This suggests that the “experiment” as you put it has failed, when in fact, myfootballclub.co.uk is still going strong.

The purists will say the “Wisdom of the Crowds” thing isn’t working, but this is only the second season that MyFC have owned EUFC and things continue to evolve, change and improve.

I think this holds true of Chelsea, since football policy is really directed through Roman Abramovich’s spending than it is the different managers; the rest is figuring out the squad, which, I’m sure, most of us here could do.

To me, managers like Ferguson and Wenger are successful because of their abilities to grow players through their youth system and finding rare talents that others would ignore. Of course, there are also the innovators who come through once a decade and set new trends regarding formations and training and so on.

As for an experiment– surely there’s an eccentric millionaire and a (sane) blogger out there who could try this out.

Even if it could work — ie, if Kuper is correct that managers don’t matter and collective wisdowm would achieve better results — Kuper also manages to prove his own point on why it could not work in football as it exists as a culture in the foreseeable future, due to the massively entrenched belief in the need for a manager from the supporters to players to ownership. It would require a total sea-change in attitudes. We’d need a few million more Syzmanskis and Kupers around.

I mentioned MyFC in the piece because even in that extreme example — where the supporters were the owners at a low-level of the game with little connection to the club or existing management and who bought into the whole concept based on being able to pick the team — even the first steps towards this were rejected by the supporter-owners themselves as unworkable in practice.

It’d certainly be fascinating, but almost impossible to implement without being a trainwreck from day one, I feel.

And also, doubting transparency in football knowledge disproves another of Kuper’s dodgy assertions, that the market is perfect when it comes to information. I don’t have a top sports journalist’s insight into these things, but I am deeply suspicious of this, especially where transfers are concerned. Not everyone can form the same relationships and networks even in much more rigidly-controlled industries – and how much more like a decentralised bazaar must the world football market be?

Having said that, I don’t know if it’s fair to dismiss his ‘wisdom of crowds’ contention on the basis of a couple of failures, Tom. I think someone ought to experiment with it. I’m confident that, given a few parameters (team and league knowledge, intent, team conditions, etc.), a sample of football fans will get all of the tactics right some of the time, and not just by chance. Leadership expectations need not always remain what they are right now.