Manager Prediction Thread

So out of the top teams, who do you think will have a manager replaced and by whom?

Manchester City: Pellegrini sacked, replaced by Viera for a season
Manchester United: LVG sacked, will go to Moyesy(not srs I dunno who)

Any more suggestions.

Wigan Athletic: Mackay sacked.
Millwall: Holloway sacked.

Pellegrini will go, yeah - but I'm unsure who will replace him. Guardiola is far out of their reach right now. Maybe Vieira, yeah, but maybe somebody like Benitez or Blanc if they were to fail getting Pep. I'd say that all the other teams will stick with what they've got.

I do think this, though:

Next Man Utd manager: Ryan Giggs
Next Chelsea manager: Diego Simeone
Next Arsenal manager: Jurgen Klopp/Paul Clement

Blanc would be a sideways appointment, after the debacle of 2010 he helped steady the french ship. I don't see him leaving PSG unless they fail to win Ligue 1, although you'd probably ask questions of somebody who's failed to win Ligue 1 with a squad like PSG's to go to City, who are suffering the same problems. Don't think he's any better than Pellegrini, although he's young so will have time to grow as a manager. Feel like Ancelotti's PSG while weaker in terms of the squad was better as a unit.

Benitez I feel would be a good appointment. He's good in europe tactically, not much difference in europe compared to the Mourinho's/Ancelotti's/Guardiola's compared to him when you look at the teams he's managed. But his league record is quite poor post Valencia, he's turned around the ignominy of his Inter days though and was a decent stop gap at Chelsea.

For what it's worth, think German managers are very underrated. Heynckes has two CL titles with the only two top clubs he's managed and arguably produced the strongest ever side in history in the space of 2 seasons in charge. Wonder who will get more CL titles out of Jose and Guardiola too?

Will probably be Guardiola. The guy has an incredible ability at taking over the best team in a weak league by comparison to his side and making everyone think he's the GOAT.

Is Heynckes retired for good, that Bayern 12/13 side has to be one of the best of all time, and they actually played entertaining football.

In fairness he took Barca to a much higher level than seen before and domestically he's doing the same with Bayern. He does need to win more CL trophies to prove how good he is though. I don't see why anyone in his position would go to a smaller club.

On that note, Mourinho hasn't either - Porto are regularly winners. He had a lot of money to spend at Chelsea to make them winners, Inter had no competition while he was there, Real Madrid are one of the biggest clubs in Spain.

True, but he hasn't been as privileged as Pep has. Obviously he earnt the standing that he had at Barca during his playing career but that's something Mourinho didn't have. He's also had some absolute stinkers transfer wise and is just as culpable as Mourinho has been of spending silly money. Just been trying to work out the most Mourinho's spent on a single player is around £35 million which isn't too bad in the modern era. Granted he's done it two or three times and Shevchenko's deal would be worth more now with inflation.

As much as I like him can't help but feel Ancelotti is a little overrated as well, he's had money basically everywhere he's gone, paid £50 million for Torres, £35 for Silva, £85 and £65 million for Bale and James respectively. He's a cup manager as well.

Pretty sure Wembley in May '13 against Dortmund was billed as his final ever game, yeah.

I don't think it was just about his standing as a player. I think it had a lot to do with his year coaching Barcelona B and what the club saw. Not sure anyone foresaw the 14 trophies in 4 years though. Would you not say he earned his reputation in that time?

I'd say he's done very well ofc, but he left to take over the team who were the best in Europe and just trounced his old side 7-0 on aggregate. The way he left Barca left a bit of a sour taste as his lack of alternative tactics when teams dropped deep and stopped Barca defending (Real and Chelsea in the same week) was a bit like leaving a sinking ship to me.

Then the same thing happened last year in the Semi Finals. For a manager who's won so much you'd think that he'd know when to switch things up and try another approach in such an important fixture. He got exposed by Real last season - we're talking Wenger levels of naivety here.

Also had the best players in Europe with Messi for three or four years, even the year when Real broke the Barca strangehold on the title, and arguably the best wingers and keeper in the world last season.

Can't name a time when Mourinho's had the outright best player in the world under him, obvious one is Ronaldo but Messi was still ahead of him at the time Jose was at Real.

Way I see it is Mourinho is the better man-motivator while Guardiola is probably the better tactician if we're talking about getting players onboard to play in a certain way. Would comfortably concede that Guardiola is better at getting his teams to play his way than Mourinho is at parking the bus - we can still be a little shaky even when we do so giving away soft goals such as against City and Atletico.

However, as we saw with Atletico last season, man motivation and passion is a trait that is just as important in the sport and that's where Mourinho easily takes it for me, Atletico's squad really had no business being up there with Real and Barca on paper - or this season for a matter of fact.

Guardiola's more than earned his reputation but Mourinho's Porto CL win is pretty unprecedented in the modern game.

Benitez and Di Matteo did random CL wins with teams who had no right to win it but he won the CL with Porto...
Most of Guardiola's achievements Mourinho has already achieved in a shape or form anyway or outdone him. Mourinho's already won two trebles in his career(domestic cup, league and CL).

Pep did well at Barcelona, but honestly don't see what he's really done at Bayern that deserves so much credit, or that Heynckes wouldn't have been able to do.

As Mancini and Pellegrini have shown, it's quite hard to sustain success despite the amount of money you've spent on a team.-

But he took a strong team, changed it significantly and made it into something different and better. Have we seen another club dominate in such fashion in recent years?

I think he just got tired of the relentless pressure (the fans, the players, the media, the expectation). Guardiola helped fashion Messi into being the best player in the world. Mourinho has had plenty of talented players under him. It's his own fault if he didn't get more out of Ronaldo (not sure they had the strongest of relationships).

Porto did have a favourable set of games.

Easy group which they finished 2nd.
Did well to beat Man Utd in R16
Lyon weren't the toughest in QF
Deportiva were't the toughest in SF
Monaco weren't the toughest in the final

He does have Bayern decimating the league - they've won a lot but not always by this margin? Still has a lot more to prove during his time at Bayern obviously.

Benitez's Valencia La Liga win was great, though. They were so systematically brilliant during that period. I remember they played us in 02-03 and we were put to the sword by them. They were simply brilliant.

Benitez is great at that. Tactically, he's so astute (especially over two legs) and he's got such a great record in the CL and UEFA Cup/Europa League (he's won it twice).

He's a very young manager though in terms of experience. He was brought up in La Masia, played the entirety of his career (when he was any good) at Barca, coached Barca B, coached Barca, and then moved to Bayern which is a completely different ethos and club.

Barcelona and 'that way of football' probably runs through his veins, and he needs some experience to shake it off and do other stuff. Wenger on the other hand has no excuse. Pep definitely has much to learn though. Interesting that he came out in his book as 'hating' tiki-taka. Also pretty sure he said he'd only go to Man Utd (aka wants a massive warchest to bring in his bros in)

Not sure what I think about him as a manager though. I get the feeling he's never been tested properly as crazy as that sounds?

tbf, it was Perez and Abramovich that spent that money. He probably had very little say in the Bale/James/Torres transfers.

Pellegrini: Sacked at the end of the season
Poyet: Sacked at the end of the season
Allardyce: Will leave West Ham this summer and get appointed by whatever club sacks their manager first next season
Dyche: Will get poached by a bigger club next season
Bruce: Sacked after 10 games next season
Ramsey: Sacked/will step aside when QPR get relegated at the end of the season
Carver: Given a lifetime contract

Allardyce will go to Sunderland after Poyet departs by mutual consent imo.

He didn't leave "to take over the team who etc etc". His decision to leave was made about 12 months prior to Bayern thrashing Barça, and 8 months before Bayern contacted him. And even before 2012 when everything was still going extremely well, Pep was always hesitant to commit to the club, only signing 1-year extensions.

That 2011/2012 season wasn't about a "lack of alternative tactics". On the contrary, the league was lost because of Pep's insistance on tactical experiments - 3-man backline, strange mf & attack variations - that the squad was too unfamiliar with. One of those experiments was the line up in the clásico you're mentioning, with Alves and Tello in attack and Adriano in a 3 man backline. Hardly his usual tactics, and different from the 2008-11 tiki taka in terms of movement, use of vertical play, pressing and passing lanes.

Other than this game, Barcelona knocked Real out of the copa and won the first clásico 3-1, which puts that one clásico defeat into perspective, but even there, Real didn't win because of simply "sitting deep". They weren't even as compact as you'd expect from a Mou side, using the front 4 to press and the rest of the team to sit back more (but not as deep as you're indicating), leaving quite some space between them. Problem was that with Alves and Tello as forwards who weren't used to making good runs and Busquets etc busy with Real's pressing unit, there was no service to Messi or from Messi, and the attacking movement had no flow. So hardly a question Pep's overall style of play, but rather one of taking too many risks wrt team selection and Real being disciplined in defence.

That leaves the Chelsea game, but that isn't enough to paint an overall picture of Pep's Barça being found out (not to mention that you're ignoring other factors like declining key players) and him leaving due to that. He was actually trying to evolve his tactics that season.


Not sure what part of your 1st paragraph you're referring to with "same thing" - you mean a lack of alternatives to his usual tactics? If so I don't see a relation between Bayern's defeat and Barça's defeat to Real/Chelsea in 2012, other than the strange team selection (Kroos-Schweini double pivot). The style he played with Bayern in that tie was different from the one he played at Barça and even at Bayern at the start of the season; on top of that, he used different approaches in both legs and actually within one leg. Don't see "Wenger levels of naivety here" either.

In the 1st leg, he went for an extreme control approach, probably trying to keep the opposition at bay as best as possible more than to win the game, and then turn things up at home. Don’t see a lot of naivety here. Aiming to control Real in midfield wasn't a bad idea as they tended to bypass that area in their attacking movement. The problem I see is poor execution, sacrificing balance for control, their transition play slowing down when reaching Real’s box, making them more vulnerable to pressing and more inefficient going front; this was partly down to some individual poor form in Bayern's team and partly to not having the right personnel however.

In the 2nd leg, Bayern played faster, made some more direct attacking movements, made more runs, and focused more on attacking with Müller as a 4th attacker playing in mf, etc. It was a different approach to the first leg, one that tried to fix the errors of the first and one that you can’t say was destined to fail per se if you look at Real's defensive organisation. Then Real scored the first 2 goals from set pieces. Unless using zonal marking is "Wenger levels of naivety", there's not much to see here in terms of 'naivety' or 'alternatives', only some stupid individual movement. The most logical reason for this is Bayern's extreme rotation and subsequent lack of routine, not anything style-related. After that, Bayern pushed higher up and tried to attack more, which they were forced to do as they were already needing 4 goals. As a consequence, Real exploited the space at the back with counters. Again, no extreme naivety here, as sitting back when you're in need of 4 goals doesn't really do the trick better. The major point of criticism, which has little to do with his style of football, is that Real's counters were facilitated by Müller playing in midfield, as that kept Bayern from occupying space more evenly and pressing sustainedly. Pep did try to address that by e.g. subbing in Javi for Mandzo and changing the formation.

In short, the *main* issues in this tie (and by main I don't mean attacking teams like Pep's being more vulnerable to counters than defensive teams) - i.e. slow transitioning in the first leg, poor set piece defending and having Müller in that mf role in the second - had little to do with what is perceived as Guardiola's general style of play, which doesn't even resemble the style Bayern played. So while Bayern did get found out, Guardiola's 'tiki taka' didn't. He didn't execute his normal style; he was/is trying to evolve it & make it suitable for the squad he has. Last season, that failed big time, this season, we'll have to see. Perhaps it's stupid of him to try and impossible to do, but at the least the notion that he sticks with 1 style and fails to find alternatives is wrong.

Is the plural a typo or intentional? If the latter: Bar Messi, most of his "best players in europe" weren't before he took over. Busquets was a static, clumsy midfielder that didn't show much promise in the youth teams, while Xavi and (to a lesser extent) Iniesta were regulars/key players but were only considered to be the best midfield duo in Europe later. Can't argue a lot about Messi, but even with him, Ronaldo was still considered the best in the world/at least equal to Messi when Pep started. Part of the reason why Messi got into & sustained that beastmode form was Pep knowing exactly how to use him, motivate him and keep him injury-free (*).

Point being, it's more relative than that. To imply that Pep was just offered the best set up and conditions in the world at Barcelona means ignoring his contribution to it becoming the best, and that in spite of his laughable managerial experience at that point. By that I'm not saying anything about Mourinho, just about your estimation of Guardiola's achievements at Barcelona.

Cba to respond to that. Fair play, guess I just got Qua'd

Yeah favourable games but knocking out Manchester United and the team that knocked out Chelsea in the semis is still a tough achievement.
You can dominate the German league on autopilot when the previous manager made a setup that won a treble and who currently has the points record of the Bundesliga. As Dortmund have fallen off the past couple of years in the league there hasn't been a noteworthy challenger of the Bundesliga. While you'd also seriously argue that the Bayern team Heynckes/Van Gaal created is the best side of all time.

What has Guardiola done that really deserves credit at Bayern so far, or whom a second rate manager like Benitez couldn't have achieved? All I see is the team playing a different style of play and having 2 starting 11s, while having way more resources. He's rotated the players well though.

Tbf to him though the only competition that you'd say would really prove Guardiola's time at Bayern to be an outstanding success than a success would be to deliver big ears while playing his style of play to the team as well as integrating the youth players into the club, that's what he was brought in for. It was always going to be a tough job for him but the Barcelona job was a fine job and I'm not taking that away from him.