Around 40% of clubs in England’s top four divisions of men’s football have changed their manager this season, and one in four of those teams have made more than one change.
With those stats still so high, I am sure people outside the game must be wondering about the process of appointing a manager.
In my day, I never once put on a presentation in front of a chairman or board of directors as part of any interview process.
Usually it was your management record, and your relative success with the respective budgets you’d been given, that would seal the deal.
Today, that has all changed. Many managers and coaches, I’m told, pay to have these presentations professionally prepared for them.
Before you get to that stage, however, club owners and chairmen will rely on their sporting director and chief executive to compile a list of names.
As I’ve mentioned in previous columns about the lack of opportunities now for British managers, with so many foreign owners in our game, there are lots of foreign sporting directors too, so it is not surprising they appoint managers and coaches they know.
Also, the agents who have assisted the owners when they purchased the club, will often have a big say on who the sporting director is too.
Players will also flow into some clubs in a similar fashion, I’m sure, and I’m afraid all of this impinges on managers and coaches from this country, who are not part of that network.
Academy coaches from the top clubs are finding a way through the system, as I am sure their contacts with clubs’ young players is part of their appeal.
It is definitely a route into management that is worth following but I am sure any ex-professionals who have followed it will have quickly been exposed to the key difference between managing at academy level and being in charge of a club’s first team.
Unlike academy football, which is about development, first-team football is about winning.
Every week you will be judged on your result and, no matter what philosophy you employ, the fanbase and the people above you will react accordingly.
