He did an excellent job for us, but that doesn't mean I'd want him over a clearly more successful and better manager, who also plays much more enjoyable football.
How exactly have you seen plenty of Portuguese football?
All the top leagues in Europe only have 3 or 4 top teams, what is your point? Winning these leagues is a greater achievement because the quality of managers and players is better.
Porto, Benfica and Sporting Lisbon have all achieved much, much, much more in Europe than any Scottish side in recent seasons,
What does "this century" have to do with it? Since when did the exact moment the clock turned to 00:00:00 on 01.01.2000 suddenly wipe all other achievements before that clean.
MON has had much more chance to win things this century, because he has been in club management, where a manager has 4 chances to win major silverware every year, the majority of this century Sven has spent in international management, where he has the chance of one major trophy every 2 years. Yet he has still won the double in Italy this century, an achievement which easily surpasses anything MON has done in it.
Again, my quoting isn't great, so I'll address things paragraph by paragraph.
1 - McGhee, Pleat, Hamilton - all standard-bearers of the 'beautiful game'. I'd sooner get promoted playing no-nonsense football any day, especially if you acquire players of the standard that O'Neill managed to acquire.
2 - I'm working in Spain. We get second rate Portuguese football on the box in much the same way as you get second rate Scottish football on the box.
3 - If the quality of managers in top European leagues is better than in the Scottish league, then that doesn't explain Celtic or Aberdeen's European successes (working on your principle that we can't discount past glories), nor does it explain Alex Ferguson, Jock Stein and, dare I say it, Martin O'Neill, who remains our club's best ever manager. On the other hand, it does suggest that the likes of Christian Gross, Jean Tigana, Rafa Benitez and Juande Ramos should have held on to their jobs for longer than they did.
4 -What have Benfica achieved in Europe in recent seasons?
5 - Again, if we have to bear in mind all past achievements and there's no possibility that a manager 'loses it' then why don't we bring in promotion maestro Dave Bassett, who's only a couple of years older than Sven? Or get Brian Little back! What about Big Ron?
6 -Sven has had plenty of opportunities to win trophies since leaving Lazio! What about three major international competitions with England, at the same time as the English league was ranked 1st / 2nd in the world? A team boasting Lampard, Gerard, Ferdinand, Terry, Owen (golden boot era), Cole, Rooney, Beckham should have done better... there wasn't an international football pundit who could fathom why those players weren't capable of winning a tournament, while the likes of Greece (starring Theo Zagorakis) and Italy were.
Managers DO lose it and the demands of English football are different to those of football overseas. There are plenty of half-decent foreign and even Premiership managers who screw up in the lower leagues (Coleman would be a recent example), just as there are many players who do the same. I like Sven, I think he's doing a decent job, but you shouldn't get carried away just yet.
