Interesting article from Economist that focuses on the business side of the game.

 

My key takeaways:

- I don't disagree that football should practise Moneyball (the baseball movie about a team that uses pure data analysis to assemble a team). Apart from it's huge emotional / entertainment value, it needs to be grounded in solid financial discipline.

 

- in a way, I think we are already doing it by buying loads of young players. I don't always think these players are bought because they have Chelsea potential. Simply, if we can buy/sell with a profit, and these players never ever play for Chelsea, that's fine. Just business. Other clubs do it too (Liverpool made £16m profit on Solanke in about 1 year).

 

- similarly, we should consider selling players if the price/value Gap is marginal vs a younger player. You can only have creation with destruction. I enjoyed and am grateful to Hazard but if it's time, it's time.

 

- perhaps where we fail is to give the group of players a proper chance. There will always be a system to filter the cream to the top. But management needs to work with coaches/managers to provide proper incentive to blood these youngsters. This season, we have RLC and CHO although CHO playing more seems "forced" by circumstances. Hopefully, we get a right mixture of a couple more next season (TA, RJ, Ampadu, etc) + RLC/CHO.

 

However, putting in a proper management system like this takes years. So just cross fingers and pray?

 

- what does this mean? Proper DoF, coach that understands need to blood 2-3 youngsters per season, stick to 30-year extension policy(broken now by Luiz). In this light, signing someone like Higuain does not make sense unless he's almost free.

 

Anyways, lots of food for thought. I do think our Board understands this - but proof always in the pudding. Execution is key.

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.economist.com/game-theory/2019/05/12/how-manchester-city-came-to-rule-english-football

Football changes very quickly, it's never a good idea to make guesses on what will happen.

Football changes very quickly, it's never a good idea to make guesses on what will happen.

Agree. However, the owner and management would certainly need to as a business. Not to say results will not be volatile.

The answer to that question is... it all depends on Roman.

We will be in West London. 

I'm not sure where will be in 5-10 months. 

We seem to have all the tools to compete, but we have been making poor decisions for about 6 or 7 years. 

I think the main problem is basic. The players we have are not as good as the players our rivals have. 

The best coaches can bridge gaps in quality, but unfortunately our rivals also have better coaches.

We as fans want a DoF, but I'm not sure that will be the answer, Emanalo was here filling the role while we signing Drinkwater, Bakayoko, Zappacosta etc, and we were selling Salah, De Bruyne, Lukaku. 

I'm just hoping we trim down the loan army and the 1st team, sell players that are either past their best, or dont have the potential to play for a title challenging team. We then plough money into players that will improve the starting 11, and get our squad depth from player that we already own. 

Maybe a DoF would help with this, but I dont know how much influence or power anyone but Roman Abramovich has at the club. It's very easy to blame Marina or Buck, but they could all be yes men/women for all we know. 

If we carry on with this scattergun approach, then I can only see us going backwards unfortunately.

Looking back at the last decade, City have won the league more than any other team (4 times), while we and United are joint second by winning it thrice. Next season, i can't see us winning the league with Sarri, but we probably can still make top four but United have the chance to either win the league and leave us behind or City can continue breaking records with consecutive league wins and try to close in on us regarding the total number of leagues won. The painful truth is all this will be happening while we are content with being patient with Sarri to transform us to a team playing beautiful football. The truth is, if Marina doesn't make the right choice after we eventually sack Sarri, the next 5 years could come and go without us winning the league once!

And that means giving our rivals the chance to close in on whatever records Jose, Conte and some other top managers had worked hard to achieve in other to put us up there among the best teams in Europe.

 

 

6 minutes ago, wallosh said:

United have the chance to either win the league

Based on what? As of right now i would not say United have any chance of winning the league next year. 

Based on what? As of right now i would not say United have any chance of winning the league next year. 

Noted!