Should we judge managers/team less based on result/trophies?

Was reading a nice interview with Ancelotti - http://www.espnfc.com/blog/marcotti-musings/62/post/3044918/carlo-ancelotti-on-bayern-munich-ronaldo-messi-and-thomas-muller

I know probably many here are already like that as in dont judge too much based on results, but admittedly as a fan I've mainly always judged based on results and more importantly trophies and define a teams success of a season based on that. Tournaments are even more random. As in the interview put so rightly, results in football, even over a month or even a season, can be down to luck and other factors that a manager or team cant control. So now Im starting to appreciate when some say a teams style/performance, etc., is more important than results, and will adjust mindset in this regard. Although at the back of my mind, being a fan, still want the results and trophies badly of course. I mean I imagine my team playing great football but losing and not getting trophies, may become just to use an example Arsenal Would I be happy? Im not so sure

But then another factor for the managers and many clubs is that, they are forced to be results and trophy focused, and if they dont come they will fire the managers very quickly, classic example is Abromovich.

What do u think? Should he change? Should the fans change, or maybe it'll always be this way?

how would you feel if your beloved pep and the 2009/11/15 Barca ended the season trophyless and settled for a UEFA Cup spot? would you still be as proud?

"Quality without results is pointless. Results without quality is boring."

Guardiola made headlines recently when he said that he got more satisfaction from performance than results.

"The result is an empty thing; the result is [that] I'm happy for the next two days and I get less criticism and more time to improve my team," he told NBC Sports. "But what satisfies me the most in my job is to feel emotions, the way we play... the process is the reason."

It's quite a statement and one that that leaves no doubt where he stands on the spectrum of managers who value outcomes versus how they're achieved. Ancelotti agrees.

"Sure he's right," he says. "And I'll go further. The only thing a manager can't control is the result. Seriously, when it comes to our clubs, when you reach a certain level, we have almost total control. But this is an unpredictable sport; it's a low-scoring sport where individual episodes have an outsized influence. And a manager can't really control that. There are good managers and there bad ones, sure, but nobody can control outcomes. All you can do is give yourself a better chance to succeed and you do it by working well and performing well. Of course, good performances are correlated with good results, but only in the long term, not in a month of games and sometimes not in a whole season."


"That's the irony though isn't it?" he says. "You as a manager are judged on results and not on the work you do and the performance of the team. Imagine paying a guy a huge amount of money and then judging him not on the things he can control, but on those he can't."

Very true words, and very aptly put. People should always keep that in mind.

BarcaLearning wrote: I mean I imagine my team playing great football but losing and not getting trophies, may become just to use an example Arsenal Would I be happy? Im not so sure

How do you play great football and not win anything? It can happen in a game or even a season, sure. But how do you play great football for years and don't win trophies? The answer is you don't unless there's a team playing even greater football of course.

teams, yes....managers, it depends.

zigra wrote:

BarcaLearning wrote: I mean I imagine my team playing great football but losing and not getting trophies, may become just to use an example Arsenal Would I be happy? Im not so sure

How do you play great football and not win anything? It can happen in a game or even a season, sure. But how do you play great football for years and don't win trophies? The answer is you don't unless there's a team playing even greater football of course.

My point exactly. But the thing is when people say some team is playing great football it generally means they are scoring lots and lots of goals, rarely will you see someone praising the team for defending well. Great football is associated with goals and not defending, sadly.

A compenetration of the two is the ideal, yea. But a compenetration of the two is also necessary, they are intertwined.
You can lean more towards the style, but at the end of the day football is a result oriented game. Even if you care a lot about style, you still play for the result, you still play to try to score a goal and to try to deny your opponents. It's about entertainment yes, but fans would be more entertained by results without style than style without results.
And it's not like you can achieve results without a proper style. You can only achieve results if you're a well organized, well drilled, with cohesive units, balanced between offensive and defensive traction team. And that is what beautiful football is to my eyes.

It depends on the club and it's ambition. You're not going to judge Bournemouth Arsenal and City the same way. Different managers are good for different clubs. Moyes should never have managed united now, he never had the profile. In terms of the top teams I judge it like this:

Winning with style: Pepcelona, Ajax 70s, Saachis Milan, Sao Paulo under Tele Santana, Brazil WC 70, Cruyff Dream Team

Winning: Mourinho at Inter, Mourinho at Chelsea, Simeone at Atletico, Helenio Herrera Inter 60s, Italy 06 WC, Greece 04 Euros, Italy 82, Germany WC 74, Brazil 02, Brazil WC 94, Capello Milan

No trophies  with Style: Arsenal, Bayern under Pep  (according to gl), Napoli under Sarri, Joga Bonita Brazil wc 82, Totaalvoetbal Netherlands 74, Liverpool 13/14

No trophies and playing wretched football: Mourinho at Madrid 13/14, Mou at Chelsea final season both tenures


I also believe that some managers have too much expectations placed on them, I mean the fact that if Bayern don't win the cl it will be seen as a failed season by some is ridiculous. And everything in a season seems to boil down to winning the cl for a lot of people.

jibers wrote:It depends on the club and it's ambition. You're not going to judge Bournemouth Arsenal and City the same way. Different managers are good for different clubs. Moyes should never have managed united now, he never had the profile. In terms of the top teams I judge it like this:

Winning with style: Pepcelona, Ajax 70s, Saachis Milan, Sao Paulo under Tele Santana, Brazil WC 70, Cruyff Dream Team

Winning: Mourinho at Inter, Mourinho at Chelsea, Simeone at Atletico, Helenio Herrera Inter 60s, Italy 06 WC, Greece 04 Euros, Italy 82, Germany WC 74, Brazil 02, Brazil WC 94, Capello Milan

No trophies  with Style: Arsenal, Bayern under Pep  (according to gl), Napoli under Sarri, Joga Bonita Brazil wc 82, Totaalvoetbal Netherlands 74, Liverpool 13/14

No trophies and playing wretched football: Mourinho at Madrid 13/14, Mou at Chelsea final season both tenures,

I think we had the very same post before in a similar thread.

And I'll again, as I did then, point out the silliness and fundamental confusion of those arguments.

Because for one, as you do in the ranking, people conflate 'results' with 'trophies'.
So if Arsenal don't win the league for 10 years, that means they have gotten 'no results'?
Arguably, compared to the investement made by them and their competitors, they achieved consistenly good results. That their fans are not satisfied with that is another matter.

Let's not start about Pep winning back to back to back league titles, 3 CL semis and 2 cups LMAO. 'Style without result'

The 'no trophies with style' coumn of yours is full of teams that actually achieved fantstic RESULTS. Liverpool 2nd place 13/14, Sarri's Napoli - fantastic results.

This whole discussion is confused. @zigra summed it up best, with his last sentence being the operative one:

zigra wrote:
How do you play great football and not win anything? It can happen in a game or even a season, sure. But how do you play great football for years and don't win trophies? The answer is you don't unless there's a team playing even greater football of course.

here it is
http://www.goallegacy.net/t34630-style-vs-results

and I gave the definitive answers back then

Hapless_Hans wrote:the way I see it, if you get worse results than you could get, your style is flawed.

Hapless_Hans wrote:

guest_07 wrote:my rank for this issue

tier 1:
team with result + style (beauty) = brazil, real, barca

tier 2:
team with result = greece, chelsea

tier 3:
team with style (beauty) = arsenal, dortmund

Dortmund won back to back leagues, one cup added, with a squad bought for an apple and an egg, and reached a CL final, finishing 2nd in the league, after. How are they not getting results?

And they won it BECAUSE of their style, not just on top of it.
This style vs. results thing is a flawed dichotomy.

Arsenal are consistent BECAUSE of their style, too, not despite it. If they one day manage to win something again, it will be because they will have managed to IMPROVE their style in order to do it.

/thread

And subjectivity is the only barometer to judge style anyway. I refuse to accept the notion that Pepcelona and Arsenal played better football than Mourinho's Inter, Italy 06, Simeone's Atletico just because of hurr durr possession.
2010 Inter gets a lot of shit and is labeled as ugly football, but the only ugly football match they played was the return leg vs Barcelona when they had a wrongfully sent off guy at the 30 min. The football they displayed in the rest of the games, like vs us, in the first leg vs Barca, in the final vs Bayern was beautiful. A cohesive, ruthless, fast paced, with intense pressing, with short distance between defense, midfield and attack, with great attention to details, with every player displaying high tactical acumen football. Same goes for Simeone's Atleti.

That's my perception of football style perfection. I personally think the style we played with RDM was the pinnacle of football poetry.

I agree with Carlo generally speaking, although the main question here is 'what determines good style?'

If a club and manager can agree on the way a team should play (be it counter attack, possession, high press etc) then it should mitigate poor performances to some degree.

That said, just because a style doesn't entertain fans as much as the next, you can't flipantly discredit Greece, Mou, Klopp, Simeone etc