Vì sao HLV Arsène Wenger đưa Arsenal chỉ vô địch ba mùa, rồi suốt ngày về nhì?

- ko đổi mới, ngủ quên trên chiến thắng,

- thế giới (bóng đá) cạnh tranh, thay đổi, các đối thủ đều mạnh lên,

- ba là, theo quyển The Hidden Half, thì là... hết may rồi :)

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...There are three broad explanations (lời giải thích đại khái) for these tragic (bi thảm, thảm thương) career arcs (cung, hình cung). Our instinct (bản năng) is to blame (đổ lỗi) the individual. We assume that Mr Woodford lost his touch (mất kỹ năng) and that Mr Wenger stopped learning (không tiếp tục học hỏi). That is possible. Successful people can become overconfident (quá tự tin), or isolated (cách ly) from feedback (phản hồi, góp ý), or lazy (lười biếng).

But an alternative possibility (khả năng khác) is that the world changed. Mr Wenger’s emphasis on diet, data and the global transfer market (thị trường chuyển nhượng toàn cầu) was once unusual, but when his rivals (đối thủ) noticed (nhận ra) and began to follow suit (bắt chước), his edge disappeared. In the investment world — and indeed, the business world more broadly — good ideas don’t work forever because the competition (cạnh tranh) catches on (bắt kịp, đuổi kịp).

The third explanation is the least satisfying: that luck was at play. This seems implausible (không có vẻ hợp lý, không có vẻ thật, đáng ngờ) at first glance (cái nhìn đầu tiên/thoáng qua). Could luck alone have brought Mr Wenger three Premier League titles? Or that Mr Bolton was simply lucky for 28 years? Do we really live in such an impossibly random universe (vũ trụ ngẫu nhiên)?

Perhaps we do. Michael Blastland’s recent book, The Hidden Half, argues that much of the variation we see in the world around us is essentially mysterious. Mr Blastland’s opening example is the marmorkrebs, a kind of crayfish that reproduces parthenogenetically (sinh sản đơn tính) — that is, marmorkrebs lay eggs without mating and those eggs develop into clones of their mothers.

Place two clones into two identical fish tanks and feed them identical food. These genetically identical creatures raised in apparently identical environments produce genetically identical offspring who nevertheless vary dramatically in their size, form, lifespan, fecundity, and behaviour. Sometimes things turn out very differently for no reason that we can discern. We might as well call that reason “luck” as anything else.

This is not to say that skill doesn’t matter — merely that in a competition in which all the leaders are highly skilled, randomness may explain the difference between triumph and failure. Good luck plus skill beats bad luck plus skill any time.