I don't underplay the significance of coaches and managers at all, what I said was I think you have an over elaborate idea of what happens in training. Managers have a massive influence over how well a team will do but the training ground is only one part of it and not the biggest part. The biggest part is actually emphasised most by our friend Spurs King who talks constantly about team building and he's right. Managers will decide on a system and style they want to play and it's usually based around their resources and quality of player that they can attract and recruit.
The clown for example at Liverpool has recruited 15 players in a year, this more than anything will or should determine how a side wants to play, at Liverpool it doesn't because he clearly doesn't know what he is doing and squad wise certainly they are weaker than when he started his net £64 million spree. He's now playing 4 CB's, 3 at the back, and god knows whatever else is going on there. He's bought all those players, spent all of that money and he has no clearly defined idea of what to do with them.
AVB on the other hand as an example has also been very active signing 15 players who are all or have been with the exception of Fryers key members of his match day squad and purchased with a system in mind and are players who have the ability and skill sets to play how he wants.
This is the most important area of management, get it right and you have every chance of succeeding whatever your targets are as long as they are realistic to your wage & transfer budgets, be it qualifying for Europe or staying in the league.
After this there are 2 main aspects, how you prepare your team for matches both individually and collectively. Instilling your own patterns of play and block work both in and out of possession. This is where most coaches although doing different things and requiring different things from their sides which is quite often determined by the ability at their disposal will work in a reasonably similar way and even do a lot of the same drills. Some will ask their players to play from defence more than others, some know they have better players than other teams so will work systems accordingly and some know they don't and will work accordingly to that. But players at clubs like Spurs for example don't train that much once the season is under way, usually limiting their sessions to short sharp affairs as they are always preparing for matches and nothing kills players like over training. The rest of the time is spent analysing opposition, how to expose them and how to defend against them but much of this is meeting based.
Finally of course is where Ferguson was King, which is getting your squad mentally tuned into immediate, short term and long term goals and the belief that you can instill in the players to achieve them.
I think some people over imagine what goes on at training grounds and have this grandiose view that some managers are turning ordinary players into Brazil out there whilst others are instructing their players to do no more than kick the shit out of the opposition.
Oh and as is famously touted Wenger does pretty much nothing on the training ground, he just buys players who naturally fit into his system of play, that's it nothing special, nothing ground breaking and nothing overly complicated!
