The Football Manager Stock Exchange

As a manager moves through their career, it is inevitable there will be highs and lows. For the highs, they will always get praise, no doubt about it. Even the likes of Alan Ball and Ian Branfoot, often considered amongst the worst ever Premier League managers, garnered credit for managing to stave off relegation while manager of Southampton.

However, it is the public reaction to managers’ lows which is interesting. Some gaffers will get crucified in the media and by fans for certain failures, while others will be able to get away with more blatant blemishes with little comeback. Fans’ perception is, I fear, too easily swung by personality.

The best example I can give you of this is the case of Roberto Martinez against others like Sam Allardyce and Tony Pulis. I think a lot of fans would prefer the former to manage their team over either of the two latters. Why? Well, the answer would inevitably be that his teams play ‘good’ football, as opposed to the other two, whose teams play ‘bad’ football, I suppose?

What on earth is good football? I suppose it comes down to whether you are happy to have your team play silky football whatever the results, which I highly doubt many fans would. If you offered Wigan another chance to play in the Premier League but told them they had to concede less than 45 goals to stay there, I’m sure you would see a more conservative team being put out.

I heard an argument the other day where someone said he disliked Pulis and Allardyce because they chose to play ‘ugly’ football. They had players who were capable of ‘better’. Well, surely Martinez chose to play ‘pretty’ football with the formations he picked and the players he signed, and in that case he must take responsibility for Wigan’s relegation, given that, had they been less open and conceded fewer goals, they may well have stayed up.

People like to think that playing attractive, rather than effective, football is fighting the good fight. The aim is of course to do both and some teams manage it, but they usually finish in the top seven places in the Premier League. It’s all very well saying these things, but when your team is in trouble and they can’t defend corners, or they can’t keep clean sheets, or they can’t score the kind of scuffed, melee-style goals which keep you up, most fans will change their opinions. In my opinion style can never be considered more important than substance.

Stoke’s lowest finishing Premier League position under Pulis was 14th. Martinez’s highest with Wigan is 15th. Sam Allardyce has never been relegated from the Premier League, and has only really come close when he kept Bolton up in 2001/02 and 2002/03, Martinez has just been relegated and now moved on to Everton.

It is clear that Pulis and Allardyce were given a lot more resources than Martinez and that Bolton, West Ham and Stoke are bigger clubs than Wigan with bigger fan bases, but Wigan had some very good players last season. Not players that could get into top half sides, with the possible exception of Shaun Maloney, but certainly good enough to stay in the division. When a team has natural goal scorers, it can get itself out of careless performances by scoring, but when you are so open at the back all of the time, you really are hurting your own cause.

It puzzles me that fans harbour so much bad feeling towards Pulis and Allardyce in particular. They were simply trying to bring relative success to their clubs, as Martinez has been trying to. They are after the same things and, while Martinez won the FA Cup this year, Tony Pulis was just 90 minutes away from the same prize, playing a hugely different brand of football. Not better, or worse, just different. True, Wigan were better equipped to take on Man City on the big pitch with their style, but that surely goes to show what they can do when they defend fairly stoically as they did that day. That was not the performance of a relegation team, yet they did indeed go down.

Entertainment in football is not about passing or possession statistics. It is about what you do with the ball. Maybe I am on my own in this opinion, but the only time I get excited at a football match is when your team have the ball near or in the opposition penalty area. Goals and chances generate excitement, not one-twos or passing out from the back. These things are nicer to watch perhaps than a pitch-length cross from a defender to a striker, but in the end the aims are the same. Both penalty areas are where games are won and lost, not in the middle of the pitch, and everything else really is theory.

We all like attractive football, but there is a need for a ‘horses for courses’ approach, particularly in modern English football, where slipping out of the top division can have serious repercussion’s – just ask Bradford, Portsmouth and now Wolves.

If your team is achieving what it should be, people will be happy regardless of your team’s stats. Wigan’s fans were treated to more attractive football than West Ham fans last season, but I know which set will be happier at the moment.

The same goes to Bolton, who changed their style dramatically, only to find that actually, perhaps they should have stuck with what they had and what they were good at. After all, isn’t that what the game’s about? Not all players can be short and silky, after all.

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