Dave Save is sad.
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I'm unfamiliar with your managerial track record.
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...no. normally spontaneously combusts after two years.
Nigel Atkins, Mike Walker, Lopetegui, Dino Zoff, Bruce Arena...loads as assistants and on coaching staff, obviously. I know a few ex-pro keepers who are good (trusted) scouts as well (Seamus McDonagh for one).
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Nuno was alright as a manager
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Surprised no one has mentioned Peter Taylor as yet (albeit he was an assistant manager)
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Are you filtering tricky's posts out? Wise and brave.
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(Someone did)
Andy Woodman
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The vast majority of the names produced so far really just support my point.
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As I pointed out last season when Lineker was snarky about the Nuno v Lopetegui matchup, Jock Wallace was a goalkeeper. But he managed Leicester, so probably shit.
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I'm not convinced by the argument, nor reality, of strikers making great managers. As the posterboys they might get the most opportunity, but most of them know next to nothing about team play.
Clough was an exception with a career cut short, and a desire to prove himself. Where are these other great former striker managers?
We need some sort of test for what a good manager is. Guru seems to have dropped the ball on formulae, so maybe someone who has a better managerial career than playing career?
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Are you looking for a great striker who was also a great manager, or just a great manager who was a striker? Ferguson was a decent striker, I think. Dalgleish did pretty well as a manager and was clearly a great player.
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and Wayne Rooney, of course.
I was exploring this really. My thinking about great strikers is that they are largely only interested in things that get them goals, rather than the team dynamic. They might be good at the movements that make goals happen, but they might also be the sort whose teams get beaten 4-3 because they don't understand the other bits. I hadn't really explored it, so I was looking for opinions/data.
Clearly a lot is down to the individual, but my personal perception was that strikers are not intrinsically better placed to understand overall team shape than goalkeepers. Generally you don't want either as captains, because they are both isolated from most of the important attritional play that happens in the middle of the park.
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We know what your formula is, Tricky: "GM = N x T", where GM = good manager, N = name of manager & T = Tricky thinks he's good
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Spent a few minutes looking at the playing positions of the greatest managers of all time. A good mix of forwards (Clough, Ferguson, Michels, Busby, Cruyff, Hitzfeld), midfield playmakers (Shankly, van Gaal, Capello), and defenders or defensive minded players (Trapattoni, Conte, Guardiola, del Bosque, Lippi, Scolari, Bielsa), but none that I can find were keepers. In fact, there are more guys who have become top managers with little or no playing career (Wenger, Sacchi, Mourinho) than keepers.
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There's also a bit of perception and opportunity. Forwards are going to get more opportunities because they are generally bigger names...and there's more of them. Taylor definitely understood what a player could do better than Clough. A lot of goalkeepers are temperamentally less suited to being the head of a coaching team, being as they are mostly wired up wrong. Which reduces the pool of the smallest group of players further....and the role of coach/manager is changing. It's interesting to consider how much is the use of eyes, ability to communicate, and how much is opportunity/weight of numbers. There are definitely more of all categories of player that don't make good managers, than do. So a lot comes down to the makeup and drive of the individual.
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Your points about pool of addressable players and temperament are both fair, the latter being what I was trying to say about a keeper being less of a team player because by definition their role is an essentially isolated one. Whether they're headcases because of that, or whether they gravitate to the role because they're headcases, is a debate for the ages.
I'm not entirely convinced about the name recognition thing though. Of course that makes a difference with the biggest names in the game, but there aren't that many of them. There's at least one former keeper on every pro club's coaching team what with needing a goalkeeping coach and all, you'd think that at least a few would work their way up to bigger jobs if they were suited to doing them.
