Life in Football Manager

Who doesn’t know anything about Sir Alex Ferguson? He is in charge of one of the most famous and supported teams in the world and that is most probably because in Sir Alex’s reign have won 27 cups of all different varieties, including the Champions League in 1999 when they performed the famous treble.

Although it could be said that Sir Alex is Mr Manchester United, he did have a successful career before coming to England and joining up with the red devils. Alex started his footballing career as a player, scoring regularly for amateur teams such as Queen’s Park, St Johnstone were he scored a hatrick against Rangers. It was when he signed for Dunfermline that he became a professional footballer scoring 66 goals in 88 games and later joined Glasgow Rangers although it wasn’t a very good experience for him he reluctantly left after being blamed for losing a cup final. Falkirk was the next stop for Ferguson were he had the most successful part of his careers making over a 100 appearances for the club before ending his playing careers at Ayr United.

Ferguson’s first managerial job was at East Stirlingshire on a part time basis and quickly came into his own style as a disciplinarian, Alex started showing signs of his tactical intelligence and his team quickly improved in the league. St Mirren was his next job were again he was able to turn a clubs fortunes around. But after some alleged breaches of contract St Mirren became the only club to sack Sir Alex Ferguson. 1978 came along and a new club for Alex, this time it was with one of the biggest clubs in Scotland at the time Aberdeen. Things didn’t start to well and Alex who was relatively young for a manager struggled to gain any respect. But after a long stint of 24 years without a league trophy Alex managed to clinch it and then again another two times. Alex also found European success at Aberdeen winning the European Cup Winners Cup in 1983 before joining up with Manchester United in 1986 which famously didn’t start off to well and threatened with the sack, but if he was he would never have become the most successful manager in England, well done United he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in the latest climate.

Ferguson has had many of his own players make the step up to managerial positions in Premiership club, Coppell, Bruce and Hughes to name a few and one of them touted to become the future successor of Sir Alex is the former outspoken captain Roy Keane. Sunderland haven’t had the best of starts in the top flight, so I have given Alex a chance to show Roy how to do it properly seeing if Ferguson can take over at Sunderland work wonders there.

Season 2007/08
Sir Alex obviously felt in his first season that he had the squad available to him to fulfil the goals of the first season, the papers said 16th place should be a realistic target and to do that the only signings that came in was 19 year old Jordy Buijs and Costa Rican ageing midfielder Centeno both coming in on a free, but the latter being released in the March. Out the door straight away were former players of Manchester United, Cole and Yorke who obviously are not on the right side of 30. A safe mid table finish for the season finishing 12th, the highlight of which was a 2-1 victory against Arsenal even though they played the majority of the game with 10 men Jones and Wallace both finished their chances in the first half enough to seal it, Arsenal only able to put away a penalty kick. Craig Gordon was the highlight of the season meaning that Sunderland weren’t punished by to many silly goals, it seems that it is up front in which they lack. Jones being the only consistent scorer but only putting away 13 goals says it all, but in Alex’s first season in the North East his team was voted as the over achievers of the season.

Season 2008/09
The good year obviously saw the books improve as Sir Alex began to splash the cash, spending £22 million and bringing 18 players in. He brought a lot of experience to a side that was lacking in such Anders Svensson, Pablo Contreras, Tottenham’s Tanio, Paulo Ferrieira, Gokhan, Brazilian Edu Dracena, Diego Gavilan, Martin Stranzla and Ivan Alonso all raising up the average age of the club to 27. Although he did balance the side out with Steven Lennon, Barnetta, Gary Glen, Augustyn. Da Costa from PSV was the highlight of his transfers at a fee of £5 million. Conor Clifford from Chelsea and two United youngsters Eikrem and Cathcart completed the squad fodder.

But it was the older guys that made the difference to the season and pushing Sunderland further up the table this time they finished dead in the middle at 10th. Ivan Alonso grabbing 21 goals and the best signing of the season award, Da Costa playing well throughout the season. Most of the players in the squad were consistent, the secret of the success Sunderland were enjoying. A lot of the transfers that came in were to add depth into the side and experience on the backline to keep it plugged. But once again it was the strikers that were failing to pull their weight, other then Alonso it was hard to see were else a goal was going to come from. Sunderland did show there class in the FA cup managing a semi final finish until West Ham dumped them out.

Season 2009/10
Alex did more culling of the squad this season then bringing any one in. This time it was only £7 million spent in the transfer market, the majority of that spent on Juan Manuel Vargas (£6.25 million). The Peruvian proving a sure hit in his first season finishing the best player in the team with an average rating of 7.30. It was more squad fodder that arrived in the form of Pavel Pardo on a bosman, Mario Bolattie and Duran who went straight back out on loan.

Ivan Alonso had another good year but at 31 is showing his age Alex will be looking for a longer term replacement for him. The improvement this year was that Sunderland were able to find goals from all over the park instead of just relying on the strikers to find the net, Vargas taking 7 himself and few goals from other parts of the field mounted up to take Sunderland to an 8th place finish in there continuous improvement and a European Vase position. Martin Stranzl also seemed to peak this season continuing a decent defensive backline again, something becoming of a trend of this side and for the first season Sunderland finished with a positive goal difference.

Ferguson though was getting on himself and decided to retire after this season safe in the mind that he had placed down the foundations for a successful Sunderland side which Adrian Boothroyd would take control of.

After Ferguson

Boothroyd looks like he is to go for the big push now spending large amounts of cash as the Sunderland position improves. A good bit of business saw Craig Gordon leave for AC Milan for £28 million and Craig Cathcart leave for Reading for £6.75 allowing Sunderland to spend £28.5 million in the market himself. First in was Munich’s attacking midfielder Julio Daniel Dos Santos, Clint Dempsey arrived from Championship side Fulham and Bolton allowed captain Kevin Nolan to negotiate terms with Sunderland for £6.5 million. To help improve the striking situation in came Ewerthon on a free transfer a good buy for someone in top class form. The most expensive signing of the season was defender Hubschman who arrived from Pompey. But the most exciting transfer of the summer was Parma’s Luca Cigarini the central midfielder who arrived for £7 million and looks a decent player to fit into Fergie’s squad into the central midfield.

Sunderland continued there assault on the Premiership this time improving again hitting 6th in the table Jones finding his goalscoring touch again putting away 15 goals while Ewerthon and Alonso both finished with 17 a piece, improvements in the midfield with Vargas and Cigarini made the difference contribute 27 of the assists to the goals. Sunderland were also able to make it into the UEFA cup from the European Vase, managing to get to the knock out stages until meeting Champions League drop out’s Lyon who battered Sunderland 8-1 over two ties. The extra burden of Europe and league glory affected there cup competitions losing to Coventry in the league cup 3rd round before going out to Chelsea in the FA cup. Sunderland kept on spending money but the continuous improvement didn’t carry on into Boothroyds second season and Sunderland were back to the middle of the table. With the help of prolific striker Stancu one of Boothroyd’s purchases Sunderland slowly climbed up the table again finally finished 4th in the final season played.

But I can’t help but think that it was mostly down to the foundations laid by Alex Ferguson that brought the success to Sunderland, without his part in building up the reputation at The Stadium of Light I don’t think they would have been able to attract a top manager such as Boothroyd to take over when the big guy retired. Again I feel it was the managers that made the difference in this squad and I got to say the improvement of Sunderland has been the most interesting of quests so far.

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