Im_Spartacus wrote:bigblue wrote:
Lets translate this to business/professional setting.
Theres a salesman Bob, who is one of the best salesmen in the country, and can sell 20 cars/week consistently. Two weeks a year Bob sells 25 cars/week!
Now, is Bob performing at 100% normally (since he is one of the best in the country) or his he only performing at 80% every week, then for some reason steps it up to 100% two weeks a year?
I would argue that Bob (and Yaya) are performing at 95-100% of their ability for most of the year. Those exceptional weeks/performances are more results of situation (for Bob it may be the holiday season or the week before business taxes are due. For Yaya it might be a big game that makes other players more nervous than him or a team that fails to lineup properly against him.)
Not really, because in business where performance counts, people very rarely work at 100% of capacity for long, and people almost never work at that level without an inspirational motivator behind them.
This is sort of the analogy I had with Mancini's motivational issues, in that a players natural performance level may be about 80% of ability. Another 10% may come from the players own 'getup and go' and the remaining 10% from the managers motivation. The manager can actually demotivate, and you may end up with some players at 70% which is what I believe we had for much of f last season.
When playing at elite levels of sport, if you are at your natural level of 80% you can probably get by if you are one of the very best and your 80% is still better than most normal players' 90%. Yaya might up his own game in the very big games to 90%, but when was the last time he played 90 minutes of truly world class performance?
The problem is that if all of your top stars are at 80% most of the time, your teams performances are gonna be very hit and miss in the context of a title fight, particularly if you are up against bacon who will get 100% out of most of the team most of the time, and therefore the count's job in my eyes is to direct the players into a unit, and motivate the players upto that sprt of level of consistency.
If he cracks that, we will do well. If he doesnt, and mourinho or moyes do, they will be successful and we will appear to underperform relative to our peers and wont really have moved on from mancini in that respect.
People in business need inspirational leaders as well, which is why sales mangers/executives get paid so well.
I'd object to the whole performance scale that you are using. I think the difference between players at the top level is marginal. A 1-2% effort drop can be the difference between winning and losing in the PL or CL. To suggest that players' performance shifts by 20% in some cases is a bit over the top. Modern sports science protects against this and weekly stats prove it (except for stats under statistical significance like goals or assists).
Professional players have become in the top .000001% of all football players on the planet by training harder, wanting o succeed more, a little luck, and physical gifts. They have basically been working at their current job since they were 9 with the dream of being a professional. You think that a manager is really going to inspire them to lift their game by 10% just by giving a talk (as if they don't want it enough already)? I think a manager can lift a team's performance by getting everyone on the same page, putting individual is the position to make the most of tehir talent, and work together. But if an individual doesn't have enough desire at the professional level you call then Wayne Brigde or Winston Bolgrade, not Yaya Toure.
So Yaya plays at 95-100% every week. Yaya + a manager who puts him in a role to succeed, a team who is on the same page, and a little luck = something greater than what Yaya can produce individuality.
Just like Bob + a proper incentive/commission structure + competent assisting staff + good marketing push = more than Bob would produce on his own.
