How do clubs try to improve their fortunes and what works?

By Tony Attwood

While reviewing a book on Arsenal a few years ago, I noticed a comment in the volume under review that under Wenger, “it was difficult to watch a clever man and a legendary manager do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.”

By chance. I came across this note while looking for something quite different, and it made me stop. Because it made me think, isn’t this what we’re seeing today, only with manager after manager coming into clubs, doing the same things, and expecting something different?

And then I thought, “How many different things are there to do in football to improve a team?

Looking at the current situation of clubs like Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United, Chelsea, Newcastle United, Everton, West Ham… none of these clubs are where they want to be.

Of course, part of the problem is that not every club can be at the top of the league, and not every club can be in the top four, but somehow these six clubs and their fans seem to have expectations that they feel they are entitled to have, but which are not being met.

But why do fans expect their club to grow at the expense of others? I thought it would be interesting to explore this.

Tottenham Hotspur – What is it? for example, they have won the league twice and the FA Cup eight times. Although they won the League Cup in 2008, they have not won any major trophies since 1991.

And yet the media treats Tottenham as a big club, and it seems that their fans buy into this idea of ​​the club suddenly winning things. This is possibly due to the shiny new ground they have and the fact that it apparently produces more than any other ground on match days.

I think expectations have also been raised by the belief (a false belief from my reading of the situation, but still a belief among some commentators on this site) that the ground is debt-free. My reading of the situation is that this is far from the truth – with the cost of the ground being a debt that Tottenham have to pay off over time. If that is not the case, then their lack of trophies is inexcusable, as prior to last season they had 13 consecutive years in Europe, which must surely have boosted their income. But if the club are paying for the ground, then yes, perhaps they have a very real excuse.

As for Manchester United, After five barren years, they have had two years of winning the two domestic cups in succession, but they don’t seem to have found a way to build on their position in the league table: 6th-3rd-2nd – 6th – 3rd – 8th. That’s not progress, it’s more up and down. (Compare with Arsenal of late, where the numbers are 8th – 8th – 5th – 2nd – 2nd. No trophies there, but progress, though.)

Chelsea They have had a golden era under Russian control, and that was extended by winning the Champions League in 2021, just two years after winning Europe. And yet in the last three seasons they have finished 3rd, 12th and 6th, and have been runners-up in three cups. This was supposed to be a springboard for the club, and yet all we hear is arguments and bickering, and although the new season is still very young, their start has been mid-table.

Liverpool They have been winning trophies for the last few seasons, and their league results over the last four seasons have been really promising (3rd, 4th, 2nd, 3rd) and perhaps with a new manager they can make that final push. They certainly look like they have more of a chance than the other clubs we noted above and have won all three of their opening games.

Leaving aside the conquest of the Championship after relegation Newcastle they hadn’t won anything since the Intertoto Cup, and yet when they were bought by the Arabs there was certainly an expectation that it would happen very quickly.

But failure to progress beyond the Europa League group stage last season and a decline to seventh in the Premier League have not been what was expected.

West Ham United with the huge ground they were given after being paid for by British taxpayers, one would expect some progress towards trophies, and they did indeed win the Conference League in 2023, but apart from that their main achievement is that in three of the last four seasons they have finished in the top half of the table.

Now, there is a point in listing these clubs that might be seen as underperforming. They are all expected to do better, by their fans and the media.

The clubs trying to climb the league with more and more signings aren’t trying to outdo a bunch of self-satisfied starters, they’re trying to climb the league while outshining half a dozen other clubs who are also trying to do the same thing, and the top two are also improving all the time.

We saw with Arsenal that promotion can take four years after a manager change – but how many of those clubs are willing to give a new manager four years? And yet, as Football365 points out, the average tenure of a permanent Chelsea manager since Claudio Ranieri became the first casualty of the Roman Abramovich era is just 455 days – a third of the suggested timeframe.

Managers are increasingly given less time, and more and more reliance seems to be placed on buying new players. However, there is no indication that either approach actually works. So on this basis, we can expect more and more managerial sackings and more and more transfers – very few of which will result in success on the pitch.