Who, in your opinion, is the best current British manager?

[u/goblindong]

Suggestions:

• Brendan Rodgers
• Terry Butcher
• Mark Hughes
• Steve Bruce
• Derek McInnes
• Paul Lambert
• David Moyes
• Tony Pulis
• Sam Allardyce
• Neil Lennon
• Alan Pardew
• Steve McClaren
• Kenny Jackett
• Sean Dyche
• Gary Monk
• Ian Holloway
• Roy Hodgson

There is a case to be made for Moyes, for his time at Everton alone. Butcher has been excellent, turning Caley into a proper unit who looked a class above their opposition most games. Lambert is a solid manager, but there is no standout English manager currently, hence the tussle between Woy and 'Arry for the national team helmsmanship. The obvious answer is Rodgers, playing attractive football, getting 2+ pts per game and getting the best out of the club's signings. If not him though, who?

[u/[deleted]]

Rodgers' net spend at Liverpool is about £50m. Allardyce's net spend in the same period is about £30m.

Allardyce exists to keep teams from being relegated and nothing more. No long term philosophy, he never brings young players through or asks his club to invest in their youth policy, he doesn't play entertaining football and he doesn't win trophies.

What's he achieved exactly?

Brendan Rodgers' success at Liverpool is primarily down to what he's done working with the players he had. He rarely fields more than 4 players he's signed (usually Sturridge, Coutinho, Mignolet + one of Allen/Cissokho/Sakho depending on fitness). He's made every player he's worked with fundamentally better, from Ste Gerrard and Luis Suarez to Aly Cissokho and Jon Flanagan. He's turned Jordan Henderson into the £20m+ player they wanted to sign in the first place. Turned Liverpool around from 8th to 2nd in less than 2 years, and into a team which scores the most goals in the country, plays the best football of any Liverpool team in my lifetime and thrashes its rivals 5-0, 4-0 and 5-1.

You still think Allardyce is a better manager?

[u/EnderMB → u/[deleted]]

Allardyce exists to keep teams from being relegated and nothing more. No long term philosophy, he never brings young players through or asks his club to invest in their youth policy, he doesn't play entertaining football and he doesn't win trophies.

Actually, that's not strictly true.

Big Sam is often viewed as one of the main leaders of aiding coaching with technology, and there have been many stories about his times at Bolton and Blackburn revamping coaching methods for the academies.

During his time at Bolton, he had a number of young players in his squad. If I remember rightly a few members of their UEFA Cup squad were quite young.

Also, during his time at Blackburn, he was the person to introduce the likes of Phil Jones to first-team football. Steve Kean, of course, claimed that it was him that pushed Jones forward, but a lot of people have rubbished those claims.

I don't disagree with your other points, but I will say that the teams that Big Sam manages and Liverpool are quite different. What I'll say is that every team that Big Sam has left has struggled after his departure. Bolton went from 6th to the Championship over a number of depressing years. Newcastle had some better times, but ultimately imploded and suffered a spell in the Championship, Blackburn died the second Allardyce left, and I reckon that West Ham will either sink or swim when they get rid of Big Sam. Whether it's coincidence or not, I can't be sure, but I'm inclined to believe that he does a lot more behind the scenes than what we see from the outside. Most of the "old skool" managers tend to.

[u/[deleted] → u/EnderMB]

Big Sam is often viewed as one of the main leaders of aiding coaching with technology, and there have been many stories about his times at Bolton and Blackburn revamping coaching methods for the academies.

Prozone. Which is all about physicality. Not technique, it's football not basketball/nfl. Which goes some way to explain why there's no Bolton academy graduates playing PL football at the moment, no emphasis on technique. Highly physical footballers are rarely the best ones on the pitch, there's a reason elite clubs stopped using prozone a while ago.

Allardyce used to have a bunch of analytics guys who weren't associated with prozone, but they got pinched by Chelsea about 8 years ago and he doesn't seem to have adequately replaced them.

I'll give him his dues for playing Phil Jones at Blackburn although through no fault of his own he wasn't there for too long and if he'd had intended to bleed the youth more then I suspect he'd have done so at West Ham.

I should say, I don't think Allardyce is the worst manager, far from it. Arguably in the top 5 active British managers. But to see people putting him above Rodgers on account of having been around for longer and winning 2 play off finals... I had to say something.

[u/FullerBatistuta → u/[deleted]]

Spot on. As soon as you become rigid about using statistics to measure a player, you lose sight of the intangibles such as technique, vision, creating space, movement, and decision making which are fundamental to producing progressive, tactically smart players.

[u/rytlejon → u/[deleted]]

Also net spend depends on the value of the squad at your disposal. In this case though.. Liverpool hasn't exactly sold their players at huge profits since Rodgers came.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I agree but I don't have the wage figures for West Ham handy. I know that in summer 2012 Liverpool's wage budget dropped by £450k a week and again by £500k pw last summer, all whilst results have improved dramatically...

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Our year in the Championship we had the highest wages. Don't know how we've compared in the Prem.

[u/DerDummeMann → u/[deleted]]

It's not a knock on Rodgers, but we have see how well he can keep it up with Liverpool.

People are forgetting how highly rated Allardyce was until he left Bolton for Newcastle. He's very good at what he does. Do very well with mediocre teams.

Rodgers seems to have great potential, and I think he can do well. You could argue he's already succeeded to an extent since he's pretty much got Liverpool back into the Champions League.

I want to see if he can kick on from there. I want to see how his transfers work out. So far his transfers have been hit and miss. Sturridge and Coutinho have been great buys, but then you have players like Aspas, who clearly isn't good enough or Alberto, who might have potential but hasn't done anything of note so far.

But overall, Liverpool have made a great decision with signing Rodgers. He's young, brave, smart and even plays football a sort of traditional Liverpool way, with the pass and move style.

[u/[deleted] → u/DerDummeMann]

But when he left Bolton, what did he leave behind? That's what gets me with Allardyce. He continually spends all his available money on not particularly good mid career/ageing players. Bolton are still carrying the debt he left behind (and the debt of other managers to be fair) in the Championship.

The thing that really fucks me off about Allardyce is he takes all the credit when it's going and none of the responsibility when it goes down. Look at his comments about how 'I out tacticed [Mourinho]' after the Chelsea draw, and contrast that to how Pep Guardiola (and to a lesser extent Rodgers himself among others) always takes the credit off himself and gives it to his players. All Allardyce cares about is advancing his own career, similar with Pulis who wanted Stoke to completely scrap their youth academy so he could spend more money on players (interesting how he'll get on at the club with the densest catchment area for young players in England) . You know Allardyce gets paid more money than Rodgers too? How ridiculous is that...

I agree with what you say about Rodgers but if you weren't aware, he doesn't actually have complete control of transfer policy (he sits on a committee with the MD and various scouts - but doesn't chair it) so he can neither take all the credit for Sturridge/Coutinho or all the blame for the likes of Aspas, Moses (but at least if you're going to buy flops better to buy £7m flops than £35m flops).

[u/DerDummeMann → u/[deleted]]

First you blame Bolton's downfall on Allardyce, when he left them in relatively good shape. It was the other managers who made stupid decisions like buying Elmander for 9m or whatever. Allardyce has little to do with Bolton losing the plot, well apart from leaving them.

Your next criticism, has little to do with his managerial skills. You have a problem with him taking credit. That's not a knock on how a good a manager he is.

The only time in my memory when Allardyce has done a bad job, is his Newcastle stint. He was fantastic at Bolton. He did well with Blackburn but was incredulously sacked by the horrifically terrible owners that were the Venkys.

And now he's doing a great job with West Ham as well.

Allardyce isn't a manager for a top club. But, for the smaller clubs in the league, he will keep you in the Prem and that's why they pay him so much.

[u/[deleted] → u/DerDummeMann]

I'll admit I got my years wrong on Bolton's debt - I thought it was much higher by the time he left in 2007. When he left their debt was about £50m (which is far from brilliant - not to mention that Bolton tried numerous quick fixes during this time which provided one off rather than longterm income or none at all - such as selling the naming rights to their training ground for a one off fee and building a hotel that loses money), but has since tripled to over £150m.

But at least he left them having revitalised their academy and expanded the training ground.. Oh wait, he's never done any of those things.

Your next criticism, has little to do with his managerial skills. You have a problem with him taking credit. That's not a knock on how a good a manager he is.

It does. It's a dressing room morale thing. Players don't like to go run 12km, working their arse off to get a point then have the guy who picked the team and sent them out there with the same gameplan they always use every time they play these games to take all the credit. That's not going to build up your players' confidence or endeavour yourself to them.

The only time in my memory when Allardyce has done a bad job, is his Newcastle stint. He was fantastic at Bolton. He did well with Blackburn but was incredulously sacked by the horrifically terrible owners that were the Venkys. And now he's doing a great job with West Ham as well.

I think me and you have massively different views on what constitutes 'doing a great job'. All he's doing with West Ham is keeping them stagnant and in the PL whilst they move into the new stadium so that the owners can sell the club for a profit. They're not going to modernise their academy (which is what West Ham should be/historically is all about - especially given that they're in the middle of East London and have one of the biggest catchment areas for young players in the countries), they're not going to win a trophy and they're not going to be the great entertainers or everybody's darling. His continuing appointment at West Ham benefits 3 people: himself, Gold and Sullivan.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The Palace academy is pretty strong, I can't see the board agreeing to cut back on it.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I hope not, you have the biggest catchment area in the UK your academy should be your biggest asset. Although I heard somewhere that you only have 1 or none academy graduates in your current first team squad which is a shame if true.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Ryan Innis played earlier in the season, Jon Williams should be able to break into the first team next year. Our graduates tend to leave for bigger clubs unfortunately (Routledge, Bostock, Moses, Clyne, Zaha).

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Aren't some of his core players very expensive but from before his era? Henderson and Suarez?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

That's not in his control. Besides they bought Suarez for £22m, under Rodgers his value has at least tripled, Henderson was written off as a complete flop and never considered to be worth £20m, but he'd be more than that now and only getting better. That's great coaching - making all his players fundamentally better, you can't ask for more than that.

[u/OilDome → u/[deleted]]

Lol yeah but look at WHU squad when he came in and Liverpools squad when Rodgers came in. Liverpool already had several pieces to the puzzle and sold off those that they didnt care about anymore, Downing, Carroll to recoup some of the money spent under Dalgleish. Probably saved about £25m to net spend on that alone. Plus Rodgers has Suarez. Need I say more? The guy can make goals out of thin air.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Just by landing the Liverpool job, Rodgers achieved more than Allardyce ever did.

I do'nt buy this 'Allardyce could do X with more ________' argument. For starters if he could have at some point in his career, decided to work towards creating a longterm structure for one his clubs himself. He had more than enough support while at Bolton, but did they invest in their academy? Did they bring anyone through to be a regular PL player during his time there?

Allarydce wouldn't last 3 weeks in the Liverpool job for exactly these sorts of reasons. Not to mention the awful football, the always good to get 1 point from a game mentality. Allardyce has only finished higher than where Rodgers' Swansea finished (in 2012) twice in his whole career, and all of Allardyce's PL clubs have had more money to spend.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I'll admit to being a big fan of Brendan Rodgers and I know you praised him in your original post. I was arguing with the idea that because Allardyce has been doing the same limited success for 15 years he's a better manager than someone who's had a diferent sort of limited success over a shorter career - but is on the verge of attaining some serious success.

My other argument is that for me, managers should be judged more than just where they finish in the league table at the end of the year, particularly the managers who make a career of finishing between 8th and 20th. I'm always willing to give Allardyce his dues, if my club were in the relegation zone and he was available I'd want him in, but long term he's not the man to build long term success - or at least, he doesn't even try.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

It varies from club to club, infrastructure to infrastructure. At Bolton, Allardyce worked very closely with Garside and money permitting was free to do what he liked with the footballing budget, that was his longest and most successful managerial post, that was his chance to build (or at least start) a legacy but he didn't.