When talking about managerial performance outside of football you can often categorise managers in 2 ways. As a general rule those who make decisions based on the right thing to do, and those that make decisions based on opportunities for self promotion? Of course it’s a bit of a grey area as there is sometimes the potential to do both, weighted in varying degrees obviously. However, poor managers will almost always take the latter option given the opportunity. I believe that many of our managers in recent times would make ego driven decisions based on self promotion more often than not. My view is that it was to sometimes prove themselves right regarding tactical choices, rather than change tack and by definition admit the original decision was flawed. This was particularly the case when they had persisted with a tactical choice in the face of fairly vociferous mounting criticism. It will be interesting to see how Curle reacts to the bit of criticism he has experienced of late over his substitutions? I haven’t quite decided which category Curle mainly falls into at the minute, but might get a chance to find out over the coming games? I should also add that occasionally you can replace the word ego for the word fear.
So many managers over complicate matters by trying to be too clever . Curle comes into that category regarding his substitutions and last season with his constantly changing team selections.
Just play the correct players in the correct positions and allow them to perform while negating the opposition threat .
Also admit you got it wrong every so often rather than chucking players under the bus