On Monday night, if you listened ever so carefully, you could hear the sound of a nation of football fans collectively slapping their foreheads in despair. Brian McDermott was sacked by Reading.
After a hugely successful spell at Reading, McDermott’s sacking was disappointing to say the least. But it’s hard to say what is most troubling, the fact that he was sacked or the fact that in this day and age it wasn’t even that surprising.
The notion of the revolving door manager is all too familiar to us now. In the Premier League only four managers, Sir Alex, Arsène Wenger, David Moyes and Tony Pulis, have been with their clubs longer than 4 years. 8 of the 20 managers in the Prem are still in their first year. This will become 9 when McDermott’s successor is announced. Troubling stuff.
This is the kind of managerial story that has become all too common. Brian McDermott had been with Reading since September 2000. After a succession of different jobs at the club including working with the youth team and the reserves, McDermott was finally given the manager’s job (albeit on a temporary basis) in December 2009. After doing enough to secure the job permanently, he took over the role full time a month later.
Since then, Brian McDermott and most importantly Reading FC haven’t looked back. Each season from there on was an improvement on the last. Culminating in Reading being promoted to the Premier League by winning the Championship last season. All on a modest budget. This budget was stretched even further when McDermott was tasked with keeping the Royals in the Premier League this season.
With significant investment in the playing squad lacking, McDermott had done a respectable job in keeping Reading in the hunt for survival. On the day of his sacking, they sat 4 points from safety with 27 points still to play for.
It’s possible that Reading would have been relegated, their squad is still largely that of a Championship club. But, under McDermott, Reading had shown that they stood a chance of keeping their Premier League status. A much better chance than what had been expected of them.
The decision makers at our clubs seem incapable of seeing the big picture. Hardly any seem able to look at a manager like Brian McDermott and say “look where we were when he took over and look where we are now”. It’s simply “look where we are now”.
All the good work that a manger has done for a club, forgotten. Is it ridiculous to expect a chairman to remember the promotion that McDermott earned after replacing Brendan Rodgers who had failed before him? The Chairman can’t even seem to remember that his teams performances were impressive enough to win the manager the January 2013 manager of the month award.
It was good to see fan forums and social media awash with neutrals and Reading fans alike who condemned this decision. They probably know now how Southampton fans felt when their manager Nigel Adkins was sacked in startlingly similar style. Back to back promotions not enough to buy Adkins more than 5 months of Premier League football.
Patience is a thing of the past. Notoriously impatient football fans are being left gobsmacked by their trigger happy chairmen. Adkins and McDermott aren’t the only ones, just the most recent.
Harry Redknapp, took Spurs from the bottom 3 to the Champions League quarter finals. Sacked after another 4th place finish. Carlo Ancelotti, two Premier League titles and an FA Cup with Chelsea, sacked after one trophy-less season. Of course this is the same club who sacked Roberto Di Matteo just 6 months after the clubs first and only Champions League triumph.
Tony Pulis is seemingly the next manager to find himself under pressure. Stoke City were languishing in the Championship when Pulis took over for a second time in 2006. Now they are sitting pretty as an established Premier League club. They find themselves 9 points clear of the drop zone and above massive football clubs like Aston Villa, Newcastle United and West Ham but football has become so short sighted that all of a sudden the goal posts have been moved and a mid-table finish is no longer good enough for a club like Stoke.
This was meant to be a detailed analysis of the facts and figures surrounding the issue of managers and their remarkably short tenures. It has turned into a bit of a rant. But that’s the stage we’re at now. Everyone knows the figures. Everyone knows that the shelf life of a football manager at any level in seemingly any country is short. It’s no longer big and clever to list examples of managers being unfairly dumped by their clubs as there are just so many.
But of course it’s us, the fans who have to suffer through this managerial uncertainty. I’m sure there are more than a few Blackburn fans who wouldn’t mind Sam Allardyce and a little bit more mid-table obscurity in the Premier League. Sorry Blackburn fans, your board replaced Big Sam unjustly with Steve Kean and now your team sit 16th in the Championship.
Kudos to the owners of Manchester United, Everton and Arsenal. You are the only clubs in the top four divisions to have had your manager in place for over a decade. In 5 years time, it would be nice to see a few more names on that list. But at the rate football is going there probably won’t be any.