presented with equally as skilled managers but ones who are too cowardly to accept responsibility for their own team’s failings and would go to sometimes ridiculous lengths to find someone else to blame for their defeat. The referee, an opposing player, the opposing manager, ball boys and girls… even the choice of kit has been blamed in the past by these bullies. Anything so they don’t have to put their hands up and say, ‘Look on the day my team didn’t perform,’ or better still, ‘I chose a team and tactics today that simply didn’t work.’ It would be too much for their egos to take, I’m sure.
I know I don’t have to name names, but I will nonetheless. Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Steve Bruce, Kevin Keegan and Rafa Benitez (I could go on) are all guilty of passing the buck and putting the blame anywhere but at their own feet.
You may have noticed I left out one obvious name there. A man who could arguably be called the best manager in England right now. A man who has challenged for the title and maintained a top four position, whilst spending a fraction of his peers. That’s right, it’s Arsene Wenger. I thought I’d single Mr Wenger out for special treatment as this is a man who has become a caricature of exactly what a whingeing manager is.
The genius of the man is not in question; let me get that straight from the start. He was, is and, I imagine, always be an incredibly shrewd operator in the transfer market and a tactical behemoth. Despite these strengths, or maybe because of these strengths, he feels the need to bitch and moan more than any man I have known of. It’s becoming a joke.
Ferguson, you might say is getting off lightly, and I freely accept the red-faced Scot is up there in terms of petulance and hypocrisy. The difference between Wenger and Fergie is that Sir Alex’s gripes are always related somehow to his own team and how they have been cheated out of a goal or a result, whereas Wenger will moan about anything and everything. In fact, it’s his out spoken nonsense about subjects to which he is completely unrelated that gets under the skin of most.
I used to love the man. He was a crusader. A man who was willing to stand up and say, ‘No, this is getting silly. I’m not going to pay such ridiculous money in fees and wages. I’m going to find a different way.’ For a while he successfully did just that. Times change though, and his antiquated and stubborn refusal to splash the cash is going to cost Arsenal their place at the top. It’s that simple.
Wenger can complain all he wants about the immoral way in which players are ‘tapped up’ or how money is ‘ruining the game’, but I suggest he take a long hard look in the mirror and ask himself if is as innocent as he portrays.
Wenger’s tactics aren’t to tap up established and brilliant players. No. That would still cost money. He’d rather trawl his way across the globe, raping and pillaging other clubs of their star youth team prospects, getting them at a snip of what they one day could be worth. It’s a gamble, I admit. I’ll repeat though that this is a truly great manager and one that has an incredible eye for talent. However, his way of doing things is no more moral or ethical than Ferguson practically screeching up in his car at Manchester airport, bundling Berbatov into the boot, and driving off at high speed.
I can’t but wonder what Cloughie would make of the so-called mind games of today too? I dare say he’d claim to be the best at it, without really knowing what they were. He was an arrogant so and so, but unlike today’s gaffers he handled himself with both dignity and humour, as did all the old legends.
Matt Busby once said, ‘It was a very simple team talk. All I used to say was: 'Whenever possible, give the ball to George.'’ Can you imagine Benitez saying the same about Kuyt? Okay, bad example…
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Comment by Anonymous
Comment by DCBlue
Oh and as for Wenger, I agree that the man is a King Moaner, but I feel like the disappointment of the last few years has knocked him down a few pegs. He seems far more selective in his approach to rants now.
He needs to bring back "I zidnt zee it"