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Why Trophies don't matter any more

spids

Well-Known Member
Jul 19, 2015
6,647
27,841
And I'm sorry, but to say Pochetino and Klopp are among the best coaches in the world while dismissing the likes of Wenger and Van Gaal is nothing short of stupid. Has this writer completely forgotten about Ajax of the 90s or Arsenal from the 2000s?

The context is that they are rating the managers in the present. Today Poch is better than Wenger or Van Gaal. Football evolves and it is very hard for a manager to be ‘the best’ for more than a decade. Fergie was the exception. But Capello, Van Gaal, and even Mourinho (who has been on the wane since his last year at Madrid), are proving that after 10 years their tactics and ways of working are no longer the most effective. Right now, today, Poch is a much better manager than Wenger or Van Gaal.
 

The Doc

Well-Known Member
Dec 18, 2012
881
2,456
It's all about the context too isn't it? Winning an FA Cup with Wigan is a significant achievement, whereas, for Arsenal, it's just meh. As it should be for us too. Have to be aiming big, (the league title and CL) especially now it looks like we will finally start to access the financial resource needed to sustain this. I think Kane said recently he would swap the next 100 goals for winning the league. No mention of the Carabao or FA Cup in there.

Admittedly, the list of the top 30 managers does appear to be bollocks of the highest order. This is partially acknowledged in mention of tendency to go with zeitgeist names. Same as these music polls when the best album of all time is revealed to be 2 or 3 years old at best (when the world and its dog know the answer is always "let's go crazy apeshit banana" by yip yip the cowboy. A truly beautiful work of heartbreaking genius, and a timeless classic to boot).
 

Mullers

Unknown member
Jan 4, 2006
25,914
16,413
The context is that they are rating the managers in the present. Today Poch is better than Wenger or Van Gaal. Football evolves and it is very hard for a manager to be ‘the best’ for more than a decade. Fergie was the exception. But Capello, Van Gaal, and even Mourinho (who has been on the wane since his last year at Madrid), are proving that after 10 years their tactics and ways of working are no longer the most effective. Right now, today, Poch is a much better manager than Wenger or Van Gaal.
He's more in demand than Wenger but MUCH better, what's that based on? Coming second and third in the premier?
 

Mullers

Unknown member
Jan 4, 2006
25,914
16,413
It's all about the context too isn't it? Winning an FA Cup with Wigan is a significant achievement, whereas, for Arsenal, it's just meh. As it should be for us too. Have to be aiming big, (the league title and CL) especially now it looks like we will finally start to access the financial resource needed to sustain this. I think Kane said recently he would swap the next 100 goals for winning the league. No mention of the Carabao or FA Cup in there.

Admittedly, the list of the top 30 managers does appear to be bollocks of the highest order. This is partially acknowledged in mention of tendency to go with zeitgeist names. Same as these music polls when the best album of all time is revealed to be 2 or 3 years old at best (when the world and its dog know the answer is always "let's go crazy apeshit banana" by yip yip the cowboy. A truly beautiful work of heartbreaking genius, and a timeless classic to boot).
We haven't won the FA cup for 27 years, to win it would be an significant achievement for us. After all if it was that easy we would have won it during those 27 years.
 
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riggi

Well-Known Member
Jun 24, 2008
48,487
104,720
It's alright for you old bastards that have seen us lift cups. Us younger lot want our day at Wembley!
 

The Doc

Well-Known Member
Dec 18, 2012
881
2,456
We haven't won the FA cup for 27 years, to win it would be an significant achievementioned for us. After all if it was that easy we would have won it during those 27 years.

Would it really tho? Obv, great if it happens, but it's just 6 games isn't it? You don't even have to win any of them, as pens are eventually waiting at the end. Moreover, this season, we have had a dream draw to date. Say we win the replay, then the next two (let's imagine against Sheff Weds followed by Soton) before beating Brighton in the final. Would that still count as a major achievement?

I can see what you're getting at, just don't agree that an FA or Carabao win are going to make that much difference.
 

spids

Well-Known Member
Jul 19, 2015
6,647
27,841
He's more in demand than Wenger but MUCH better, what's that based on? Coming second and third in the premier?

Based on the last 12-24 months which of those managers has a stronger team with a better ethos / philosophy and developed that through coaching and man management skills?
 

Mullers

Unknown member
Jan 4, 2006
25,914
16,413
Would it really tho? Obv, great if it happens, but it's just 6 games isn't it? You don't even have to win any of them, as pens are eventually waiting at the end. Moreover, this season, we have had a dream draw to date. Say we win the replay, then the next two (let's imagine against Sheff Weds followed by Soton) before beating Brighton in the final. Would that still count as a major achievement?

I can see what you're getting at, just don't agree that an FA or Carabao win are going to make that much difference.
It's just 6 games but we haven't managed to win them all in 27 years.

Yes it does still represent a major achievement, they maybe games that we should win but we still got to get the job done. Coventry 87, Everton and Portsmouth semis are among numerous games that we were expected to win.

Our club history is built on cup wins, without that there isn't too much left there.
 

Mullers

Unknown member
Jan 4, 2006
25,914
16,413
Based on the last 12-24 months which of those managers has a stronger team with a better ethos / philosophy and developed that through coaching and man management skills?
Well the only time that we finished above them during Wenger reign was last season. That certainly isn't enough evidence to prove that he is much better than Wenger.
 

walworthyid

David Ginola
Oct 25, 2004
7,059
10,242
And if we were rich, we could have regular champions league and win trophies.
Man Utd are rich, I wouldn't swap our team, style of play, manager or recent trophy wins for theirs.

The process should ultimately lead to trophies, but it is far more complex than that. What about teams in the lower leagues who aren't realistically going to win anything? Are their fans perpetually unhappy? Would we spurs fans accept winning trophies but playing shit football? In that instance, our process would be moving towards winning whilst playing good football.

I want us to win something, I really do, but it isn't the most important thing to me. It is what we win and the way we do it. I want us to win the league or the champions league because to do so you have to the very best consistently. Winning the FA cup or league cup doesn't mean as much because so much of it is down to luck. Aside from that, you can win either of those and still be shit week in and week out. Where is the glory in that? Or even the sense of a process?

The process is always ongoing whether you are winning or not, whether you are at the top of the prem or the bottom of league two. In a very real sense, as fans the daily support of our club is judged against the backdrop of this process. If you perceive the process to be poor, even a good result will seem less significant. Conversely, if your process is a positive one a poor result will be seen as just a bump in the road.

As Blanchflower said, "it is all about glory" and glory isn't all about winning.
 
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Lemon

End World Debt
Jul 17, 2014
2,436
4,664
Man Utd are rich, I wouldn't swap our team, style of play, manager or recent trophy wins for theirs.

Bit far chap. 3 Trophies in the last 2 seasons, get that you mean if you had to endure their often sterile performances and Mourinho.
 

Lilbaz

Just call me Baz
Apr 1, 2005
41,363
74,893
It's all about the context too isn't it? Winning an FA Cup with Wigan is a significant achievement, whereas, for Arsenal, it's just meh. As it should be for us too. Have to be aiming big, (the league title and CL) especially now it looks like we will finally start to access the financial resource needed to sustain this. I think Kane said recently he would swap the next 100 goals for winning the league. No mention of the Carabao or FA Cup in there.

Admittedly, the list of the top 30 managers does appear to be bollocks of the highest order. This is partially acknowledged in mention of tendency to go with zeitgeist names. Same as these music polls when the best album of all time is revealed to be 2 or 3 years old at best (when the world and its dog know the answer is always "let's go crazy apeshit banana" by yip yip the cowboy. A truly beautiful work of heartbreaking genius, and a timeless classic to boot).

Winning the fa cup would not be meh to me. I doubt it would be to the players either or the sponsors.
 

Lilbaz

Just call me Baz
Apr 1, 2005
41,363
74,893
Would it really tho? Obv, great if it happens, but it's just 6 games isn't it? You don't even have to win any of them, as pens are eventually waiting at the end. Moreover, this season, we have had a dream draw to date. Say we win the replay, then the next two (let's imagine against Sheff Weds followed by Soton) before beating Brighton in the final. Would that still count as a major achievement?

I can see what you're getting at, just don't agree that an FA or Carabao win are going to make that much difference.

Yes it would be considered a major achievement. Not as much as pl or cl but an good achievement. I'd bet you'd be celebrating like mad if we did.
 

Lilbaz

Just call me Baz
Apr 1, 2005
41,363
74,893
Man Utd are rich, I wouldn't swap our team, style of play, manager or recent trophy wins for theirs.

The process should ultimately lead to trophies, but it is far more complex than that. What about teams in the lower leagues who aren't realistically going to win anything? Are their fans perpetually unhappy? Would we spurs fans accept winning trophies but playing shit football? In that instance, our process would be moving towards winning whilst playing good football.

I want us to win something, I really do, but it isn't the most important thing to me. It is what we win and the way we do it. I want us to win the league or the champions league because to do so you have to the very best consistently. Winning the FA cup or league cup doesn't mean as much because so much of it is down to luck. Aside from that, you can win either of those and still be shit week in and week out. Where is the glory in that? Or even the sense of a process?

The process is always ongoing whether you are winning or not, whether you are at the top of the prem or the bottom of league two. In a very real sense, as fans the daily support of our club is judged against the backdrop of this process. If you perceive the process to be poor, even a good result will seem less significant. Conversely, if your process is a positive one a poor result will be seen as just a bump in the road.

As Blanchflower said, "it is all about glory" and glory isn't all about

You're moving the goal posts. Nobody has said the winning a trophy is the be all and end all in football.
 

beats1

Well-Known Member
Feb 22, 2010
30,006
29,551
Dedicated to my old trophy adversary @Mullers

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...ven-trophies-can-save-arsene-wenger-92xlnf0hc

Why trophies don’t matter any more

james gheerbrant

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Philadelphia 76ers, the NBA basketball team, have a rather curious unofficial motto: “Trust the process”. Originally a pledge of support for the team’s specific strategy of “tanking” on purpose to get better picks in the following season’s draft, the slogan has become a more general, cultish declaration of faith in the team’s gradual rebuild from one of the worst teams in the NBA. It has outlasted the man who originated it, the team’s former general manager Sam Hinkie, and become utterly synonymous with the franchise. It has bled into popular culture and trended a hundred times over on Twitter. Fans have even been known to chant it at home games.

To the ears of the English football fan, attuned to the sport’s comic-book folklore of glorious heroes and glittering triumphs, it sounds weird, even iconoclastic: like the sort of soulless corporate motto more suited to the boardroom than the stadium. We grow up believing that the game is about glory. Medals over methodology. “Football is about winning trophies,” Jamie Carragher wrote in his Daily Telegraph column last month, describing that statement as an “immovable fact”. That the ultimate aim of football should be to win things is a truth so unquestioned that it might as well be carved into a stone tablet.

But ahead of Sunday’s Carabao Cup final between Arsenal and Manchester City, when the first trophy of the season will be awarded, it feels like an apposite time to consider the actual worth of silverware. And I think that increasingly, the game of football is much less about the glory of winning trophies than we might imagine, and more about trusting the process.

Last June, the august football magazine FourFourTwo had a go at ranking the best managers in world football. Mauricio Pochettino was 11th, one of no fewer than six managers in the top 20 — along with Peter Bosz, Maurizio Sarri, Julian Nagelsmann, Gian Piero Gasperini and Marcelino — who have never won a major honour, plus another, Lucien Favre, who hasn’t won a trophy since the 2007 Swiss Super League. Arsène Wenger and Rafael Benítez, serial trophy winners, did not make the top 30. No 1 was Antonio Conte, an outstanding league manager who has won zero cup competitions in his career (if we exclude Italy’s Community Shield equivalent).

I mention this not to take issue with their list. Actually I think the ranking was eminently reasonable and would probably be in line with the opinion of most football observers. If some of those names, inevitably, have seen their stock fall eight months on, most are still considered among the best managers out there, and Pochettino and Sarri in particular might even be in a consensus world top ten, despite not adding to their barren mantelpieces. What is interesting is what the order says about the priorities and preoccupations of modern football.

I’ve been thinking about trophies recently, and whether we actually care about them as much as we think we do. Of course, there is a vast bedrock of football orthodoxy that suggests we should care about winning trophies — indeed, that it’s all we ought to care about. Bill Shankly’s much-mythologised quote that Liverpool “exists to win trophies” — for which you could probably find an analogous utterance at every big club. The notion that trophies are football’s “hard currency”. The reflexive pub-debate cry of, “Show us your medals”.

But what do we really talk about when we talk about managerial excellence nowadays? Are we mentally counting out numbers of trophies, assigning an arithmetic value to a manager’s greatness? Or are our minds instead drawn to the less shiny intangibles: a manager’s ability to tactically drill a team for the big games; their track record of developing players; their ability to cultivate an atmosphere of stability and gradual long-term improvement?

When Tottenham Hotspur produced a superb tactical performance in a dominant 2-2 draw in their Champions League last-16 match against Juventus last week, there was pretty much universal assent for the idea that Pochettino has already abundantly demonstrated his excellence without needing the additional garnish of a trophy to “prove himself”. Actually, I think the idea that he does is akin to the “Messi has to win the World Cup” contention: an argument more often imagined than it is actually advanced. In order to be considered good, even great, it is no longer a pre-requisite for managers to win things. In fact, sometimes, we don’t care even when they do.

Take a look across town at Wenger. On Sunday he will lead his team out in their fourth cup final in five seasons — and they have won the previous three. It is, unquestionably, an excellent recent track record of contending for, and usually collecting, at least one of the game’s major prizes, year in year out; a run of big days out, silverware, history, all the things that are supposed to be important to clubs and their fans. And yet it has made hardly any difference to his standing at Arsenal.

Wenger’s run of winning things has failed totally to slow the roll of his reputational decline and has had a negligible long-term impact on the general spiral of negativity at Arsenal. Partly that reflects the diminished stature of the FA Cup, of course. But it is also because, for all the isolated glory of those Wembley wins, most Arsenal fans do not trust the process under Wenger. They no longer believe in his ability to develop the team, to deliver sustainable improvement. The cup competitions, football’s “hard currency”, have undergone such a process of depreciation that even cashing in three of them in four seasons has barely made a dent in Wenger’s overdraft.

Ironically, it might have been Wenger himself who started the ball rolling, with his quote in 2012, much derided at the time, that “the first trophy is to finish in the top four”. By equating a broadly successful league campaign with a cup triumph, Wenger began to pick away at the mythology of trophies, to undercut their traditional primacy. If finishing in the top four was as good as a trophy, then perhaps other things were too: building a thrilling young team of improving players, for example; or consistently challenging the best opposition with attractive football. Now the reordering of priorities that he argued for condemns him and minimises his triumphs.

Wenger’s old foe, José Mourinho, increasingly finds himself on the same side of the fence. Under Mourinho, United won two of the four trophies they competed for the last season — the League Cup and Europa League — yet Mourinho still finds himself overtaken in many reasonable estimations by the likes of Pochettino and Jürgen Klopp. Not many argue for those two trophies as proof of Mourinho’s enduring greatness — instead it is the frequency of sterile performances like the one against Seville on Wednesday, the lack of visible signs of growth and progress in his team, that matter more. After the Europa League win, Mourinho suggested that “poets don’t win titles”; but increasingly it seems that poetry is more important to us than prosaically acquired prizes.

Recent seasons have provided ample evidence that the club football hivemind no longer rates the acquisition of trophies as a top priority. If it did, Benítez would be in a far bigger job than Newcastle United. Louis van Gaal would not have been fired immediately after leading Manchester United to the FA Cup. An FA Cup and Champions League double would have brought Roberto Di Matteo a lot more time at Chelsea, and granted him far more glamorous jobs subsequently. Do you really think Liverpool or Tottenham would exchange their coaches for Zinédine Zidane, the Champions League-winning manager of the last two seasons? Trust in the process, not trophies on the résumé, is what counts.

And the football-watching public is the same. Tottenham fans don’t care that Pochettino hasn’t won a trophy, just as a victory for Arsenal on Sunday would not transform perceptions of Wenger, nor shake faith in what Manchester City are building under Pep Guardiola.

The one exception, perhaps, is the players. Listen to any Harry Kane interview from the past six months and he will reference a need to “start winning trophies”.

Maybe it has something to do with the zeitgeist. Social phenomenologists posit that we are living in the Experience Age: an era characterised by the social media-driven tendency to live in the moment. Everything is impermanent. As the artist Fatima Al Qadiri has said, “There’s no such thing as the most recent update. It immediately becomes obsolete.” Trophies, the instant they are won, pass into history, a sepia-tinted realm of scant interest to the millennial. It is how our teams make us feel, how we experience them in the here and now that is important; not the number of cups we can point to.

It’s interesting to revisit the full context in which Danny Blanchflower uttered his famous, “The game is about glory” maxim. The full quote is this: “The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish.”

That now feels truer than ever. What does a momentary cup win matter if a team is not moving in the right direction long term? It does not matter a jot that Pochettino will not be leading his team out at Wembley on Sunday — because under him, Tottenham fans feel they can trust the process.
I like the 76ers and follow them and I feel this article glosses over the "process" and doesnt actually take in to account what the process was and is
  • Sam Hinkie who started the process, realised that in order to win a TROPHY(NBA CHAMPIONSHIP) you need 3 stars, so his aim was to get three star players
  • He did the opposite to what all teams do and didnt sign mediocre players for big contracts earning star player wages and be competitive for few years
  • He didnt set out to lose but instead didnt sign players past their prime and bad contracts, increasing the chances of them finishing lower in order to get a good draft pick and sign a star in free agency further down the line
  • Its also worth noting that the process had no clear plan and has been going on 4 years, they made the mistake of drafting 2 players in the same position
  • The medical team was poorly run as their drafts ended up always injured, their 4 first round picks all missed majority of their first and/or second season
  • Hinkie, was sacked because of the process as the league put pressure on the owner to sack him
  • Trust the process, was adopted by Embiid(76ers player) as his personal slogan so people chant it games because their players is called the "process" not necessarily because the process is working
  • If the Process doesnt bring back a trophy it will have been a failure
  • Other teams have done better to position themselves for the future without having to go through seasons of playing poorly/losing

So whilst your article talks about the "process" and how we should trust that we are going in the right direction. Its worth noting that the original article is wrong to liken us going in the right direction over winning a trophy to the 76ers process, which was started solely to bring back a trophy to Philadelphia.

Hinkie pointed out when he was hired that teams that constantly who try to build a team, at best make the playoffs for a few years and never win anything before starting the rebuilding process.

So it begs the question, what is our ultimate goal. If the goal is to win a CL or PL trophy then we need to trust we are going in the right direction but if at the end of this era we dont come back with a trophy and just some good seasons. Then like the 76ers it will have been a failure without the trophy at the end of the era.
 

jurgen

Busy ****
Jul 5, 2008
6,711
17,170
Love Poch and if this team comes and goes under him and we never win anything I'll still remember it as the best Spurs team of my lifetime, and Poch the best manager.

However, I think even an FA Cup win would be a massive monkey off our back, and let's be honest, it is usually the big teams that win it these days anyway bar a few outlying results, so it is something we should definitely be aiming for, and it seems like we have a nice pathway with some notable big-club absences if we can do our jobs and get to the semis.

Not that many games to play to get there, but a big chance to show we can come away with victories in the big boy matches.
 
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