At last, an English football manager who actually deserves to be sacked (or ‘left by mutual agreement’ if you prefer the official line). An England manager on £3 million a year shouldn’t be dreaming up ways of helping himself to an extra few hundred thousand through dodgy deals.
But that makes Sam Allardyce something of a rarity. It is hard to think of another England football manager of recent times who really deserved the heave-ho. Roy Hodgson led a team to an embarrassing defeat against Iceland, but was it really him who deserved to go or the useless players who couldn’t even pick up a pass? It is no use coming up with strategy if the players start letting it through their feet. Most of them, though, will play for England again, and go through the usual ritual of being praised as heroes before letting us down at the crucial moment in a knockout competition.
Sven Goran Eriksson? Can anyone explain why it was him who had to fall on his sword after 10 man England went out to Portugal in the quarter finals of the 2006 World Cup? England lost because Wayne Rooney stamped on another man’s balls and got sent off. How was that the manager’s fault? Rooney, of course, not only survived but was later elevated to captain.
It is the same with the Premiership. The average tenure of a premiership manager at the end of last season stood at 1.23 years. Yet under-performing players go on from season to season. English football picks on the manager because it is still trapped in its working-class origins. No matter what, it is always the boss’s fault, never the players’.
No doubt it is a cathartic experience for football’s many working-class supporters – it is like a proxy sacking of their own boss. But it doesn’t help their teams win. Just look at the two most successful teams in the Premiership over the past 20 years: Manchester United and Arsenal. They are the clubs which bucked the trend and employed the same manager for over two decades, through thick and thin. Just look what has happened to Man U since the club reverted to the more normal culture of English football and started sacking its manager every few months.
If you want a more scientific analysis of the effect of manager turnover on football team performance read this Dutch study. The FA would do well to take it on board next time England gets knocked out of a tournament.
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