Money Talks

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The other day whilst doing a post on Pep Guardiola I saw this and found it interesting as the two modern managers who have done well have spent huge sums.

This is not very surprising to see them at the top of the list when you look at where they both came from. Pep was a player at Barcelona and stayed with the club as a junior coach and worked his way up to take over the reigns. Jose was a translator/ 'B' team coach also learning the ropes at Barcelona. We all know how Barcelona spends and they target the top players and the price tag rarely scares them off.

The rivalry really kicked in and I suppose the spend at the same time with Jose at Real Madrid and Pep at Barcelona. It was imperative that they bought the league title home each year and that fueled the spending even more. A single player can easily cost over 100 Million Euros today so these figures look bad but in a few years time others will overtake them. I do believe these managers did help inflate footballers salaries by the eay they operated.

When we look at both their careers we could comfortably say they bought the glory and titles these teams achieved under them. Every club Jose has been to he has had his own way with the cheque book and maybe manchester United was the first club where he struggled with the purse strings. Ed Woodward and him clashed and it was always over the transfer market and certain players.

It has been proven time and time again if you throw money at something you will win the league such as Blackburn rovers did in the 1994/5 season. Jack Walker was a wealthy owner and he bought that title for the club spending what was at the time ludicrous amounts of money making the footballers instant millionaires.

Spending large sums of money became the norm for most teams as the fans saw that as the board being serious about their club. One club manager on the list stands out though and that is Arsene Wenger. He spent under 1 Billion Euros which is not a lot of money for the time he has been managing. He ran the club as a business and could have achieved much more if he had spent like some of the others.

I do believe spend and success go hand in hand and if clubs were limited to x amaount per year the likes of pep and Jose would not have achieved the glory thay have in their careers. This is why they tend to move fairly frequently having stints for about 3 or 4 seasons at any particular club.

Both Jose and Pep once taking over a team will normally achieve instant success in the first or second season as they have to justify the turnaround with the spend. I do believe if Pep doesn't win the league this year with Machester City it will be deemed as a failure and a 50% record for him having won 2 titles out of 4 seasons.It will be interesting to see if he carries on, joins another club or retires. There aren't many clubs left who could entice him with a fresh challenge except possibly maybe PSG in Paris.

I see these two managers as great at getting a squad together for short term results but they need to spend heavily every year to maintain this. If they were running a business model like Arsene Wenger was at Arsenal then they would most likely bankrupt a club as it is not sustainable over a long period of time.