[QUOTE=“The Scouse Cafu, post: 949885, member: 2660”]My opinion on McGuinness is quite nuanced, Kevin. I like nuance. He clearly has a rather large ego, and he’s definitely a bit of a cunt. He’s made judgement calls that I didn’t like, but that’s his prerogative and in a county like Donegal he clearly felt, and perhaps with some justification, that he had to make them. He’s not worried about falling out with people because he’s single-minded in pursuit of success and has seen where previous Donegal management teams have fallen down.
Nobody’s arguing that you can’t change your mind about things. What you’ve done is you have gone from being a true believer to believing that Donegal’s failure last year completely invalidates his success before that, which is very obviously not the case.
Astute people come with all sorts of personalities and make all sorts of mistakes too. Pat Gilroy would now be seen as a tactically astute manager, yet he presided over the worst collapse in Dublin football history and a five goal thrashing by Meath. He never got the Dublin team to even look at a video of what happened against Tyrone in 2008 and was powerless to explain what happened against Kerry in 2009, apart from calling his team “startled earwigs”. He didn’t look very astute at the time.
Lots of astute people show their arrogance to the world. Jose Mourinho has shown plenty of astuteness over the years but shows a lot more arrogance. Is Rupert Murdoch astute? Is he a cunt?
Why is McHugh gone? Perhaps he doesn’t have the appetite for it. He’s about 24 and perhaps feels that he wants to do something else with his life for a while.
Who, in your view would have got Donegal to challenge for an All-Ireland last year? 2012 was their second ever All-Ireland. One All-Ireland is seen as an end in itself in a county like Donegal. One team in the last 24 years has retained the title. It was rather predictable that they wouldn’t be near the same force last year, given the necessary sacrifices that that inter-county GAA players have to make in order to be successful.
Donegal have some excellent players (I’d say probably four are genuine top class players - Murphy, McFadden, Lacey, McGlynn - and in the case of McFadden and McGlynn they would not have been regarded as top class when McGuinness took over) but that can be said of lots of counties. I certainly don’t think their talent pool stands out in Ulster and is well behind Dublin and Cork. I don’t believe they have near the capacity to play like Dublin. What McGuinness has done is implement a system. The system instilled discipline in the players. Then it bred confidence. The confidence made the players better. Then the better players made the system better and enabled them to refine it. It’s a virtuous circle.[/QUOTE]
Sid I never said anything he did post 2013 in anyway diminishes winning in 2012, that’s utter crap and you know it.
I have, and still give, him huge credit for what he did, for many of the reasons you outlined above. This does not mean he hasn’t made some serious errors of judgement since.
You basically agree with me on nearly everything and visa versa, you must just be bored an looking for a disagreement.
