by Rory Truesdale

Created on: August 17, 2009   Last Updated: August 22, 2009

It would be very easy to over simplify this argument and make wild generalisations that due to the fact that it is the players on the pitch; it is the players who are to blame for poor performances.

Throughout the different leagues, particularly in England, the importance of the manager to the players invariably changes. For example, teams playing in the lowest tier of English League Football are more likely to have similar squads than Premiership teams. This is due to a number of factors including the financial stability of the club, training facilities and youth facilities amongst many others. This does, however, reiterate the point that managers and their ability to work with the players are of paramount importance.

Brian Clough is heralded as one of the best football managers of all time, and his success came when managing two clubs which didn't necessarily have the best squads at the time. When he became manager of Nottingham Forest, they were thirteenth in the old English Division Two, but when Brian Clough took charge they soon gained promotion and in his third season in charge, they won the league. Under Clough, Forest also went on to win the European Cup, and all this while largely maintaining the same squad of players that the club had in Division Two. Despite the fact that this example is taken from a time when football players where less egocentric and overpaid, there are modern success stories.

Take Peterborough United FC as an example; a team that has risen from League Two, to League One, and now the Championship in consecutive seasons. Under manager Darren Ferguson, (son of Sir Alex Ferguson, undoubtedly one of the greatest of all time) Peterborough has bounced up the leagues with essentially the same squad. Although the Championship will prove a much sterner challenge than League One football, it is still suggested that Peterborough will flourish in this division. This is because the team have a manager that commands respect from the players and they all want to play under him.

There are possible exceptions to the rule, for example the Real Madrid team early this decade, nicknamed the Galacticos. Madrid chairman, Florentino Perez invested heavily and saw the club make some of the biggest purchases in football at the time, notably Zinedene Zidane and Luis Figo. However, despite all these world class players, the team enjoyed little success. The reasons for this were the lack of impetus placed on defensive options within the squad, and more importantly perhaps, the players did not gel together on the pitch. The responsibility for this failure could not land at the manager's feet as the erratic tendencies of eleven superstars on the pitch would be very difficult to manage.

Undoubtedly the players on the pitch do play a massive role in the performance of a team, but it has to be said that if the manager is not doing his job well, the players will not do theirs well. Think of it in dragon sleighing terms (hopefully avoiding the numerous football cliches); if you remove the head, the body will fail.

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