Quote: Wildmoggy "Don't mind at all! You make some good points, and yeah luck does come into play, as with lots of other things. Those Leeds youngsters mentioned are probably players that come along in a group maybe every 25, 30 years given their talent? Same at Man Utd, with Giggs, Neville, Scholes etc, but would they have been as successful without the guiding hand of Sir Alex?! There are obviously loads of elements into the making of a successful team aren't there, my argument is it just simply isn't down to money, but i'm sure history shows it's harder without money! Don't get me wrong also, I know how hard it is for clubs like ours to get hold of 15 to say 18 year old kids, who have potential, and how they always seem to end up at Wigan, Leeds, Saints etc, obviously at that age parents have a big say etc. as to where they end up.'"
"Success breeds success" seems to be the obvious quote to use here. Players are drawn to joining successful teams and so the better players inevitably end up at the more successful clubs. Those clubs can then pick and choose which ones are going to be top notch and discard the rest for the less successful clubs to pick up the pieces.
In the same way (and failure is a harsh word but) failure breeds failure. Clubs get so used to not achieving success that we accept any slight blip as a massive achievement and then expect to fall away again. That in itself then influences your ability to pick up and retain talented players.
In my eyes you probably need to get 2 or 3 sustained seasons of better than expected achievement to then be able to start building from. We've managed 1 or maybe even 2 but not been able to sustain it longer than that.
How we get that catalyst is another thing entirely and not something I have an answer to, sadly!
