Doing a Ferguson

Interesting look at Manchester United’s approach over the years.  Key is the whole ‘make stars don’t grow them’ angle, as well as point about keeping older players around to be good influences.

The more I think about it the more I think Martin Jol’s in a difficult position. He realises this and is attempting to transition away from the team that we had.  This being football and results being results, he hasn’t got the time to rebuild like, for example, an American sports team would, so he has to do this on the fly while still winning matches.  Tricky.   It does make me believe that we need to give more time to Matthew Briggs, show patience with the likes of Kasami and Frei (few players are ‘ready’ at 19, but playing them at 19 can make them into much better 21 year olds than they would have been) and perhaps look for 2-3 other young players to fast-track and give minutes to in games where this is possible.  I always think it’s a shame that even in matches that are comfortably in hand, we don’t see more of young players for the last ten minutes or so.

Anyway, well worth a read.  Obviously we’re not Manchester United and the young players they’re looking at are different species to the ones we’re looking at, but this doesn’t mean the approach can’t work for us.