Firstly, I've been accused today of being stuck in the past, but all of Sven's success was in the 1980s and 1990s (when we still had wing backs, by the way). O'Neill's last league title came six years after Sven's last title.
Are you really comparing the achievement of winning the SPL to the Serie A, when it was at its peak?! Do you really think the game changes that much in 6 years?
Secondly, you miss the point that Martin O'Neill actually won us promotion in that mediocre season you're talking about, with five wins and a draw in our last five games. And, crucially, he was the guy who pointed out that our very nice passing football had become just a little too predictable for the Championship. Something Sven will have to learn if we're to go up.
5 wins and a draw? I'm sure I've seen someone better than recently, I wonder who...
Why will he have to learn? Based on form since he's been here, we're comfortably top 2. If we don't go up this season, it will be down to Sousa, nothing to do with Sven.
Finally, as for 'he's an excellent manager', as I've said, you've got to wait and see. He's BEEN an excellent manager, whether he can pull it off this time we don't know. And if he is an excellent manager, then right now he'll be wondering whether he should have selected Bruma instead of Abe, or Dyer instead of Waghorn too. Until he develops that much vaunted 'Plan B' we won't trouble the promotion race.
Of course, even great managers can fail, but you don't just "lose" your managerial ability. Of course, he may not succeed here, but you could say exactly the same thing about MON.
Firstly, you're talking about one game. Scondally, yet again, you keep judging Bruma without having seeing him play, do you even know if he put in a good performance tonight? How do you know if Waghorn was in the side for Dyer we would have all of sudden not lost that game? For all you know we could've lost it by more.
Again, why do we need a "plan B"? Where is Barcelona's? Where is Spain's? Where was West Brom's or Blackpool's "plan B" last season?
They all play passing football and it brings them success.
Personally, MON's football bores the shit out of me and I'm so glad we're playing this way rather than MON's hoofball. It's infinitely more enjoyable to watch.
Of course, that's not to say that he won't. After all, he has BEEN an excellent manager. In the meantime, we lost a game, and the reasonable thing to do is to wonder why.
No. The reasonable thing is to let the management and backroom staff, who have intelligent computer programmes with hundreds of statistics and in-depth analysis as well of videos of the game go over the game, see for themselves the reasons why we lost and correct them. Not to say make some half-arsed speculation that a player you've never even seen play was a mistake.
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