Sittin' over here, it's hard to get too much news about the non-glamor teams, but from what I know, about a year ago, he took over Palace and was charged with avoiding relegation. He sneaked them into the last playoff spot, and won it. Then, the club decided to not bring in alot of players, hoping to take one year of EPL TV money and go back down and rebuild. But look at Palace now, not just their place in the standings, but also their recent form. So I ask...how would you compare Dowie to guys like Wenger and Ferguson? Or is his job so different that it's a bit like asking whether Baseball Manager X is better than Basketball Coach Y.
Dowie is an excellent manager. He is being tipped to take charge of one of the top clubs some day if he carries on well at Palace. To take charge of a struggling club and turn them around completely is quality. Prepared to Wenger/Fergie i would give Dowie more respect as he manages a club with hardly any money. Stick Dowie in charge of Man Utd and i think he would do as well Fergie does. Imagin if ypu stuck Wenger in charge of Palace - i think he would be rubbish. Palace are just as hard to manage as any team in the prem. I rate dowie as the 5th best manager in prem behind Mourinho, Fergie, McCarlen and Alderdice. Palace will stay up this season and season by season rise higher till they are top 6. Hey im biassed being N.Irish though.
And to think we still need to somehow squeeze the great Neil Shipperly into the side. Carn the Eagles
I'd put Dowie up there with David Moyes at the moment. Although I don't know if David Moyes doing so well this season gives him the cred necessary to erase prior seasons. But certainly, handling RooneyGate and keeping the team more than competitive is quite an accomplishment.
Moyes seems to be an iambic pentameter kind of manager, alternating good and bad years like Shakespearean verse.
Big Sam at Bolton, he manages it each year. Ok his team is almost full of players that are on their last legs, but he manages to make Bolton tick. I give credit to managers like him as well as Dowie (ugly git)
I'd say yes. This team's gone up about 30 places in the league in the last year. Can't beat that. But to be a bit more scientific, i'd say: Best motivator of players -- yes Best tactician -- very good so far, but I think he'll have to adjust when other teams start to figure out how to defend the Crystal Palace one striker system. Will be interesting to see how he copes. Best judge of talent -- seems to have an eye for bargains. But if he's going to be a top 5 manager, he'll eventually have to start buying (and motivating) players in a whole 'nother category. It's not always easy to spend $20-30 million on a player, as Chelsea & ManU have shown (Veron, cough, cough, Veron, cough, cough). Best organizer -- hard to say, but seems to have done everything right in terms of getting the whole infrastructure in place at Palace.
The short answer is "no". The slightly longer one is that if he is ever given the chance to try, he may be one day though. The problem he will face is the same one that Allardyce, Curbishley and others face - no big club will take a punt on a manager who has, at best, a creditable First Division record and a couple of "manful toil followed by inevitable relegation" seasons in the Premiership under their belt. The stakes are too high these days. Allardyce and Curbishley should be shoo-ins for any big job that comes along after their work in establishing Bolton and Charlton in the Premiership, but it just doesn't happen. Dowie will have to do as well as them and then some if he is to even get to their level - which is the "yes, you're good, but we need a name for this job" level. Be interesting to see if Spurs come back in for Curbishley though, having said all that. Insomuch as Spurs still qualify as a step up from Charlton, that is.
The English managers need a shot at managing Liverpool, Newcastle and Spurs. THe 2nd teir of big clubs. Then thye can be moved up to Man U, Arsenal and Chelsea. Liverpool accept it your 2nd teir.
Hardee har har. Sadly for you (as ever) that's gubbins. Without wishing to thread-jack, a club's"second-tierness" is defined by their general stature, not their current performance. As other Manchester United fans always - and I mean always - insisted upon reminding people when they spent years in the wilderness, including the "second tier" of the Football League. Of course, you weren't around then, which is why you lack such perspective. Liverpool, along with Celtic and United, are the biggest clubs in Britain. Newcastle, Spurs and the likes (Chelsea and Arsenal most certainly included) are second-tier precisely because they lack the historical and international cachet of the big three. And will continue to do so until they can prove themselves capable of replicating the achievements of the big three.
See, this is what I was wondering. Matt, to me, he has a chance to try. He's a manager in England, therefore he's a candidate. But to you, his job is enough different from SAF's or Arsene's job, that you can't compare. To improve upon my earlier analogy, it's like asking whether Bob Stoops (college tackleball coach) is better than Bill Belichick (pro tackleball coach.) Nobody here would ask such a question, just like you aren't really engaging the question of whether or not Dowie is better than SAF. I'm not saying you're wrong to have that perspective, Matt. I was just wondering how common that perspective is.
Biggest clubs in Britain in order: 1.Liverpool 2.Man Utd 3.Celtic 4.Spurs 5.Nottingham forest 6.Aston Villa 7.Arsenal 8.Everton 9.Leeds Would you agree?????
No – hang on, that’s not what I meant. He DOESN’T have a chance to try. To say he does implies that all he has to do is make himself available and the opportunity will arise. In reality, even if one of the big clubs in the UK suddenly required a new manager, they would be unlikely to go for someone like Dowie. But not because his job is different – it’s not. Coaching is coaching, managing is managing. And either you’re good at it or you’re not (and Dowie, like Wenger or Demento, is very good at it)f. Sure, there are differences in the remit and the means, but the basics are the same and the skills required to make a successful team are largely unaffected by how high up the strata you are attempting to do so. Dowie also happens to be one of the most progressive, gifted, open-minded and tirelessly innovative coaches in the business at this moment in time – all qualities that are required at the big clubs … but increasingly appear to need to come with a name attached (witness Benitez’s appointment at Liverpool). Indeed, I would say that the last example of a club going for ability in and of itself rather than a CV is Arsenal when they appointed Wenger. That doesn’t happen at that level anymore. As to the original question of whether Dowie is better or not – I think it is inarguable that he is a better coach than Ferguson, but then Ferguson has always been more of a manager, so that’s largely irrelevant. Is he a better manager than Ferguson? Fuck no. As I said in my previous post, the comparison is invalid – not because of your analogy about the jobs Dowie and Ferguson do being fundamentally different, but because there are more appropriate benchmarks by which to judge a young manager like Dowie that must prevail for the time being – like Allardyce and Curbishley. As things stand, he has not even achieved as much as they have, let alone come close to beginning to achieve as much as Ferguson has. And that’s not just down to “being given the chance to try” and unlikely forebearance and altruism by massive corporations like Manchester United – bear in mind that Ferguson arrived at United having taken tiny Aberdeen to repeated Scottish titles and a European trophy.
No. Manchester United are manifestly a bigger brand than Liverpool – and have been for probably about 10 years now. Once upon a time they were a much bigger club than Liverpool too - until the mid-1970’s at least. But then we blew them out of the water for the best part of 20 years, so that put paid to that. But their brand dominance remains, especially since they decided it would be more fun to become a multinational corporation. Liverpool have been a bigger club than Celtic for some time though.
Again, it comes down to semantics. He has a chance to be the best manager/head coach/whatchamacallit in England. What he DOESN'T have is a chance to manage the best club in England. In the States, we have an award for Manager/Coach of the year. It usually doesn't go to the head guy of the best team. It usually goes to a guy whose team was supposed to be terrible but was good, or was supposed to be bad but was very good. Interesting anecdote. Florida State University joined the ACC, a topnotch basketball conference, for the 1992 season. FSU is and was a football school. They had one player who everyone knew was very good. But in the ACC, you need more than that, so they were picked to finish near the bottom in the pre-season polls. Well, unheralded freshman Bob Sura turned out to be a gem, and unheralded junior college transfer Sam Cassell turned out to be great. FSU finished second, because two players turned out to be alot better than anyone expected. The coach, stupidly, swept the COTY awards. He was and is a poor coach, who lost that job and his next one too. Anyway, the moral of the story is, here, the emphasis is put on how much a manager improves a club, not how well his team does in the championship race. Here, SAF would only have gotten any consideration in the Treble season. Recent winners would be guys like Curbishely, Allardyce, Redknapp. So when you insist that Dowie isn't in the conversation, that he doesn't have a chance, that's the English perspective. That's not a universal perspective. That's all I'm saying.
Fair enough, but I don't agree. We also have a Young Manager of the Year Award here and the likes of Dowie are continually picking it up. But that doesn't make them as good as Ferguson or Wenger - or even Allardyce and Curbishley. Nor does it make their chances of becoming the next manager of Manchester United any better either. Their work in improving minor clubs like Palace (or Bolton or Charlton) will widely hailed and recognised by the media, fans and pundits alike ... but when it comes down to it, the majority of new jobs that count as "Big" go to a name.
Iain Diowie is the one of the best managers in England. In my own opinion the best manager in the prem is Steve Mclaren. With a smalll budget he's assembled a top squad, good mix of big names and experience, not forgettin the quality of youth at the riverside at the moment ie Stuart Downing - definite future england regular.
Liverpool are definitely second tier, arguably the top of the second tier, but they're not on the same level as Man Utd, Arsenal or Chelsea who are way out as the first tier. The difference between Liverpool and Newcastle in particular is minimal imo, although it was an absolutely bizarre decision by Newcastle to appoint Souness. They did try to appoint Allardyce though, at least that is what's rumoured, but he turned them down. I suspect that may be down to not wanting to work with an interfering arsehole like Freddie Shephard and not a lack of ambition or belief that he can do the same things with Bolton.
As I said in the original argument, it's entirely down to what you define your tiers by. If it's current performance, then sure, Liverpool are currently second tier. But as clubs, there simply are no sane argument to be had by which Liverpool are anything other than top tier. Ultimately pointless discussion by virtue of that very thing.
He's one of the best, there's no denying that. He's got a load of ageing pros to mould into a football team AND got players like Okocha melting into his, hahem, "straightforward" style of play without any obvious signs of discontent. Good management and good tactician. He's also done amazing things for Bolton as an organisation in his time there. My wife was recently up at their new training complex, she was amazed by it.