Yanno Trap is a brilliant analogy. But not through guys having a shelf life as much as them being too stubborn to adapt and the game just passing them by. The complete polar opposite to the glaring example still kicking around at Utd Ferguson and how he adapted as the game evolved each generation to be the standard bearer for all Utd managers that he is.
Happened with Trapattoni. One of the most decorated and respected Italian coaches of all time. Master of ‘catanachio’ who took that on to another defensive level tactically. Then Sacchi tips up and completely revolutionalises Italian footy with his exapnasive, attacking game and it more or less rendered Trap, who refused to adapt and accept the game had moved forward to a whole other new, exciting level, more or less extinct.
Same way your fella doesn’t have that vital yet understated leadership characteristic, humility, to look at himself and realise this isn’t 2005 any more and you can’t come close to winning the league trying to play that way. Progressive managers like Guardiola, Klopp and Pochettino are just leaving him behind as he stubbornly digs in even more. Which leads into the new generation of players and the multi- dimensional way they’re brought up and used. He can’t adapt there to work with them. I was thinking about that with the Fabinho talk of late and him being held out, in part, as he’s not tactically used to being more than what he’s been in Monaco. A traditional DM. You oook at Pep playing players deeper so he has playmakers all over the park to move the team forward. Rather than just in the final third. The same with Klopp with the amount of players we’ve changed positions and coaches to be far more versatile. Pochettino similar. Whilst Hoses still stuck on compartmentalising. Matic is Matic. He has his role and he’s comfortable with that. Where as one of the newer generation, a multi-faceted player like Pogba who can do 5 or 6 different things on the pitch he struggles to deal with and fit him in where he’d be doubtless killing it at Ciry or L’pool.
Even from his last title at Chelsea the games moved in immeasurably. But he’s stayed stubborn to his past success. You’re talking 90 points now just to be in the conversation for the title. Last season’s 81 is just nowhere near now. It’s absilutely mad but that’s how high City have raised the bar. They dropped points in 6 ****** games last year. SIX! So let’s be kind and say that might increase to 8 this year. Utd have dropped 2 games already. 3 with the GD. That leaves VERY little room to play. You have to be almost perfect right through. Lose at Burnley Sunday, coupled with L’pool and City wins, and you can as god as write off the league season in terms of the top spot. Which is utterly mad after 4 games but that’s the level City have taken this to. Whilst he still thinks he can play and win it like it’s 2005 or so because ‘I’ve won more PL than any other current manager’ or whatever the latest embarrassing rant is.
Just tarnishing what should be a great legacy down to an egotistical refusal to adapt and not move with the times in a game that’s conoletely leaving him behind.
