Newcastle and the rationalist error

If we can stop laughing, there’s an important lesson to learn from Newcastle United's troubles.  It’s that Newcastle’s board and fans are suffering from an illusion. It’s not just the illusion that Newcastle are a big club. It’s the belief that successful organizations can be built from scratch, if only you can give the job to the right man.
Very often, this is wrong. It‘s the rationalist error, believing that conscious human agency has unbounded powers.
Instead, successful organizations are grown over time by piecemeal improvements. Take the two most successful football clubs (I‘m ignoring mere money launderers who just buy success), Arsenal and Manyoo. Wenger and Ferguson took over teams with a strong core - some good players and a fanbase with a passing acquaintance with reality. They could therefore make piecemeal improvements, such as persuading players to be occasionally sober. Success emerged over time.
Of course, sometimes a genius will create a great team from nothing, as Shankly did at Liverpool and Clough at Derby and Forest. But such men are prodigiously rare, and it’s almost impossible to identify them in advance, or even after they’ve been in the job a while; Clough‘s first season at Derby, and Shankly‘s first at Liverpool were lacklustre. Had they been held to the same standards Geordies demanded of Allardyce, we might never have heard of them.
“Find a genius” is not a viable strategy.
My point here is not just a footballing one. Football can illuminate less important areas of life such as politics.  What Geordies don’t have - and what has got their team into its current position - is what Michael Oakeshott in this truly great book called the conservative temperament - a scepticism about rationality, a preference for the grown over the built, for the tried rather than the untried, for the actual rather than the possible.
But then, as Oakeshott said, “if the present is arid, offering little or nothing to be used or enjoyed, then this inclination will be weak or absent.”   

Comments

[dearieme]

"It‘s the rationalist error, believing that conscious human agency has unbounded powers."
Agreeing with Hayek, eh?

[ortega]

To dearieme:

If Oakeshott is taken as a model here, it is not possible to agree with Hayek.
That is what Oakeshott said about Hayek's 'Road to serfdom': "A plan to resist all planning maybe better than its opposite, but it belongs to the same style of politics..." (In the book mentioned above).

[QuestionThat]

I can only conclude from this that you didn't watch much of the appalling excuse for football that Newcastle United played under Allardyce?

He had no idea how to adjust to managing a team like NUFC, how to play with the quality players he had (Emre, Duff, Martins, Milner all wasted under Allardyce) in a way that it would be reasonable to expect the Geordie faithful to get behind. When the fans booed Newcastle against Liverpool, it wasn't because they lost 3-0, but because they were so ridiculously negative, against a mediocre side by Liverpool standards, that if they'd played well into the night they wouldn't have scored.

Instead he tried to turn Newcastle into Bolton, battlers playing percentage football, trying to grind out a draw away to bloody Wigan by playing 4-5-1 - and failing miserably.

Meanwhile, Manchester City have played great football, are currently level on points with Liverpool, and look very good bets for a UEFA Cup place with a manager who has had less time in the hot seat than Allardyce. Meanwhile Newcastle languish in mid-table. However you define "big club", if Manchester City are one then so are Newcastle United.

Newcastle were absolutely right to cut their losses and turf out Allardyce before he started splashing around buying players only for the next manager to have to sell (like Souness did) in the transfer window.

Granted, it would have been better if they'd had someone lined up to replace him but we can't have it all!

[Planeshift]

How long was Bruce Rioch given at Arsenal?

[dearieme]

ortega, surely Hayek and Oakeshott agree in rejecting the notion that "conscious human agency has unbounded powers" even if they would differ on how best to cope with that rejection?

[Will]

Mr Clever Dick again.

Woeful shit from you Mr Stumbling. Try looking at the world through specs that aren't covered in shitty little economist's jism. Oooooo -- look -- he knows what econometrics means -- piss off wanker and fuckstain. The clasping at the singularity of the inauthentic piece of shit to which you cling is an embarrassment. Cockney fucking scum and all you represent...kill yourself now -- that would be an altruistic event, you, the actor disappears from view, pleasant indeed.

[hakmao]

Or, to translate:

We're sick of negativist fuckwits and sneering Southerners, and we're quite happy if NUFC is not the focus of media beat-ups and speculation. Still the eighth most successful team in English football, no one's expecting Champions League football in the short term, but it is nice if your team actually runs out and tries to score goals -- especially when playing teams of the quality of Derby or Wigan.

[hakmao]

True Faith fanzine on negativist fuckwits and sneering Southerners:

The media have been at it again. The whoppas with lap tops, who spent the last few months heaping loads of pressure on Allardyce and creating an intolerable environment for him are now in full on revisionist mode – it's the Geordies who are to blame, high expectations and how can the club possibly succeed with the constant change in managers. The brass neck of some of them has to be seen to be believed!

[reason]

Surely the skepticism is not for rationality itself, but about the extent of our knowledge.

[Recusant]

"mere money launderers who just buy success".

So you can build successful teams from scratch then?

[dsquared]

[However you define "big club", if Manchester City are one then so are Newcastle United.]

I'd define it as "won a major trophy in the last fifty years".

Still, nice to see the revolutionary socialists giving their support to a billionaire from Buckinghamshire's latest investment.

[reason]

I'm wondering whether even "find a genius" would work anymore. See the genius does one of two things
1. Spot talent that others can't see
2. Introduce innovative playing/training systems

Both may be harder to do now, simply because we know more than we used to and are more systematic about applying that knowledge. And we must be nearer to reaching the optimum strategy for the game.

[Minute]

Ferguson and Wenger *did* have instant success: Ferguson was league runner-up in his first full season and Wenger won the double.

But why are Newcastle seen as having done badly? In the last fifteen years they had five great years under Keegan and five good ones under Robson. They've had two cup finals and their league record compares well to Tottenham, Villa, Sunderland, Sheff Wed, Man City, etc. Liverpool have done better, of course, but considering the millions more they have spent, the inheritance they had, and their luck in finals, have they done that much better?

Nor are Newcastle a managers' graveyard: Gullit, Roeder and Souness were not great managers anywhere.

Newcastle have two major problems: it's difficult to break into the top four, and it's difficult to attract top players and managers to the north-east. Still, I wish them well.