Managers - Win, or you're fired!

Fans protest over the sacking of previous manager Roberto di Matteo at Stamford Bridge.

Football has changed a lot in the last decade. Much has been said about the tactical changes and the change in emphasis of the football philosophy. There has been talk about the players being mercenaries and the death of club loyalty.

But what about the longevity of the managers?

Managers are probably the ones with the most important job – to keep the team winning and continue playing at a high level. But the trend of late seems to be to sack the guy in the suit if the team isn’t playing well. A year or more at a top-tier club is fast becoming a glowing reference in the manager’s resume.

Clubs are willing to go to ridiculous lengths to win titles and play in the top leagues, and yet we find managers have, more often than not, short tenures at the clubs. Chelsea have been steamrolling through the managers’ market for years now, and are fast running out of options. Even smaller clubs like Nottingham Forrest and QPR have started to go through managers at an alarming rate.

In the quest for success, are managers the first martyrs? What are the reasons for this dramatic change?

SHORT-TERM GOALS

This is perhaps the most important factor. The owners’ demand for success is nothing new in football, but the demands of instant success have had an adverse effect on the managers’ longevity. With the short-sighted view in place instead of the sustained and long-term goals, the manager and the club both suffer badly. The manager is unable to instill his ideas and methods into the team due to the demands for success and the lack of time he is afforded to achieve it. This often leads to the club failing to move forward and the manager’s tendency to play it safe and not take any risks (like bringing up youth players), which he would have done otherwise.

A look at Barcelona or Bayern Munich provides you with a glimpse of what long-term planning can do for the fortunes of a club. Both these clubs are highly successful, and look stable enough to continue at their level for years to come, while Chelsea (a club notorious for short-term plans) look unpredictable at best, even when they taste success.

THE TRIGGER-HAPPY OWNERS

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich

The growing trend, particularly in the English league, of a wealthy businessman buying a club and making it his own personal plaything, has played a major role in the lack of manager longevity. Clubs like Chelsea, QPR, etc. all have one such individual sitting in the VIP box and making the decisions. Their sudden, and often questionable decisions to fire and hire managers have played their part in the new trend rising in world football. A glance at Chelsea, who have gone through more than half a dozen managers and have still managed to oversee their most successful years in the club’s history, can lead others (especially the naive and rich) into believing that maybe that is the way success lies. Perhaps that is true, but success does come with a price. One look at Chelsea will tell you that they look forever like a club in the transition stage, a stage that looks unlikely to end.

This kind of ownership will only have a negative influence on the managers who know that they will be kicked to the curb with no remorse in case the club does not play well. They also have an adverse effect on the fans, who shamelessly call for the sack whenever the going gets tough. The worst part about it all is that the fans know that the actual boos must be directed at the owners rather than the managers. But knowing that their success depends on the owner, who would dare to do so?

FINANCIAL PRESSURE

With the amount of money flowing into the game, every team wants to make as much money as possible, and to do that, qualifying for European football and staying away from relegation, depending on their realistic targets, has to take center stage. The further you go in the cup tournaments and the higher you go up the league, the more money you make. Since there are very few teams that are sure about qualifying for Europe or staying up in the league, it is quite understandable why there is the pressure and expectation on the manager to deliver.

ONLY PLAN OF ACTION

The manager of a club that under-performs in the first half of the season has the walls closing down on him from all sides. With the transfer window reopening in the winter, there is always a hope that there may be a change of fortunes on the cards. But sometimes, especially for the smaller clubs, the chances of survival may not be very high if they wait that long. With that in mind, the only available action to the owner is to change the man in charge. Whether this works out for good or bad is another issue, but it seems to be the most popular action. There is also a belief that with a new manager comes a new (and hopefully successful) philosophy that can turn the season around.

THE WINTER TRANSFER WINDOW

The transfer window also plays a small role in the sacking. The idea is that the new manager might need the whole month to analyze and bring in the players that he wants to stamp his brand of football in the club. This has led to managers being fired early, robbing him of a chance to bring the season around and maybe even use the transfer window to do so. A look back into the history books to a time when the winter transfer window was not established, and you’d see lesser managerial changes than what we see today.

Everton manager David Moyes with Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.

While a shorter tenure for managers has been an increasing phenomenon, there still are clubs who keep faith in their managers. Manchester United and Everton are two such clubs that have kept faith in their managers, Alex Ferguson and David Moyes, for a number of years now. Arsene Wenger can also be included in the list, although there have been widespread calls from the fans to remove him from his position at Arsenal due to the lack of titles in recent years. While the faith shown by these clubs are admirable, the decision of Wigan Athletic seems far more commendable, due to the fact that they have shown faith in their manager, Roberto Martinez, despite the club’s constant fight for survival.

So where do we go from here? Is the era of manager longevity a thing of the past? With the ever-increasing influence of money and rich owners in the game, it seems that managers do have uncertain times ahead of them in their future.