Rubbish

[Real ale Madrid]

Well except we were still in with a shout against France in the dying minutes, whereas Georgia were well and truly on their way home halfway through the second half

A fairly tenuous shout mind you - we were down to ten men with 25 mins left and the game had fizzled out. The stats from the game are pretty similar in terms of possession and shots etc.

Getting back to the overall point I just don't see the attraction with Sagnol at all. Albeit to be fair Gerogia don't have too many good players. But they came through League C - had a home playoff v Greece, drew a weak group in the Euro's, only beat a 2nd string Portugal ( which was a great achievement ok ) but basically had all the luck in the world to get to the L16.

[pineapple stu]

I think there's a fair point in there alright.

I didn't see the Turkey game but by all accounts they played very good stuff in it as noted on here. They got the breaks against Portugal for sure (8 changes; gifted a goal after 90 seconds) and even against Spain (early goal), but overall they played reasonably well I thought. As you say, they don't have many good players - the keeper and the Napoli guy up front really? Since Sagnol took over, their Elo rating (for world rankings) has risen from 1507 (77th in the world) to 1704 (42nd). That's a decent improvement. (We're 1619/59th for example). They won their Nations League group with ease too. They were well-organised in the Euros and fluid when attacking, which is more than can be said of us the last while.

How much of all that is the emergence of Kvaratskhelia/Mamardashvili and how much of it is Sagnol? No idea.

Is Sagnol a great manager on the back of the Euros? No. But he's probably of the calibre we're aiming at, if not slightly above it.

[Jolly Red Giant]

Sagnol is still a racist