January Transfer Window

And they lost

 

it takes a special coach to train them in that way and there aren’t many Bielsas about.

he says himself it take 6 weeks for his players to know his methods/tactics etc. Got to remember he hasn’t really signed that many players at Leeds compared to previous managers and a lot he uses were there already plus the odd youngster. His teams famously do burn out but think this year is their year sadly

 

You're right, but it'd be a great journey to pursue. You need to embrace it fully though. You need a great coach who the players buy into - because player engagement is key. If you get the players to truly buy into that way of playing, which would be great fun to be part of, they'll put in the legwork in training. Look at sides like Man City, Liverpool, Leeds. All 3 have world class coaches who play front foot football. What player wouldn't want a part of that?

 

Need that breed of coach which unfortunately is an even rarer case at our level of the footballing pyramid. That player buy in is the key, again something we can lack at times with what we can offer. Wouldn't want to know what goes round a players head when they get the tour of our schoo.. sorry, facilities.

 

Increasingly, great coaches are starting to phase out the old fashioned, chequebook based man managers. Mourinho has been great, but I think he's outdated. Look at Klopp - he's unbelievable in how he has Liverpool playing, because while they have some world class players, the Midfielders especially wouldn't be on many people's World XI shortlist and he's developed some of their players immensely. Guardiola spends a lot of money, but he's also a phenomenal technical coach. At a lower level you have the likes of Brendan Rodgers, Bielsa and Chris Wilder - if I were on the Board at Man United for example, I'd be looking at someone like Wilder. A proper coach who can drill his team into a modern way of playing.

Expansive coaching over defensive shit-housery every time for me.

 

Give it 10 years and the only jobs the likes of Parky, Bowyer and other managers with a safety first, defensive attitude will get is at the bottom of league 2 with teams like morecambe.

 

Or Bradford.

 

That's my biggest disappointment with the way the whole Rupp/Rahic buyout has played out. I genuinely hoped that when we had new owners brought in, they had expansive and ambitious plans to buy back and modernize the ground, professionalize our scouting and coaching set-up and invest in our training facilities. I'm 100% on board with the idea of buying and developing younger players, then selling them on - but to do it seriously and as part of growing the club. Continual growth and reinvestment. A lot of up front finance needed for sure, but get it right and you can establish a repeatable plan for bringing in revenue. Clearly it was never going to be the case. C'est la vie.

 

Bang on. It's an expensive project to move a club forward to those levels but one where the potential income is astronomical in today's market. Just look at Peterborough who want £15m for Ivan Toney in the third division. That probably covers what the owners have invested, out of their own pocket, in the past 5-10 years.

It's all well and good Rupp doing soundbites for the ST campaign about how we can be successful etc but he hasn't got a vision for the future and if he has none of us know about it. And Rhodes certainly has no plan to take us forward. At the minute it seems as if it's a season by season thing, which in my opinion is no recipe for long term success.

 

Klopp took a while to get going at Liverpool but yeah done a fantastic job. Liverpool are slightly different as they are very much up on the stats and xg side of the game which I know some of our fans don’t seem too keen on. I like it, it takes all the bias out of it and you look purely at numbers.
Liverpool now have a throw in coach. Every detail is covered and they are reaping the rewards.

 

I think Rupps vision for the future doesn't involve Bradford City

 

Even with Klopp though, in his first season there were flaws but you could very clearly see the identity and philosophy he was looking to build. I think he's even better than Pep, and that's saying something.

 

Exactly right. Coaching over splurging. The likes of Liverpool, Leicester, Wolves and Sheff United are showing what can be done if you have a proper plan, philosophy and system. The likes of Man United are showing how futile it is when you're fundamentally disjointed from the top down and simply look to throw money at everything.

 

That's probably true.