Back in January we discussed Mauricio Pochettino, who yesterday left Southampton to become manager of Tottenham Hotspur. He is without question the hottest management property in the most bloated league in football.
He was also an unemployed flop a little over a year ago.
In reality, Pochettino is a good manager but he is also the latest in a long line of faux guru-managers, the aura of divinity around him is illusionary. He was sacked by Espanyol in December 2012 with the club bottom of La Liga after 13 games, after propelling them up the league from a similar position two years earlier. Espanyol’s problems were not Pochettino’s problems. The club strategy had been failing for years, Pochettino was not the first manager to suffer as a consequence, in fact, he was the club’s third manager in a season when he took over.
He joined Southampton, who were on a different trajectory. Southampton have been producing some of the best youth talent in the UK for a decade but a series of self-harming boardroom battles saw the club competing in the third tier of English football. In Nigel Adkins the found a man who won two consecutive promotions and had them comfortable in the Premier League.
Then, in January last year, Southampton made one of the ballsy-est decisions in football history. They sacked the successful Adkins and replaced him with the aforementioned unemployed flop.
Chairman Nicola Cortese, who was an outsider to the football industry, figured that Adkins could only take the club so far and that, with the appointment of a man in-tune with the new strategy, Southampton could make a real breakthrough at the top of the Premiership.
Pochettino did what Cortese wanted, not through obligation, but through instinct. Unfortunately for Southampton, Markus Liebharr, who appointed Cortese, died, and his daughter-and-heir, Katharine, figured the family had spent enough of their fortune on an English football club. With strategy tending towards a breakeven point, Cortese resigned. It was inevitable that Pochettino would follow.
What are the lessons for us?
Forget looking for a guru, it’s all about the strategy. Get the strategy right, only employ people who are instinctively aligned to it, and employ an intelligent, tactical student, even if he can’t speak the language.
CQN Event in London
Lisbon Lion John Hughes is joining Brogan Rogan, Auldheid and Angela Haggerty for a CQN Question and Answer evening at the Manor Club, Wimbledon, on 21 June. The event is ticket only, so let me know if you would like to attend, celticquicknews@gmail.com
Visit the CQN Bookstore to get Tommy Gemmell to sign your personal copy of his tome, All the Best.
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The bookmakers wouldn’t lay you two trout to a trout
– they must suspect there’s somethin’ fishy goin’ on in the race to fill the Parkhead hot seat.
bournesouprecipe
Aye they know there’s something fishy going on por cierto.
16 roads – Celtic über alles…
17:12 on 28 May, 2014
So how many punters would have to put a £ each on the Pope for him to become favourite?
Acgr. At least it’s an honest wage.
HH jamesgang
BSR- go steady on the ole fugu.
L
‘The mother narrative to all this is carbon-fuelled expansion. Our ideologies are mere subplots.’unga Photograph: Alamy
et us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled one cubic metre. Let us propose that these possessions grew by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC? This is the calculation performed by the investment banker Jeremy Grantham.
Go on, take a guess. Ten times the size of the pyramids? All the sand in the Sahara? The Atlantic ocean? The volume of the planet? A little more? It’s 2.5 billion billion solar systems. It does not take you long, pondering this outcome, to reach the paradoxical position that salvation lies in collapse.
To succeed is to destroy ourselves. To fail is to destroy ourselves. That is the bind we have created. Ignore if you must climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; even if all these issues miraculously vanished, the mathematics of compound growth make continuity impossible.
Economic growth is an artefact of the use of fossil fuels. Before large amounts of coal were extracted, every upswing in industrial production would be met with a downswing in agricultural production, as the charcoal or horse power required by industry reduced the land available for growing food. Every prior industrial revolution collapsed, as growth could not be sustained. But coal broke this cycle and enabled –for a few hundred years –the phenomenon we now call sustained growth.
It was neither capitalism nor communism that made possible the progress and pathologies (total war, the unprecedented concentration of global wealth, planetary destruction) of the modern age. It was coal, followed by oil and gas. The meta-trend, the mother narrative, is carbon-fuelled expansion. Our ideologies are mere subplots. Now, with the accessible reserves exhausted, we must ransack the hidden corners of the planet to sustain our impossible proposition.
On Friday, a few days after scientists announced that the collapse of the west Antarctic ice sheet is now inevitable,the Ecuadorean government decided to allow oil drilling in the heart of the Yasuni national park. It had made an offer to other governments: if they gave it half the value of the oil in that part of the park, it would leave the stuff in the ground. You could see this as either blackmail or fair trade. Ecuador is poor, its oil deposits are rich. Why, the government argued, should it leave them untouched without compensation when everyone else is drilling down to the inner circle of hell? It asked for $3.6bn and received $13m. The result is that Petroamazonas, a company with a colourful record of destruction and spills, will now enter one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, in which a hectare of rainforest is said to contain more species than exist in the entire continent of North America.
Yasuni national park. Murray Cooper/Minden Pictures/Corbis
The UK oil firm Soco is now hoping to penetrate Africa’s oldest national park, Virunga,in the Democratic Republic of Congo; one of the last strongholds of the mountain gorilla and the okapi, of chimpanzees and forest elephants. In Britain, where a possible 4.4 billion barrels of shale oil has just been identified in the south-east,the government fantasises about turning the leafy suburbs into a new Niger delta. To this end it’s changing the trespass laws to enable drilling without consent and offering lavish bribes to local people. These new reserves solve nothing. They do not end our hunger for resources; they exacerbate it.
The trajectory of compound growth shows that the scouring of the planet has only just begun. As the volume of the global economy expands, everywhere that contains something concentrated, unusual, precious, will be sought out and exploited, its resources extracted and dispersed, the world’s diverse and differentiated marvels reduced to the same grey stubble.
Some people try to solve the impossible equation with the myth of dematerialisation: the claim that as processes become more efficient and gadgets are miniaturised, we use, in aggregate, fewer materials. There is no sign that this is happening. Iron ore production has risen 180% in 10 years. The trade body Forest Industries tells us that “global paper consumption is at a record high level and it will continue to grow”. If, in the digital age, we won’t reduce even our consumption of paper, what hope is there for other commodities?
Look at the lives of the super-rich, who set the pace for global consumption. Are their yachts getting smaller? Their houses? Their artworks?Their purchase of rare woods,rare fish, rare stone? Those with the means buy ever bigger houses to store the growing stash of stuff they will not live long enough to use. By unremarked accretions, ever more of the surface of the planet is used to extract, manufacture and store things we don’t need. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that fantasies about colonising space –which tell us we can export our problems instead of solving them –have resurfaced.
As the philosopher Michael Rowan points out, the inevitabilities of compound growth mean that if last year’s predicted global growth rate for 2014 (3.1%) is sustained, even if we miraculously reduced the consumption of raw materials by 90%, we delay the inevitable by just 75 years. Efficiency solves nothing while growth continues.
The inescapable failure of a society built upon growth and its destruction of the Earth’s living systems are the overwhelming facts of our existence. As a result, they are mentioned almost nowhere. They are the 21st century’s great taboo, the subjects guaranteed to alienate your friends and neighbours. We live as if trapped inside a Sunday supplement: obsessed with fame, fashion and the three dreary staples of middle-class conversation: recipes, renovations and resorts. Anything but the topic that demands our attention.
Statements of the bleeding obvious, the outcomes of basic arithmetic, are treated as exotic and unpardonable distractions, while the impossible proposition by which we live is regarded as so sane and normal and unremarkable that it isn’t worthy of mention. That’s how you measure the depth of this problem: by our inability even to discuss it.
Twitter: @georgemonbiot. A fully referenced version of this article can be found at Monbiot.com
HH
ernie
Miracles do happen, ask The Pope, he knows all about them, por cierto.
The Unthank Road, if you’re lurking can you get in touch with me via my acgr@hotmail.co.uk addy please. I have a few questions about Jura (the island, not the dram).
HH
Anyone know how to get in to amend your details in the CQN ‘registry’, please …!!??
Celtic are close to agreeing on a deal that will see Owen Coyle take over as the clubs manager for the next 3 years. A source inside the club confirmed Coyle met with club chief executive Peter Lawwell this afternoon, and talks are now at an advanced stage. More to follow…
From the record. maybe they’ve been Artur Jorge’d again.
In my opinion Neil Lennon could easily have walked when all the trouble was bubbling around the bomb threats, bullets etc.
He is too much of a man for that and gets my full backing for not giving “them” their day.
Who could have blamed him if he would have walked then? Not me.
Instead he dug deep and showed great character leading us to glory and managing the club he loved.
Now that the scum have not won he has decided to reflect and leave when he felt right instead of being harassed into it.
For that Neil Lennon gets my full backing and I wish him every success wherever he ends up as he deserves it.
As I say, my opinion.
Mincey.
Once a Celt.
Always a Celt.
Love it!
http://talkingbaws.com/2014/05/28/cheeky-celtic-shop-sits-replica-european-cup-in-front-of-rangers-advert/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
TwentyfirstofMaynineteenSeventyNine..’
At .. 17.13
Heck..Pal.. Ah wull tak THAT!
Fur… Even…. Ah, Masel….Dinnae Agree.. wi a Loat o the Stuff which Ah write oan Here…!
Dae Ye think that Ah Am …well..
NUTS?
Don’t Answer that..Pally.. !
Nice chatting..
as Alwiz.. Pally..
Kojo
Still,Laughin.
AweNaw – I am quite literally just after reading that article in the Guardian.
Will it bring Philvis out from retirement?
Probably not. I think he is Nigel Farage.
Talking of someone from left field, how about Chris Morris or was he a right back? Anyway, he’s kind of foreign, being Anglo-Irish. Hope that isn’t racist.
Apropos nothing at all….
BBC website had interesting piece on best freed XI from EPL. Sobering reading in some ways….shopping list on others!
Joleon Lescott until recently of man city. I’d always kept thinking of him as a brightish youngish thing who’d lost his place on the whim of a new manager and would surely soon see the light and move to get a start somewhere else…..
He’s 31. He’s basically spent his career sitting on a reccaro padded seat…..
NotWhatTheGameShouldBeAboutCSC
HH jamesgang
..and from Twitter:
https://mobile.twitter.com/jpt1965/status/471656931250421761/photo/1
Paul Hartley, you cant beat a past captain as manager, I think he knows enough and has improved teams, how many seasons has he been managing ?
why is it when I happen to see an image of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury do I do a Reggie Perrin…but no Hippo do I see but a pitching wedge ….funny that …
braw
Man with only one chop stick go hungry.
Confusushious CSC
16 Roads
Neil Lennon was odds on at Norwich weeks ago ….
I heard it reported that Norwich had a short list of candidates names with one name on it … Neil Lennon.
I think that it is not a coincidence that Celtic announced Neils departure whilst he flew to London ….
I am guessing that … when Neil Lennon advised Celtic that he was leaving he may have been travelling to talk to Norwich . the deal was not done ( for whatever reason ),
It is too much of a coincidence that Norwich’s ‘only name’ flew back north and Norwich knew their chance has gone and therefore appointed Neil Adams at 7pm.
The Onlooker
algarvian-hope it’s sh€£€, PL doesn’t do 3 year contracts?
!!Bada Bing!!
17:31 on 28 May, 2014
algarvian-hope it’s sh€£€, PL doesn’t do 3 year contracts?
Yes, some clown at it, that’s why I immediately thought they had been Artur Jorge’d again.
Algarvian
at 17.23
Is that wit the Daily Record is Reporting?
N.. They Hiv that Info.. From an “Inside Source”
Hmmmmmm
Well..
That settles it!
Ownie.. wull be the Man fur Us..
Must say Ah am Disappointed in Mr. Lawwell..
Ah thought that he Had Mair Perspicacity n a Biggrer Dose o’… Sagacity… Than That.
It jist goes tae Show..
That Ah hiv Mis-Judged.. Pierre’s Acumen..N.. Very Badly.. Tae!
Nice chatting ,Pally.. As Alwiz.
The Good News.. That goes with that Reportage?
It means thay YOU FELLAHS ur Stuck wi’ .. Kojo.. fur the Foreseeable, Then!
Kojo
Still Laughin’
Follow followers now discussing the latest initiative which is apparently taking place in the blue room. (How appropriate is the name of that room?). Anyhow, it’s a ” ready to listen” meeting.
I’m sorry but anyone who is not feeling sorry for these poor sods by now must have no compassion in their soul. Could we not have a wee fundraiser on CQN to help them out?
Just an idea.
BMCUW could you not organise a wee shindig? Similar to your previous hootenanny?
Mibbes a hootfurfannies?
Evening Folks.
Been busy for the lst couple of days so have hardly had time to see what is going on — so what gives I ask?
I see there has been a leak from CQN Towers that the new CQN Speedos are to be unveiled just before the summer holidays.
Now– we are looking for the group of “Appropriately equipped” CQN’ers to model these fine aquatic briefs which come in a attractive montage of green, white and gold with the legend ” CQN Speedos — Podium Chaser!” discreetly placed on the waistband.
The lucky few who are chosen, will model this exclusive range of beach and poolwear in a forthcoming catalogue which will be the talk of the terraces next season.
An on site photo shoot at Prestwick beach has been arranged — although we are waiting for a suitably sunny day.
A special Stornaway Black Pudding range has been designed for Hebcelt and the climate he is used to ( basically the Hebcelt range comes with gloves, a scarf and a Glengarry type hat ).
So — nominations and volunteers for the modelling positions are welcome.
If there is enough interest from our female posters, there may well be a swimwear design option for that market with either the CQN Bikini or one piece swimsuit.
All other suggestions are welcome.
Danny MacAskill @danny_macaskill · 7m
#Epecuen is definitely the most amazing place I have ever ridden! Have to say a big thanks to all my friends for… http://fb.me/16zdTB2u5
Excellent video
If the Budgie Smugglers come in beige,Voguepunter would be up for it i’m sure……:)
I heard Zheng Zhi was available
BRTH…. might be interested if they are stretch material!
ernie lynch
17:17 on 28 May, 2014
————————————————-
Good point Ernie.
Knowing those charlatans, if you went to have £5000 on the Pope at 500/1 they would probably buy you a pint,increase the price to 1000/1,take your money and wish you good luck… because it is never going to happen.
The token novelty be.
On the other hand, ask them to lay you £5000 on Roy Keane @ say 3/1, and they will politely tell you to go away, or let you have £50 @ 3’s.
Don’t read too much into those particular markets is all that I am saying, they are a nonsense, just like the tv specials, Britain’s Got Talent winner etc.
Only there for people to have fun with, and to generate a wee bit of publicity.
Nothing serious.
HH.
BRTH
Bit late – the Lingerie World Cup took place in Holland last Saturday.
No idea who won – think cups were awarded in categories A-F!
:-)
My Dear Kojo…
I Reckon That If Roy Keane Is Imposed On Us..
The Decision Will Have Been Made By The Oirish Raj….
With PL Having Little Input….
A Totally DISASTROUS Scenario….
However,I’m Suitably Re-Assured After A Quick Call To Owenie’s Granny….
She Reckons It’s A Cunning Ruse To Soften Up The Opposition From Our ‘Awkward Squad’….
To The Appointment Of Her ‘Broth Of A Boy’….
Fingers Crossed…..!
OWENIE…Oor New LEGHEND !
Nigel Farage Is A TIM!
Minceyheidman
Of the same opinion Mincey.
It could have ended differently.
Sad to see Neil go but at least it was this way.
the onlooker
17:30 on 28 May, 2014
—————————————
Again, more guesswork and speculation.
HH.
Ah see than Wan of the Notorious Laudrupp Brothers, Is nooo Being Bandied
as the Next Celtic Manager..
Ah canny see THAT Conjectured Appointment… Becoming . A Fact.
Fir… Say whit ye wull.. or.. even no say…. whit ye Won’t…
Laudrupp, is Failed Manager…
which Translates as…A Bum..or A Loser.. In the Vernacular.
Didnae he Deftly Guide.. thone Swansea Club.. tae A Big Drap..in thur Fortunes.. ??
Yes ,He did.. He so Soitenly.. Did.
So..
In Ma opinion..
He has.. Therefore… Proved, tae Be ..Unproven.. as the Kinda Manager that Celtic Need tae Guide ’em oota this Valley o’ Indecision.. n…. oan tae Continued Success.
“His Appointment Jist ..Disnae Compute.. Will Robinson.”
“Yes, Robot… Ah Know.”
Kojo
Still Laughin’
Kojo
I do hope your kidding about Nigel farages allegiance to the hoops.
I also hope your joking about Owen Coyle.
Malky McKay is keeping very quiet.
Would be happy if he was our man.