The managerial merry go round has been in full swing over the holiday period. Phil Parkinson went at Charlton this week although the club are fifth in League 1. However, the new owners at The Valley were not impressed by what they saw at Monday’s 2-4 home defeat by Swindon. 29 managers have gone this season which is actually slight down on the 33 figure from this time last year (but the number could easily go up over the next few days).
The managerial merry go round has been in full swing over the holiday period. Phil Parkinson went at Charlton this week although the club are fifth in League 1. However, the new owners at The Valley were not impressed by what they saw at Monday’s 2-4 home defeat by Swindon. 29 managers have gone this season which is actually slight down on the 33 figure from this time last year (but the number could easily go up over the next few days).
This morning Roy Keane was sacked after 20 months in charge at Ipswich Town. Multi-millonaire Marcus Evans invested £8m in players while Keane was manager, but the club is now 19th in the Championship table. It cannot afford to drop to League 1 as it’s a big financial gap between there and the Championship these days.
With the jobs of four Premier League managers said to be in jeopardy, the chief executive of the League Managers Association, Richard Bevan, has urged clubs to stop ‘scapegoating’ their managers. He argues that in other sectors of the economy there is a recogniton of the importance of organisational culture and long-term vision.
Maybe, but in football the league table is an even more instant measure of success and failure than profit-and-loss accounts. Much of the pressure for short-termism comes from the fans and they usually blame the manager for the players he hires, those he selects to play, the formation he chooses and the substitutions he makes. Although fans generally have a ‘scapegoat’ player they blame for everything that goes wrong, they are very reluctant to blame the teams as a whole.
Richard Bevan suggested that it might be time for managers to undergo formal appraisals, although it is difficult to see what these would measure.
One exception to the rule is Nigel Clough at Derby County who has held down his job for two years.