Too many sackings: EPL club owners need to let managers manage

“One Arsene Wenger” rang around the Emirates in the closing minutes of Arsenal’s FA Cup victory over Tottenham Hotspur last Saturday. Tim Sherwood was the 17th Spurs manager who’d faced Wenger since the elegant Frenchman came to North London in 1996 and the removal of managers such as Martin Jol and Andre Villas-Boas means that Wenger now has over a hundred games more experience than all his Premier League counterparts put together. One of those counterparts is now Manchester United striking legend Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who officially took up the reins at Cardiff City soon after he saw his soon-to-be-inherited team patiently prised apart by Wenger’s Gunners at the Emirates Stadium. [caption id=“attachment_1326093” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Andre Villas-Boas not given the opportunity to sign the players he wanted. Getty Images[/caption] It takes time for fans to compose chants about players and managers and while singing “one Ole Gunnar Solskjaer” is a bit of a mouthful, how long before they will have to compose a similar ode to some other manager? And the more pertinent question here is will they want to? Malky Mackay was a firm fan favourite at the Cardiff City Stadium and in ousting him from the Welsh capital, Tan has only distanced himself from his fans further. If things were actually going against Cardiff City, one would be able to understand why Tan had decided to let go of Mackay but the gap between the Premier League and the Championship is extremely wide and increasing all the time. Staying up was always going to be the first priority and the Bluebirds were well on their way to doing that. If Tan is going to dismiss every manager he is going to have a disagreement with, there will never be any long-term growth for the club. What he is doing is trying to get a household name as a manager so that he can drop his name into conversations when he needs a little extra to convince his backers that he is the right man to do business with. Solskjaer’s time at the Theatre of Dreams coincided with Manchester United’s most successful period and because of that, the Norwegian is a household name throughout the world. Uniforms and badges are two of the foundation stones of any club, and in changing them, Tan shows that he cares not about the club, but intends to use it as a vehicle to give him more influence when he walks into boardroom meetings that sees the world’s elite meet each other. In doing all this, however, Tan has shown that he knows little about football and the fans that come to stadia in England to watch their heroes play. If Tan is going to rely solely on results as a yardstick for success and doesn’t look at the bigger picture, no manager will want to come to the south of Wales. The case at Tottenham, though, was different, simply because Andre Villas-Boas does not know how to adapt to English football. While what he was trying to do with the ‘Spurs project’ at White Hart Lane was admirable, the true modicum of long-term success at the club is when a manager is able to deliver results even while transition is in place, as has been demonstrated by Wenger at the Emirates. Unfortunately, the players Spurs signed were not of his recommendation. They’d been put forward by Director of Football Franco Baldini, who was influential in the signings of Nacer Chadli, Eric Lamela, Christian Eriksen and Vlad Chiriches, all of whom were not players the Portuguese wanted. Managers are expected to get the best out of the players they have but when forced to work with players they do not want, results inevitably suffer. It is the manager who knows best how his team works and just like at Chelsea, Villas-Boas was forced to use players that were not wanted by him in the first place. The problem here though is not just that. Villas-Boas does not allow the natural leaders in his team to lead and that is the reason Spurs don’t have someone to help steady the ship when required. At Chelsea, John Terry, Didier Drogba, Michael Essien and Frank Lampard are hugely influential figures and it was because he alienated himself from them that he’d lost the confidence of the rest of the squad. It could have been a similar situation at Spurs. But the root of the problem that led to his sacking was not of his own design, and it is unfair that Villas-Boas had to be ousted this way. In fact, Baldini offered to leave the club on the same day that Villas-Boas was sacked. His offer to resign, however, was turned down. It was the same at West Bromwich Albion, where Director of Football Richard Garlick did not sign a replacement for Romelu Lukaku, despite smashing the club transfer record for Stephane Sessegnon, and letting go of their other goal-scoring threats in Peter Odemwingie and Jerome Thomas. This means that there is no proven goal scorer at the club because of which results have been disastrous. For Clarke to shoulder the blame is therefore absolutely unfair. It is the same at Fulham, where Martin Jol was expected to improve results with nearly no money to spend. His net spend in his two and a half years at Craven Cottage is £4 million and new manager Rene Meulensteen has already told new supremo Shahid Khan that investment is a must. To expect Jol to improve results with no money to spend is not something that was possible, though Fulham’s regression is a concern. Crystal Palace were never given time to prepare for the new season because they came up through the promotion playoffs. They were initially expected to remain in the Championship and Ian Holloway, who admitted that Palace were unprepared for the new season, had to take the fall so that the club could move on. His dismissal though was one of those rare moments of clarity on which both owner and manager agreed. As for Paolo di Canio, he simply looked too volatile to be able to manage a football club. The reason so many managers have been sacked is because owners are constantly interfering in the way a manager operates, much like they do at companies. The Director of Football model does not seem to work in England. At Manchester City, it was Manuel Pellegrini who called the shots over the players this summer. Let managers do what they’re expected to do because they know what they’re doing. It is unfair for them to be the fall guy when things do not work out for no fault of their own and if this were to continue in the future, which manager would want to work at a club which is known for hiring managers as quickly as they fire them? If owners bring in a new manager, they should have faith in him and let him do what he’s been appointed to do, which is take charge of the team as a whole, not farm out some of his duties elsewhere or constantly interrupt the way in which he works because that severely reduces a manager’s power and authority. Unless owners do realise that, there will be no long-term growth for the clubs they own.