I think so.........
You have a bad start to the season and you have to go.
Whether it's right or not, it's reality !
In an ideal world, though, a new manager coming into a club would get a certain
amount of time, say two years, so that they can not only start to get results but
the board of directors will be able to see you are the right man for the job.
It will take a bit of time for the board to see how you are developing the club from
the bottom up, from the youth team to the backroom staff and the first-team
squad.
The problem is that the fans and the shareholders whom the directors are
answering to do not see that on a day-to-day basis as the board does.
The directors can still think he is the right man and is handling things which is
why, although Sir Alex Ferguson did not win anything in his first five years at the
club, the board stuck by him because they knew the success would come.
They would not be able to give him that time now. At the big clubs you are
expected to win or to contend right up to the final stages of the Premier League,
the FA Cup, the League Cup and the Champions League. The big clubs expect to
be semi-finalists or finalists year in, year out.
Besides the big four, there are a number of others getting close too, Newcastle,
Everton, Tottenham and probably Aston Villa and Manchester City.
Their directors know that they are big enough clubs to challenge the established
top four, if the manager gets it right.
These are the issues that increase expectation on a manager from within the
club, and from the fans. If they have a bad year or a bad 18 months then the
manager has a very good chance of being sacked - and sometimes they do not
even get that long.
It is very difficult. If you are going to come into the managerial profession now
there is no room for dreaming of having years to build your vision: you have to
be realistic.
There is only one thing that will make it almost impossible to sack you as a
manager - and that is getting results. And sometimes even that is not enough.
If you are the Tottenham Hotspur manager Martin Jol you can have two fantastic
years and still find you are not the man that the directors believe can take the
club to the next level.
In two years Jol twice took Tottenham to fifth in the Premier League and almost
qualified for the Champions League which was probably better than anyone
expected.
His bad start to the season came after it was reported the directors had spoken
to Sevilla's Juande Ramos, who has now replaced him. Once that information was
in the public domain, Jol was always going to go.
You lose the players on the training ground very quickly when things like that
come out and the chairman, Daniel Levy, has apologised for the way it was
handled.
They clearly did not fancy Jol despite the results so it is not always as
straightforward as saying that you need more time in the job. And this is not
new - the pressure has always been there whatever era you managed in. And
the bottom line is that it's a great profession even though you know that just
around the corner the sack could be coming. The highs are incredible highs, the
lows are depressing and every manager would tell you the same.
What do you think.....................???
