We often hear the usual spiel of football chairmen, directors, owners, what have you. A manager is hired with the long term goals of a club in mind. The ‘5 year plan’ they often call it. Of course, we can’t help but take these claims from football’s money-men with a pinch of salt because, after all, how many of these managers are actually given 5 years?
All over the country, managers are diligently at work. They are working hard with their players in training, introducing new systems, perfecting set pieces, getting the team as close to ready as they can possibly be. They’re also keenly attempting the balancing act that is recruiting new talent while desperately trying to keep the best of their current crop of stars. Ultimately, they are doing everything in their power to ensure their team has a successful season. Because they know all too well how quickly they can end up on the unemployment line if they fail.
It seems that no one is safe from the axe, not now Sir Alex Ferguson has stepped down anyway. Regardless of what your side’s respective goals are, whether it be title challenging, avoiding relegation or just making steady progress up the league. No matter who you are, your success, or more so your lack thereof will get you sacked quickly and without remorse.
What is also becoming evident is that it matters little what you have done with a club before. If you are languishing near the bottom of the table then you are in trouble. It makes no difference if you are taking your team on a steady decline or riding a wave of back to back promotions. At the risk of sounding cliché, it’s a results business. All that matters is the here and now.
Case in point, poor old Nigel Adkins, once of Southampton. The Saints have the potential to enjoy a decent Premier League season this year after sizeable investment over the summer. But that is a far cry from the team that Nigel Adkins inherited when he took over at St Mary’s in 2010. Adkins was charged with successfully leading Southampton out of League 1, a task that Alan Pardew failed with before him. Not only did Adkins succeed but he went on to successfully guide the Saints back into the Premier League in time for the start of last season.
Plenty of reason to believe that this would buy him plenty of time but alas, it was not meant to be. Adkins was sacked by Southampton with 4 months left in the season despite it looking as though they had every chance of staying up. And all of this occurred just 2 weeks after Brian McDermott was sacked by Reading in similar circumstances, after guiding them into the top flight a matter of months earlier.
It serves to undermine the loss of a job by simply saying that it is something that happens in football. But if you toiled in your job for a few years, achieved overwhelming success and were then sacked after a bad few months you might feel a little bit aggrieved too. Without doing a lot wrong Adkins and McDermott are forced to pack up and up route their families, Adkins in Reading and McDermott in Leeds. And only because they have been lucky enough to find work elsewhere, plenty don’t.
At the start of last season 20 Premier League managers were ready to take on the world’s best league. 12 months on and only 10 of these managers are still in the same job. Have a glance around your place of work at your nearest colleagues, it’s hard to imagine that half of the people you see will be sacked in the near future. And that those sacked will in all likelihood need to move 100 or so miles to find another job. That’s because you probably don’t work in football.
That’s the pressure cooker these men are working in. It’s a privileged, often well paid job and I’m sure they’re all pleased to be in work but all of these managers are only ever a few bad games from having to up sticks and start again elsewhere.
So on to this season, history dictates that managers at each end of the table are in danger. What if Moyes or Pellergrini don’t come flying out of the box like title challengers should? Or if Cardiff City or Crystal Palace find themselves near the bottom? Will Malky Mackay and Ian Holloway face the axe despite their successes last season?
To football’s decision makers I ask for patience and I ask for common sense. But with millions of pounds at stake, I understand that you can’t afford either.