Tinker on.

[The Camel]

Ignore the haters Tighty. This is British culture. Build our heroes up- knock them straight back down

I'm absolutely not a hater.

I'm funking for Leicester to win it all as much as the next man. Love Ranieri, Okazaki and Ulloa. Chuffed for journeyman pros like Albrighton, Drinkwater and Morgan for whom this whole season must like a dream. Kante and Mahrez are breathtakingly good at what they do and I admire them greatly.

And if Vardy is an obnoxious, odious, racist thug, sobeit.

No team is perfect.

[rinswun]

I'm on Spurs at 22s so I'm obv funking for a Leicester fade haha. Regardless of the stats, incredible story, incred season.

[nirvana]

Ignore the haters Tighty. This is British culture. Build our heroes up- knock them straight back down

So lame - this is one of those ridiculously easy things to say- straight out of a tabloid, not true and meaningless. Pretty sure Tighty (aw, poor tighty) doesn't need anyone to tell him to ignore most of us

Good Sherriff effort tho

[George2Loose]

Not trying to sherif anything. Happens time and time again. Routing for the underdog turns into some sort of witch hunt

[kukushkin88]

Not trying to sherif anything. Happens time and time again. Routing for the underdog turns into some sort of witch hunt

Understanding of maths has nothing to do with hating anything or witch hunt's.

[TightEnd]

this is interesting.

Caley

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fancy-stats/wp/2016/04/21/leicester-citys-run-in-premier-league-is-crazier-than-youd-think/

"The lesson of this incredible season is not peculiar to Leicester. Good resource management, smart acquisitions and quality tactics can elevate a smaller club to competitiveness. The examples of Everton and Southampton show this, as well. Once you are competitive, you are in position to take advantage of a run of good fortune should it hit. And Leicester City has taken that advantage nearly all the way to a league title."

[arbboy]

Don't people remember when Newcastle's scouting policy was being lauded a few years ago as genius?   The chief shout Carr got a 25 year contract from Ashley off short term results which were nothing more than variance as has been proved a couple of years later.  Leicester's scouting is no better or worse than most team's in the EPL significantly anyway.  They just got lucky this year striking gold and how they all gelled together.  They have a team spirit similar to the Crazy gang off the field from all accounts.  You can't scout for this unique situation.  It rarely happens in modern day sport because of the money involved and the egos.

You seriously telling me Leicester has signficantly better resource management than Stoke and West Ham for example long term?  Stoke and WHam's owners are two of the shrewder operators financially both in football (far more relative experience as owners in modern day football than Leicesters) and business and i would assume are doing everything Leicester are doing and more maybe (with bigger budgets) to maximize the off field edges they can squeeze.

[JohnCharver]

Don't people remember when Newcastle's scouting policy was being lauded a few years ago as genius.   The chief shout Carr got a 25 year contract from Ashley off short term results which were nothing more than variance as has been proved a couple of years later.  Leicester's scouting is no better or worse than most team's in the EPL significantly anyway.  They just got lucky this year striking gold and how they all gelled together.  They have a team spirit similar to the Crazy gang off the field from all accounts.  You can't scout for this unique situation.  It rarely happens in modern day sport because of the money involved and the egos.

You seriously telling me Leicester has signficantly better resource management than Stoke and West Ham for example long term?  Stoke and WHam's owners are two of the shrewder operators financially both in football and business and i would assume are doing everything Leicester are doing and more maybe (with bigger budgets) to maximize the off field edges they can squeeze.

Now hes universally viewed as hopeless. Almost all of those amazing finds are now worthless.  Think its far more relevant to draw parallels with chelseas team of last season because of how matic, hazard and costas performanced last season compared to kante, mahrez and vardy this season.

In fairness to newcastles scouting network theres been plenty of good players we have wanted and couldnt land because of tight wad ashley and for a period bigger clubs simply followed us in making our scouting a mere extension of their own, something leicester if league winners will be less susceptible to.

[TightEnd]

Sir Alex Ferguson no less, has described Steve Walsh as the most influential man in the premier league this year

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/6997258/Sir-Alex-Ferguson-sensationally-claims-Leicester-will-win-the-Premier-League-with-THREE-games-to-spare.html

he helped chelsea build their first monied squad in 2003-4. found drogba, essien etc

he teamed up with Pearson and has a great strike rate

not without his misses, but hugely positive

i genuinely believe we have way above average resources in "below top end" scouting. ie not Ozil for £32m but finding the sub £10m stuff

Arsenal have alread poached Ben Wigglesworth from his team and wanted Walsh too

we currently have 9 european scouts and i see the list of where we go every weekend. its a huge span of games across lots of countries

i accept the above will get laughed at, but he's very good and he has a great team around him


i don't also see team of our size with the investment in sports science we've made. not an easy sell to make this, but the injury record can be linked to the resources thrown into this (work on recovery times etc) as well of course as not being in many competitions

arsenal and spurs attend seminars at our training ground run by our sports science staff.

its like walking onto the bridge of the USS enterprise walking round the buildings.

--

when taking leicester, stoke,west ham etc as a whole technology in scouting has really levelled the playing field. i forget the system they use but it enables any player around the world to be watched at the click of a button, stats up to compare and contrast etc

ten years ago before these systems the big clubs had a huge advantage, not now

[JohnCharver]

 i forget the system they use but it enables any player around the world to be watched at the click of a button, stats up to compare and contrast etc

Football manager?

[TightEnd]

its called wyscout

"5 Recruitment

The fact Vardy and Mahrez cost less than £1.5m between them and would probably fetch at least 20 times that sum now says much for the recruitment and scouting department that has its fingerprints all over Leicester’s success and is increasingly attracting admiring glances from elsewhere.

Overseen by Walsh, who is the club’s joint assistant manager as well as their head of recruitment, Leicester have picked up several gems over the last few years and believe they may well have unearthed another in Kanté. Walsh has three predominantly office-based staff, who use the computer system Wyscout to scour through footage of the top five European leagues, putting together clips of already flagged-up targets while also comparing statistics of players elsewhere with those at their own club (Kanté had the best figures in Europe last season for recovering the ball).

They also have twelve full time scouts with David Worthington recently appointed head of European scouting, and it is no surprise other clubs are taking an interest in their work given their track record. Early this year Leicester lost Rob Mackenzie, their head of technical scouting, to Tottenham.

Walsh always insists players are watched live before they are pursued more seriously and will often attend games with David Mills, the senior scouting co-ordinator, before reporting back to Ranieri. The manager has bought into the process and insists that he and Walsh must be in agreement on a player before they proceed."

that was from last november

[TightEnd]

one of the other things that has gone on is of course we have hugely wealthy owners

all spending on training facilities, backroom staff such as scouting/sports science etc was FFP allowable expenditure and allowed the denominator of the wages/costs equation to rise substantially..in turn this allowed the wage bill on players to go up

so advances in technology hit over the same period as the imposition of FFP rules and the club being bought thus having the resources to do something about it to create a much more competitive club. We then had to make the right recruitment/managerial decisions to take it all to fruition

once you establish in the PL, it becomes self sustaining but that 2009-2013 period of trying to get up needed the investment to make it happen

even so, it is strongly argued that we "cheated" on FFP in our promotion season despite this (trestellar marketing deal)

[hhyftrftdr]

one of the other things that has gone on is of course we have hugely wealthy owners

all spending on training facilities, backroom staff such as scouting/sports science etc was FFP allowable expenditure and allowed the denominator of the wages/costs equation to rise substantially..in turn this allowed the wage bill on players to go up

so advances in technology hit over the same period as the imposition of FFP rules and the club being bought thus having the resources to do something about it to create a much more competitive club. We then had to make the right recruitment/managerial decisions to take it all to fruition

once you establish in the PL, it becomes self sustaining but that 2009-2013 period of trying to get up needed the investment to make it happen

even so, it is strongly argued that we "cheated" on FFP in our promotion season despite this (trestellar marketing deal)

So basically you've bought the league? Absolute scandal.

[TightEnd]

one of the other things that has gone on is of course we have hugely wealthy owners

all spending on training facilities, backroom staff such as scouting/sports science etc was FFP allowable expenditure and allowed the denominator of the wages/costs equation to rise substantially..in turn this allowed the wage bill on players to go up

so advances in technology hit over the same period as the imposition of FFP rules and the club being bought thus having the resources to do something about it to create a much more competitive club. We then had to make the right recruitment/managerial decisions to take it all to fruition

once you establish in the PL, it becomes self sustaining but that 2009-2013 period of trying to get up needed the investment to make it happen

even so, it is strongly argued that we "cheated" on FFP in our promotion season despite this (trestellar marketing deal)

So basically you've bought the league? Absolute scandal.

the wage bill is £55m. Could just about get Sergio and Prince Harry De Bruyne for a year for that :-) 

[hhyftrftdr]

one of the other things that has gone on is of course we have hugely wealthy owners

all spending on training facilities, backroom staff such as scouting/sports science etc was FFP allowable expenditure and allowed the denominator of the wages/costs equation to rise substantially..in turn this allowed the wage bill on players to go up

so advances in technology hit over the same period as the imposition of FFP rules and the club being bought thus having the resources to do something about it to create a much more competitive club. We then had to make the right recruitment/managerial decisions to take it all to fruition

once you establish in the PL, it becomes self sustaining but that 2009-2013 period of trying to get up needed the investment to make it happen

even so, it is strongly argued that we "cheated" on FFP in our promotion season despite this (trestellar marketing deal)

So basically you've bought the league? Absolute scandal.

the wage bill is £55m. Could just about get Sergio and Prince Harry De Bruyne for a month for that :-) 

fyp