rubber duckie wrote:
I don't know. He reinvented utd 3 times.
Yes, and if he'd have left when he originally said he would, in 2002, people would have probably said the same thing about him leaving at the right time, as Arsenal and Chelsea then emerged to leave United behind for a while.
But there's another lesson from United which is that David Gill left as CEO at the same time as SAF and there was wholesale change of the coaching and support staff. United lost a whole management structure and their recruitment since has been chaotic. They just throw huge sums of money about to sign players and then try to make a team out of them, where SAF spent big when he needed to but always had a considered approach to who he signed.
The argument that SAF left United with a 'rebuilding job' is way overblown. There is always churn among the top teams. You could also say Mancini left City with a rebuilding job at the same point, they had a lot of 30 year olds like Barry, Kolo and Yaya Toure, Lescott, also Tevez was unhappy. As for Liverpool, pretty much their whole team is different, I think only Henderson and Sturridge remain from when SAF was at United. City and Liverpool have rebuilt their teams far better than United have since he left. The real problem for United was they have had nobody at the club who has had a handle on recruitment or planning.
