Man United have been the richest and most well-run club in the world for two decades. Ferguson has never lacked resources for anything. Even post-Glazer with the huge debt mountain that keeps growing he's been able to spend a shitload of money on players and wages.

I Am Arsenal Till I Die wrote:

Okay, one question.

how do you think Ferguson would do with this Madrid squad? Or even Mourinho's Inter?

Doubt he would have won la liga or the champions league respectively.

We'l have to agree to disagree then.

Football fans tend to completely ignore three things when it comes to comparing teams:

1) United has a big financial head start in England: in order for a mid table team (e.g. Citeh) to compete with a team like United, they need significant initial investment in the order of hundreds of millions. United, on the other hand, has spent that money over several years. Where were people when United was buying close to 10 current players who are more expensive than Arsenal's most expensive current player?

2) Diminishing returns: after a while, it doesn't really matter if you buy more and more good players. You can only field 11 players at a time and play 90 minutes at a time. Barca buying Fabregas is a good example. He hasn't really helped them because they already have Xavi, Iniesta, Thiago etc doing the exact same thing.

3) Class attracts class: A coach like Mourinho ends up at the richest squads just as the best players do. Mourinho, rich clubs and top players all want to win, so they find each other.

People who sit here and bitterly complain about each title that people like Mourinho win should remember this. To elevate a team, you need a concentrated spending boost, but after a while additional investment makes little difference.

Claudius wrote:

To elevate a team, you need a concentrated spending boost, but after a while additional investment makes little difference.

Think that's a bit short sighted mate. You always have to invest more if you want to maintain a winning side. Generally, though not always, the 'best' players have a very short shelf life with minimal resale value so just to maintain a status quo will cost you 50-60m a season. I think that bares out in the real world and shouldn't be denied because, sometimes, clubs invest poorly.

Capi. I agree with you entirely.
All I am saying is that if you manage, for example, Everton, you can't expect to compete with United by spending as much as they do each season. You need to spend a lot of money in a short time to actually get a squad that can compete with theirs. Then you can spend as much as they can to maintain the status quo. The additional investment I was referring to is that once you go from position 10 to position 2, you don't need to spend as much to go from position 2 to position 1 or indeed to stay in position 2. But, yes, you do need to keep spending once you're at the top.

Yeah, after I typed it, I realised my misunderstanding.

We're all premiership fans here so we sometimes ignore that Fergie's longevity, rather than his skill has much to do with his reputation. He can also get away with murder in england but that's a different conversation.

Not that he isn't a great manager but Mourinho's achievements are better in my opinion.

Yep. Mourinho's done well in a short space of time in 4 different leagues. Yes, he's had significant resources each time, but he's earned them. I'm not sure who people want the owners of Inter, Chelsea and Madrid to be entrusting their hundreds of millions of pounds worth of players to. Moyes? Redknapp?

What makes me reluctant to acknowledge the likes of Mourinho among the very best is that he's never built up a club himself. He's never started a team from scratch, never moulded every aspect of it to fit his philosophy. He's no doubt a brilliant manager and strikes me as a better tactician than Ferguson but until he takes a job where he isn't the blatant favourite to win something and doesn't have unlimited resources to spend he hasn't fully proven himself in that regard. That goes for the majority of the managers who are considered greats in my opinion.

That's a fine argument, Klaus, but how many clubs do you think would provide that opportunity in the Champions League era? Are you thinking about taking a club like Spurs or Newcastle and making them consistent title winners? Is that possible these days?

I don't know. I'm not sure you even have to win something to prove yourself to be a great manager in that sense. What Moyes has done at Everton, for instance, is admirable when you look at where they were when he took over and what he's got to spend each season. What Bielsa is doing at Atletico Madrid at the moment is admireable and if he keeps it up he'll slot into that top bracket of managers sooner or later. Pellegrini worked wonders for Villarreal even if he had some investment. He should have stayed there instead of going to Real in my opinion.

Fergie's a better manager than Mourinho imo. If he'd have gone abroad to another top club he'd have dominated in the same way that Mourinho has, but for longer.

Fergie and Mourinho are both great managers, but I dont think either of them have created a truly great team. Not sure why really, they're both pretty short termist and practical in their thinking and I sort of suspect that neither of them has enough imagination to come up with anything above the functional.

Sometimes it pays to be a dreamer.

United of 99? United of 2007-2009?

Those teams won a lot. But so have plenty of teams over the years. To be a really 'great' team you need something more imo, something that makes you stand out from the crowd, so to speak.

Timbo wrote:

Those teams won a lot. But so have plenty of teams over the years. To be a really 'great' team you need something more imo, something that makes you stand out from the crowd, so to speak.

I thought trophies make you stand out from the crowd? That's the whole point. Oh yeah now I remember, you need to play lovely tippy tappy football like Barcelona.

You need to bring fantasy and something memorable.

You mock, but there's something to be said for developing a culture at a club that's seemed to capture the imagination of the football national. It's annoying but even professional footballers seem to have been caught up in the 'hype'.

I wonder if this was what Ajax were like during the Rinus Michels era? Or AC Milan twenty years ago?

Those teams are considered iconic more so than United 99 or 2007.