Long term approaches are not overseen by managers these days, I'm fully aware. This is why the club appointed Murtough and Fletcher as our football directors.
City before signing Pep had the basis for their possession game in place after Mancini and Pellegrini spells, all orchestrated by former Barca directors Begiristain and Soriano. They had that strategy in mind being built by different coaches and the squad was moulded accordingly.
That's a long term strategy, something impossible if you always appoint the flavour of the month or some flashy names without any cohesion or common factor between them all, as we did after Ferguson leading us nowhere, and as some people comically want us to do as soon as we draw a pair of games.
That's why you'll never see City trying to sign Mourinho as we did based on pure desperation, and the same for Bayern to name another example of a well run club. They will never beg for a short term mercenary like him to win them the CL by playing miserable football and setting a bellic atmosphere inside. Their potential success is built on their own structures and ideas, with different managers becoming the extension of the club plans. That should be in my opinion the aim of every big club.
Once Pep leaves City you know they will have a solid platform to keep building from, and they will be immediately a pain in the arse. As Barca were back then when he left, and his former assistant Vilanova reached 100 points in the league, with the "ok guy" Enrique appointed from a humble Celta Vigo team winning the treble in his first season, beating Pep's Bayern in the process by the way.
In our case after Mourinho left we were in a pretty bad position. As I said with a mixed squad built by three different approaches in such a short time, with lots of average players around while having the biggest salary mass in the game. The efforts needed to rebuild that garbage, needing to improve the quality while having to reduce wages, developing young players and trying to get results all at the same time are not valued enough.
And this is what happens with that aggressive short term approach and why I think our board is reluctant about it. Short term managers will do everything to win now at all costs, favouring experience and patching over the cracks instead of fixing them, avoiding certain players and profiles with inevitable learning curves and blocking progression in many cases. When the lemon is squeezed and deep changes are needed they move elsewhere, leaving the problems for the club.
It's a double-edged sword. In the end you "might" win something relevant. Or not. But you're risking your position for the coming years by wasting your ammunition that way, so you have to think twice. Our club tried this model and amazingly backfired, a huge loss of money and time. As I said before last year they made their intentions clear about building a more sustainable model and taking a more patient approach, leaving a reasonable margin for development and young players coming through the ranks. From that point people can accept our current vision or keep crying pathetically around the corners, as many are doing on here.