imagine this place if we go on a 9 game winning run and end up in champions league.
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imagine this place if we go on a 9 game winning run and end up in champions league.
Wat Tyler
Player Valuation: £70m
ForeverBlue92
Player Valuation: £80m
Yep - City have done us right over this season dropping points to literally all our european rivals - just have to hope they get the job done in the League Cup final & beat Spurs today
ToothPlucker
Player Valuation: £950k
He has been harshly sacked by clubs who didn't appreciate him. The man is so class that he doesn't hold a grudge as he knows this aspect of modern football very well.
Chelsea: He won the league and FA Cup in his first season. They then sacked his assistant manager Ray Wilkins in his 2nd season, behind his back and against his wishes, which undermined him and the writing was on the wall then. Hardly due to being a failure.
This article from the Times about Bayern shows that it was player power that got him the sack:
"And so the club offered a three-pronged explanation. They said performances had been disappointing, they said Ancelotti’s methods — both in training and in terms of tactics — were antiquated and lacking in intensity and they said five senior players had turned against him.
The performance argument is going to be subjective. Aesthetics aside, the degree to which you can use data to measure Bayern’s performances suggests that not much has changed or, if anything, matters had improved slightly. Expected goals were up (2.37 per game this season from 2.23 last season), expected goals conceded were down (0.80 from 0.83). Considering that the side lost two key veterans — Philipp Lahm and Xabi Alonso — to retirement and that important players like Manuel Neuer, David Alaba and Jérôme Boateng were injured for at least half the matches thus far, you wonder how terrible it could have been. Or, at least, how different from last season.
The charge of antiquated training and tactics is even more problematic. Not only did Bayern know what they were getting when they hired Ancelotti, they got to see him up close for 14 months before sacking him. If that really was the problem, why not sack him in the summer and bring in a replacement?
Assuming he did not suddenly decide to go retro this summer — perhaps bringing back medicine balls and ten-mile runs while taking naps during sessions — you wonder why it took them so long to notice what his methods are and even longer to figure out that they didn’t like them. Of all the reasons given, this seems to be the weakest. Or at least the one that ought to shift blame back on the club.
Uli Hoeness, the Bayern president, suggested that Ancelotti had lost the trust of the club’s leaders in the dressing room. “As a manager, you can’t have the prominent players in your team against you,” he told a German radio station on Thursday night. “I’ve learned an important lesson in life: your most dangerous enemy is the one right there in your bed. That’s why we had to act.”
German media quickly speculated that Hoeness was referring to the likes of Arjen Robben, Franck Ribéry, Thomas Müller and Boateng. It’s certainly plausible. Robben and Ribéry will be 34 and 35 respectively by the season’s end. Müller endured his worst season as a professional last year and Boateng missed much of 2016-17 through injury. Part of Ancelotti’s appeal, historically, was his ability to extract the best from veteran superstars and extend their careers: apparently, with this quartet, he had come up short. In fact, cut through the party line and there’s a much deeper dysfunctionality at this club, one that goes beyond the lack of joined-up thinking with regards to Ancelotti’s style and that — if it was really so inadequate — it should have been dealt with in the summer.
The bigger misstep is in how the transition and rejuvenation of this squad has been handled. Robben and Ribéry are out of contract in June. That two guys of that age who clearly aren’t part of the club’s future should wield so much power to get a manager axed is tough to swallow.
Throw in Neuer, Boateng, Müller, Robert Lewandowski, Mats Hummels, Rafinha, Javi Martínez and Arturo Vidal and you have ten players aged 28 or over, which suggests Bayern’s window of opportunity for success is closing. That means you either stick with it and go all-in, perhaps with further short-term investment, or you plan for the future.
Bayern got stuck somewhere in between this summer, possibly because, from the outside, the club’s two-headed leadership structure — Hoeness and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the chief executive and Ancelotti’s biggest backer — often appear to act at cross purposes. They added promising players who are still raw (such as Niklas Süle), blue-collar midfielders (Corentin Tolisso and Sebastian Rudy) and a star-crossed gamble/reclamation project in James Rodríguez.
Ancelotti’s pleas to pick a strategy and either usher out the veterans and rebuild or add instant quality (such as Alexis Sánchez) to win straight away were not heeded. And all this played out against a backdrop that saw Bayern’s peers spend big while their transfer record — the £37 million spent on Tolisso — ranks 64th all-time, a fact that Lewandowski alluded to in an uncomfortable interview with Der Spiegel last month.
Willy Sagnol, Ancelotti’s club-appointed assistant, takes over until the end of the season. They will still be competitive — there is too much talent there — but what’s obvious is that some serious forward-planning is now required. And that goes beyond simply chasing a flavour-of-the-month manager, such as Julian Nagelsmann or Thomas Tuchel. Without a clear idea from the top, and the courage to execute at the right time, you’re only going to get so far. Just as you can only spin justifications for your actions to a certain point."
Not sure what happened at Napoli but it seems to be a similar story. Stuff behind the scenes undermining him.
He is at Everton for a variety of reasons and all of them are good. We have ambition and we are intent on going places and Ancelotti is relishing it.
polish
Player Valuation: £35m
Great team they are. Like a proper one.
Saint Domingo
Player Valuation: £90m
I think Ancelotti was just the wrong guy to follow Pep. Guardiola’s methods work on players being drilled within an inch of their lives in very specific patterns so that when they get on the football pitch they almost don’t have to think about it. Ancelotti is the polar opposite, he empowers players to think for themselves during the game and make their own decisions. It’s probably why it didn’t work at Napoli either, they were used to Sarri who is very similar to Guardiola and all of a sudden they’re being asked to change all of that and think for themselves.
When he was at Madrid and Milan however, he had the opposite, a group of players most of them natural born leaders who were crying out for someone to steer them and let them play their football and the results followed. Zidane basically picked up that baton from him and did exactly the same and the squad Ancelotti put together there won everything. If Zidane suddenly went to City after Guardiola I’d imagine he’d struggle to replicate anything like what he’s done at Madrid. Ancelotti is just the complete opposite of Guardiola and he probably made a mistake following him at Bayern.
That "Everton supporters need a reality check" made me livid. GOD FORBID the fans want better than the dross they have seen over the last 25 years.
Don't forget Madrid , they did too .
There is a common denominator ...... they are all run by nutcases . Bayern are the exception that proves the rule .... they are run by senior players like Muller
Oh dear, that’s embarrassing
bignev23
Player Valuation: £35m
I look at Leicester, we were a better team than them last season, certainly up until they appointed Rodgers, they finished 9th, within 12 months they're challenging for Champions league place. I see no good reason we can't emulate that myself( maybe not in 12 months like )... Look at the turn around in form/results since Silva was sacked. I think it's deffo achievable, Then I remember we're Everton and my optimism drains away.
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bignev23
Player Valuation: £35m
Hopefully he could but I doubt anyone else can.
I don't know, but then I haven't won three Champions Legues.
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