We're a pretty poor club at seamless transitions. It's always the case that we have a good run and then are suddenly smacked with a poor season and scramble to fix it.
Real Madrid is the best club in the world and our academy is the envy of every pueblo and village in the world.
Yes, he lost some of his magic this season. But he won the Double only a year ago. You talked as if he won nothing in ages.
Being into innovation and analytics isn't a sign of quality or ability. Arsenal have a 25 man coaching staff only to outspend and underachieve every season. A corner kick coordinator, a defensive structure coordinator, a passing game coach, a chief analyst, a chief opponent scouting analyst. You name it. End of the season, a Dutch baldy takes on Liverpool and wins the title right away.
Of course, everybody does, but nobody has gone all in on the modern analytics era as arsenal. There's goal celebrations from corner kicks where the "corner kick offensive coordinator" celebrates as if he scored the goal himself, it's pretty funny. I think, like Nagelsmann who is of a similar micromanaging and over coaching brand, that's the main reason Arteta can't understand defeat. When you get so bogged down in all the analytics and numbers the result become a math test, not a game that's being played so any other result than what you calculated for is just wrong.
Of course it isn't a math exam, nor is it a Futsal tournament. The game has advanced to where analytics do matter as they can reveal key weaknesses within the tactics, gameplay, squad, etc or analyze the upcoming opponents, key weaknesses, how other teams managed to break them down, etc. Instead we got a whole season of the manager promising we will improve the next game or how great we played despite squeezing a 1-0 victory against minnows Alaves.
I don't necessarily think analytics would have saved Carlo nor is it a big deal. I bring up his book every once in a while, Quiet Leadership because it gives a great behind the scenes look at how Carlo thinks when managing. Sadly, some of his methods are just a bit outdated in an era where there are many games and trophies to play for.
The idea that we don't use analytics is silly by the way and there is a very practical example to show this, it's the Arsenal match. You have a player that last scored a free kick during the Raegan administration, and a team that's very dangerous scoring from headers and dead ball situations. Tactically you lighten the wall and focus on packing the target area. You defend well and afterwards everybody pats each other on the back what amazing process that was and how you used the available information to your advantage. That guy scored not one but two free kicks on the same night, we're talking likelihood of 1/1500 here and despite doing all the process stuff correctly, you feel like a total idiot. There's no chance somebody from an analytical/possibility analysis point of view will tell you "the guy that NEVER even attempts it, will not only suddenly do so, but score TWICE". We processed everything purely from a possibility/chance perspective. If Carlo would've been stuck with "I post my free kick wall the way I like it and it works for 30 years darnit", maybe we would've Actually prevented those. It's mad. When I see guys like Guardiola or Arteta beat themselves in disbelief in the bench I think this is what you see in real time. The realization that those 1,8% chance things actually happen.
There's a whole world of analysts being deep in stats and data, and trying to find meaning in randomness. Nassim Taleb wrote a few books about that, like Fooled By Randomness. Soccer has so much randomness and variability, a couple of our recent CL wins cannot be explained by any logic.
Yeah, that perfectly explains the Rice free kick experience. The guy might go on to never score one in the next 6 years but somehow dropped two of them on the same night.
I'm not the biggest fan of analytics playing based on statistics etc. But I can understand the game evolution may require set piece coaches. I'm not sure you need an expert for every type of set piece though. Is that what Arsenal actually have?
Several Premier League teams have a huge staff. There's no reason a team needs 30 freaking coaches. I remember Heidenheim making fun of Leverkusen saying Leverkusen have more people making them coffee than Heidenheim have on their total employee list.
Premier League teams have insane squad numbers too, maybe that justifies the insane number of coaches. La Liga still has the 25 maximum number of first team players. Wonder if that needs to change since the number of games has increased from existing or new competitions.
Analytics is a tool. Not the end all be all. But a coach has to prepare his team to have the best chance of winning. And analytics is a great tool for that task. No sane coach would purposely setup his team to go down a goal then win the game via remontadas for example even if hypothetically the analytics say so. But make no mistake, any manager should have this fully at his disposal.
A lot of Spanish teams struggle to pay the players and staff on time, I believe there was an anonymous survey that covered the first two tiers of Spanish football and the number of employees to experience delays or absence of pay was shockingly high.
Smaller teams won't be participating in the bigger competitions therefore won't have the same amount of games. They can choose to register players based on their budget, probably fill the remaining slots with players from their youth systems. Unless you're referring to Barcelona, we already know they do what they want and don't face any repercussions.
I think it was about 38% across both divisions of players and staff having their wages withheld or not paid across both divisions, in the 20s for the first division. In particularly bad cases it was for over 3 months in a row. The player union has often proposed a strike in Spain but the clubs respond that not making any money won't make them capable of paying any faster. In other countries that number is closer to 50%. Having your pizza delivered by a guy that plays football on tv is pretty eye opening.
And thats why having a better coach matters. Ancelotti might have 100 times the career Slot did, but Slot is a better coach in the present. In fact hes the prime example of the forward thinking type of coach I was talking about, I didnt say who uses analytics more is better. We know the flukey context of that double. The writing was on the wall. We squeezed out those titles but we played the same disjointed incoherent football. Adding Mbappe confirmed Carlo cannot foster structure and cohesion, so its the right time to give it to someone for whom there is evidence he can.
Carlo excels when working with experienced players. We no longer have the KCM or the BBC trios that require no coaching at all. Instead, we have young players who can't afford to sit on the bench and need more than just a sense of family. They need development. That's not Carlo's business.
Is he a better coach than Klopp? Because using the same line of thinking, Liverpool upgraded the position significantly So does Slot going zero titles next season make his title a fluke? More new coaches failed than succeeded by the way.
You think Klopp's ideas are outdated? I'd disagree, imo his system asked a lot of his players so they were physically and mentally drained after many years of that, therefore a change was needed. Its similar with Ancelotti, his way ultimately reached a ceiling here similar to Klopp at Liverpool. But whose prospects for the future are better? Klopp without a doubt, so this type of gotcha argument youre offering here is just obstinacy. Xabi taking over Ancelotti is similar to Slot taking over Klopp, so hopefully we will see the same resurgence by the team.
Klopp chose retirement. At the end of the day the quality of the hire is decided by the results on the field.