Ben Manga

Manga to be sacked by the end of the summer window seems just as likely right now as him leading this supposed scouting revolution. Time will tell though.

 

I believe Pozzo gave three hoots of his horn!

And cue Kenny...!

 

Can someone with more time (and frankly patience and desire) perhaps look at Frankfurt’s business and see if they have also wasted a lot on duds?

I know about the success stories and the uplift in the clubs fortunes. That’s well reported. But is there also a reasonable amount of money that isn’t talked about that went on duds?

I’m not saying Manga isn’t good. The evidence points very much to the fact that he is.

But I’m just wondering if say (for example) during his tenure, he bought 50 players. Were 15-20 of them roaring successes and brought the glory…but 30-35 of them poor and of little use? What is his hit-rate like?

Did Frankfurt supplement their squad with some of their own? Or was it all buys?

Did any players from before Manga arrived stay on (as Cathcart, Kabasele, Cleverley seem destined to here) and improve?

 

Always interesting hearing people in recruitments views on data, say you love data and you get called a laptop nerd who knows nothing about how the game is played, lean too far the other way and you're a dinosaur. The ideal reality would be somewhere in the middle. Nobody should go and sign players purely based on their data without ever watching them - but data can help significantly.

Say for instance Bilic comes to Manga and says our CBs are ***** on the ball and we need a CB capable of bringing the ball out of defence - the number of CBs who can realistically play in the Championship (and get a work permit etc) is huge and it's entirely unrealistic for a scouting team to be able to scout them all, but with data you can filter that number down significantly to build a much smaller shortlist that you'd then go watch

 

I got the feeling that Pozzo was unconvinced that Joka would be capable of keeping us up in that 1st season and so low-balled him to ensure he didn't accept the offer. As events unfolded, it is difficult to criticise the decision.

If GP has had a Damascene Conversion, I wonder what has caused it?

 

I thought this was what happened as well - basically Pozzo got rid of him but in a manner which wouldn't have looked quite as bad for both him and Joka to outside observers than if he'd straight out "sacked" a manager who'd done well until then.

 

Interview with him on the official website now:

https://www.watfordfc.com/news/manga-we-aim-to-really-make-a-difference

Bit of a powder puff piece and not sure it really says anything that wasn't in the foreign interview on here recently, possibly with the exception of the focus on academy players.

 

I thought the complete opposite. I thought it was very insightful. I didn't realise he was in charge of absolutely everything. Academy and medical as well as recruitment of course. If he's the "real deal" then hopefully we'll see a dramatic improvement right across the club.

I especially liked the paragraph “Talent is important, but mentality has always been the key in my teams because we are one. We obtain success because of our mentality. With a winning mentality, you will be successful against those teams that only have talent.”. I believe this is where we're currently falling short. Loads of talent but virtually no winning mentality. Hopefully that is going to be addressed by brining in 2 or 3 players with leadership qualities.

 

“Talent is important, but mentality has always been the key in my teams because we are one. We obtain success because of our mentality. With a winning mentality, you will be successful against those teams that only have talent.” Hallelujah!

Going to be looking at the medical team too by the look of it, thank goodness.

Will be talking to Slav about transfers, wt actual f.

The academy is very important, wt actual f again.

Thanks for the link, a very interesting read, fingers crossed Gino has seen the errors of his ways. Looks like Ubenga will be taking over a few of the duties he did maybe?

 

Lying to the fans really is part of this club's culture now, Manga will fit right in.

 

‘In charge of absolutely everything’ lol

 

Totally disagree about it being power puff. Encouraged to read that he will be in charge of aligning the entire football operation, that's what we're crying out for.

Whether he's allowed to get on with it remains to be seen.

 

Who honestly believes that Pozzo is going to hand over control of the footballing side of the club to Manga? I'm pretty confident that this will end up like the Rob Edwards fiasco, all the right things being said only for it to all come crashing down a few months later.

 

It does say more - I literally asked last week in the 'Medical/Fitness Department' thread:

"Could it be part of Ubenga's remit as new Sporting Director to help find a functioning medical/conditioning department?!?!"

https://wfcforums.com/index.php?threads/medical-fitness-department.54014/page-14#post-3204552

Nothing about that possibility had been mentioned anywhere before and no one had an answer, but this interview thankfully confirms that his remit does include "strength, conditioning [...] medical & rehabilitation practices".

The fact that the interview has gone out of its way to mention it, twice, is reassuring as it indicates he seems aware it's clearly something the club need to improve.

 

I apologise profusely for not cross-referencing all of your posts with all available news sources before reaching a view. It won't happen again m'lud.

 

You wouldn't have needed to cross-reference all my posts before reaching your view - you said this interview had nothing really new which wasn't in the foreign interview.

Therefore, you only needed to cross-reference this interview with the old one before reaching your view - which you clearly appear to have done otherwise you couldn't have made your post. Your "view" just wasn't a very observant one as you missed the new information about the medical remit, which I was already attuned to and pointed out that you failed to see.

The fact your post has managed a number of 'likes' just goes to show how incapable of reading and reasoning a bunch of other members of the forum also are.

 

I think what you're meaning to say is

 

I think we’re just laughing at your pomposity rather than worrying about the reasoning to be fair.

 

Maybe Ben Manga read the Medical Thread of the forum and wanted to cross reference your post in it?

 

Maybe he just realised it was something important which the club are currently a mess with?

 

there’s a really good podcast from training ground guru with the Leeds fella on this. Victor Ortega I think it is

Edit: victor orta
Link - https://trainingground.guru/articles/how-leeds-united-blend-algorithms-and-intuition-to-sign-players

talks about 70% data 30% eyes but that final 30 being the most important

 

Hilarious that the latest club output is being believed yet again by fans. I really wish I was as gloriously naive as so many of our fanbase. It would genuinely be preferable to seeing right through it all.

 

I did live in the hope the first 8 times we were going to do things differently.

 

I used to love cross reference, my favourite were code breakers. Wait, you aren't talking about that.... oh well.

 

He’s been told this. But then you remember who his boss is…

 

Don’t apologise to him. He hates it when you offer any kind of personal detail. He loses his cool and ends up getting banned. Then returns and accuses the mods of editing his posts.

 

I’m hearing that this new chap, Ubend, in charge of everything, has instructed Gino that the final pieces of the jigsaw are a reserve 28 year old striker from the Belgian leagues and “a couple of reserves from a mid table Italian side”.

 

Please go outside more often if you can.

 

Fook it I knew I always spell it wrong. Ty for the heads up

 

In fairness it's disagreeing on whether we can up automatically. Bilic will always say we can even if he doesn't believe it