So much luck involved too though. You can get your tactics perfect but if your goalkeeper has a blooper early on you're likely to go out anyway. One cheap goal makes a huuuge difference, and you don't get to decide when to get one and when to concede one. What about Denmark in this World Cup? Doing well against the Netherlands and one of their centre-backs heads the ball off the other centre back's arse and into the net. Play well to beat Cameroon then 20 minutes into their final match the Japanese plonk two incredible free kicks into the corner and they're going home. **** happens.
Even with England, what if the Algerian keeper gets a better hand on a late USA shot and puts it out for a corner instead of into the path of Landon Donovan? The match finishes 0-0 and England are probably looking forward to a semi-final against the Dutch. No one talks about endemic, systematic failures. One tiny moment, over which the manager has absolutely no control, changes everything.
Even bad play can be considered bad luck on behalf of the manager. How often does John Terry have a game as bad as he did against Germany? Once every hundred games? Yet that bad game happened to be in the second round of the World Cup. What's Capello supposed to do about that? What about Robert Green's error? That moment changed the entire complexion of England's tournament, and he would have saved it 999 times out of 1000. Ferdinand's injury? Lampard's "goal"? We could both go on. There's a massive list of things that had a huuuuuuge impact on England's World Cup prospects which Capello can't control.
Seriously, you think luck matters, but you have no idea how much. Every game is absolutely littered with moments that can change everything. Aldo's tactics in 00/01 were excellent, but if just a couple of things hadn't gone his way you'd've been out of both cups and no one would have known. What if his goalie made a blooper in the first round, or the other team knocked in a couple of wonder-strikes? He might even have been criticised for being useless and inept. Because getting your tactics spot on doesn't pay off anything like every time. Maybe over the course of a season, but not over the course of a World Cup. And likewise, success by no means implies that you got your tactics right. Good managers can't guarantee anything, all they can do is increase your chance of success, and in terms of national sides, the amount by which they can do even that is overstated hugely.
Oh come on, what do you mean when you say I have "no idea how much" of a part luck plays.
I think you're arguing against things I didn't say. of course luck plays a part but the basic implication is that the role of the manager is affected more by luck than ability. I'm sure that's not what you mean but it's how it comes across.
Let me again relate things back to the mighty whites. You could say John Barnes was unlucky to inherit a squad that had been weakened; we had lost our captain, top scorer and best player, Tony Kay. We lost our playmaker Steve Jennings. Greenacre had gone and while he hadn't featured much the previous season his experience was a big loss given the forwards we were left with. Bas Savage started the season injured. we had no goalkeeper or right-back of our own and him and Ian Goodison didn't get on.
So he came into the role with quite a bit of sympathy from the fans and nobody was realistically expecting another play-off push. Nonetheless, as a manager, your job is to make your own luck as much as you can and when you're tactically naive you are bound to get more bad luck than good luck. It's not unlucky if you balloon a ball against one of your own defence and it goes in, because you should be more careful where you are hitting it. Errors like that were a plenty for us under Barnes. Under Parry, the results were a bit better, the performances were a bit better but if you look, there were some absolutely woeful performances as well. Because our players weren't very good. But they were at least organised under Parry, and when Leeds ripped us apart it was because they were better. When Charlton ripped us apart, yeah they were better too but it was just so much easier for them. I think that makes sense, it does in my head.
So coming back to England. I'm loathe to call Ferdinand's injury unlucky given that he played about twelve games all season. Ledley King was fit for the Germany game, so it's not bad luck that Fabio went for selection by results rather than performances for it. John Terry was fairly poor all World Cup I thought, so it wasn't a huge shock to anyone that he played that badly. is it bad luck when someone who was stripped of the captaincy early in the year has a bad tournament? Make your own mind up on that one but I know my opinion.
I refuse to counter any events of the USA-Algeria game into our luck because you know as well as I do that things should have been in our own hands by then. Was Rob green's mistake bad luck? Who picked him? At this level if you back someone and they **** up, it's not unlucky, it's your fault.
Lampard's goal was of course unlucky and this is one thing I think we both agree on, that you can always make some allowances for refereeing decisions when looking at the overall picture. However, had we defended with any brains we wouldn't have been behind at that point. Whose fault is it that we defended without brains? Fabio Capello.
Coming back again to Tranmere's cup runs, I think some of your points are a little redundant here. Because we made pleeeeeeeeeenty of ****-ups. We were three down at half-time against Southampton after some of the worst defending I've ever seen from a team not managed by John Barnes. Going behind in any circumstances was what brought the best out of us in those two seasons under Aldo. His strength as a manager was that he was one of the very best at motivating players for big games. His weakness was the opposite. If we ever got bad luck or a stinker from the ref in a game though, you could guarantee he'd have them believing the whole world was against them and they'd turn it around.
It's a cliche that these things even themselves out so I won't throw that out there but luck plays less of a part in the game than you are saying. I go to between twenty and fifty games a season and only very occasionally do I think "that was lucky/unlucky" because more often than not, teams win because they win, because they score more goals or play better football. We've all seen the same set of players that looked like dunces under one manager transform into world-beaters under another, and that's not luck, it's just not, not at all.
Shut up you sack of ****.
Why don't you edit it to just say 'Shut up', it's what all the cool kids do
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