Winter 25-26 Transfer Window - hopes, speculation, rumours etc.

[Dante Lavelli]

Send Guardiola to Sheff Weds with no budget and see how good he is.

I reckon he would do okay. 

I wish a top manger would do something like this.  Take mourinho, he’s run out of big clubs to manage.  He should pluck a club in a nice city and see how far he can take them.  He could even bring along Disney (or whoever) to make a documentary and bump his salary.

[Stu82]

Send Guardiola to Sheff Weds with no budget and see how good he is.

I reckon he would do okay. 

I wish a top manger would do something like this.  Take mourinho, he’s run out of big clubs to manage.  He should pluck a club in a nice city and see how far he can take them.  He could even bring along Disney (or whoever) to make a documentary and bump his salary.

Didn’t he lead Porto to Champions League though.

[cdbearsfan]

Yep. Mourinho has actually achieved something, Guardiola hasn't.

[Dante Lavelli]

They both have.

[aj2k77]

Mourinho winning a Champions League with Porto is miles more impressive than flat track bully whinging about squad depth and spending half a billion in a year.

[Sexual Ealing]

Porto had already won the European Cup. They were already giants.

[Villatillidie25]

To say Guardiola isn’t one of the greatest managers of all time is just bonkers. The amount of acolytes and impact he’s had on the game is pretty evident. He’s managed big teams and spent lots of money but that’s true of lots of top managers.
There are different types of managers. Clearly he’s brilliant with elite clubs. Emery is elite with top clubs that are one rung down and gets them to punch above their weight. Both would probably struggle with elements if you got them to manage Kidderminster, although I still expect that they’d do well.

[London Villan]

Send Guardiola to Sheff Weds with no budget and see how good he is.

I reckon he would do okay. 

I wish a top manger would do something like this.  Take mourinho, he’s run out of big clubs to manage.  He should pluck a club in a nice city and see how far he can take them.  He could even bring along Disney (or whoever) to make a documentary and bump his salary.

I like Jose, but he did that with Spurs and failed.

[Garyth]

Guardiola is elite but his skill set and challenge is different to 99% of managers.  His main jobs are to harness massive egos and maintain their performance levels, rather than developing players. 

Yup. Context is important, and it's unrealistic to suggest that every manager should be able to manage at every club to be considered 'good'.

It doesn't diminish Guardiola's skill to say he might not succeed at Burnley (or wherever).

Assuming any lower league manager could manage 'elite' clubs is also assuming the jobs are the same, when in reality they are wildly different. There's probably only a very small subset of managers who could *actually* succeed at Real Madrid - where the combo of politics and ego management is surely almost all of the job. Sure, almost all managers would love players with the level of skill they have access to, but tolerance for underperformance is almost zero, and coaching requirements quite different (ie. The information Modric needs to do his role not the same as [random player at relegation struggling team] ).

For a specific type of job there is no manager greater than Ancelotti - but I'm not sure anyone really thinks he'd be a success managing a mid-table club with players less gifted than surrounding teams. His greatest skill is choosing the right jobs, IMO.

[cdbearsfan]

Porto had already won the European Cup. They were already giants.

The game already massively changed since their last European Cup win. They're the only team not from one of the massive leagues to have won it in the last thirty years. Much more impressive than winning leagues in cheat mode.

[FatSam]

Guardiola is obviously a good manager, but he was parachuted into managing Barcelona first after a year of managing the B team. Mourinho had a couple of positions before managing Porto, and he took them over in 5th place in the Portuguese league. Yes, they had previously been European Champions, but before the CL was introduced. His victory with Porto is the clear outlier in terms of the profile of winner since Red Star, with perhaps the exception of Ajax and Dortmund - but these were both in the early days of the CL. Nothing had come close since.

[olaftab]

Send Guardiola to Sheff Weds with no budget and see how good he is.

Exactly. His measure of true coaching and managerial capability will never surpass people like Cloughie and Sir Ron and dare I say Unai.

[VILLA MOLE]

He is obviously a good coach but they never discuss all the players that failed at high cost

[PaulWinch again]

Hemmings is supposed to be a top talent isn't he? As in, Grealish level prospect?

If that's the case then throw him straight in.

I agree, let’s have a look at him and Bogarde together.

Being honest that’s the type of thing lower mid-table, relegation candidates do. If we want to compete in the second half of the season in and around where we are right now, Bogarde’s minutes should be controlled and Hemmings should be very limited. That’s not a criticism of either, they’re both developing players (albeit at different stages), but I would suggest them playing a lot will not be a good thing for us in the short-term.

[Ian.]

Didn’t Liverpool throw Fowler and Owen in and Man Utd with Beckham, Scholes etc? Surely if they are good enough and knocking on the door we could?