Piccsnumberoneblue wrote:Of course the biggest deciding factor is the wage bill. I wonder how that fits in?
Attack rules. It's what we love to watch. Only weirdos love watching defensive strateg in action.
It's the truth.
In the book soccernomics (edit, this is the same book as CCJJ posted above, they renamed it in the 2nd edition), they studied this over the premier league era and found that the wage bill is believed to be something in the region of 80% responsible for the finishing position of a team. They also found that this was true in other countries, and also in the english top flight before the premier league.
They also found that the transfer spend of a club had little or no correlation to the finishing position of a team. They argued that clubs regularly pay irrational transfer fees all the time to persuade clubs to sell against their will, but that wages were generally still based on the 'going rate' for a player of that quality and experience.
I suppose the dominant view in this thread, that attack rules, really then brings in the 'x factor' - entertainment, which must surely be the reason why managers like Pellegrini adopt the 'score 1 more than you' philosophy (It doesn't explain his defensive rotation though, that just seems unnecessary). Spurs fans are well known for demanding quality attacking football, and whilst I reckon they would settle for a season of defensive play to win a league title, as with us, that would quickly turn sour if the style of play didn't improve in subsequent years.
Perhaps the take-away from this thread then, is that if you play like Mourinho, you should probably win the league most years so long as your wage bill was competetive, but if you want to play like Pellegrini you should expect that the price of entertaining football is that some years we will inexplicably under perform, and other years be amazing. It certainly explains this season down to a t.