The flaw with Pat's conclusion here is that players in this sport (and probably most sports) have always self-motivated themselves against bigger teams with big name star players, whilst at the same time it's harder for the top tier players to self-motivate when facing inferior opposition. It's always been the case, hence why theres terms like "its like their cup final" and why top teams can randomly struggle against bottom tier ones.

For NUFC specifically, no matter how bad the team or manager, whether its Souness or Allardyce or even Kinnear, and even in relegation seasons, we've frequently had our players raise their levels and match or out-perform title contending teams filled with world class footballers, at least for XX minutes. And every time we wonder why they can't play like that against worse opposition, because if they did we'd have alot more points.

But that's where a key difference between "good" and "bad" managers comes into play when facing more mediocre opposition where players won't self-motivate. The good managers will get their players to raise their levels more often through management inspired motivation, or devise/drill tactics or strategies to mitigate the inevitable drop off (such as player rotation), and therefore pick up results more consistently. Whereas the bad managers have no clue what they're doing so unless the players motivate themselves (or someone is in insane form to bail the team out) the football turns to complete dogshit and it becomes a coinflip at best. In fact bad managers usually make things worse when they start pancking (e.g. with shitty substitutions, falling out with players, etc).

And that's why the variance in performance levels is so big with a crap manager. One week we're matching some team with players worth 10x what ours are (Harry Kane and Son combined would cost more to purchase than the asking price of NUFC), then the next week we're struggling tog et a shot on target against Sheffield United.

So I wouldn't say Pat is wrong, just that he's maybe jumping the gun here.