English clubs should not be pleased to go to places like Barcelona and get away without a thrashing. They should be able to compete. They have the resources.
Billy Beane was a guy who had been devalued by the sport as a player and now is working as a GM for a small-market team.There is such a gulf in what these teams have to spend on talent [that] they can never play equally - they can never have a true competition.
We created materials to explain Slack to individuals - what it was for, how it worked, what you're supposed to do - but we also built resources for team administrators. We wanted to give them ammunition to help convince the team.
Gerard Houllier's thoughts on the matter international football echo mine. He thinks that what the national coaches are doing is like taking the car from his garage without even asking permission. They will then use the car for ten days and abandon it in a field without any petrol left in the tank. We then have to recover it, but it is broken down. Then a month later they will come to take your car again, and for good measure you're expected to be nice about it.
You can be the best coach in the world, but if you don't have the players, you cannot get results.
I walk into the clubhouse today and it's like walking into the Mayo Clinic. We have four doctors, three therapists and five trainers. Back when I broke in, we had one trainer who carried a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and by the 7th inning he'd already drunk it.
The one thing you have to be careful of is trying to do what other teams and players are doing when you don't have the people to do it yourself.
Grant Dalton, constantly, whenever he gets asked something in the media about Oracle, he makes the statement that we have got unlimited resources, and we can do anything we like. It is just complete crap.
I've had two owners - Jim Dolan and Les Alexander in Houston. Both were terrific. They wanted to win badly and gave you the resources to win.
