By Tony Attwood
- Is anything going right with football? Or are the journalists right to criticise everything?
- Still plenty of time for journalists to make up false tales about who is going where…
What is it that makes a poor club better? Obviously most club owners think they have the answer: change the manager. This is what Rangers in Scotland have done and today we have a set of headlines that remind us that “McInnes worked wonders with Hearts before returning to Rangers, where he had a playing spell” but which is followed by “How do you catalogue the insipidness of Derek McInnes’ Rangers team in Jablonec? How do you catalogue the Pedro-Caixinha-in-the-bushes level embarrassment that the club experienced in their exit from European football on Thursday?” Etc.
There’s plenty more in the same vein, but the point is clear, and we have made it before many times. This current disaster can be summed up with a reminder that “They had one shot on target the whole night, one goal scored in 210 minutes. Rangers fans in the stadium gave it to them with both barrels at the end.”
Now several points emerge from this but in particular I would focus on
a) Just because a manager does well in one club it does not mean he will do it in all clubs
b) Fans in some clubs are not willing to give a new manager time. Most (not all) Arsenal fans will give the new man time as they did with Arteta, but that is not true everywhere. One up to us, for being patient.
c) Although the Rangers manager is a pretty disastrous example, more managerial changes fail to bring about the radical improvement wanted, than actually make it happen. In fact it is a better thesis to state that changing manager mostly doesn’t work as a way of improving a club’s results.
Indeed that last point ought to be fairly obvious, because the majority of Premier League clubs changed managers last season. Indeed Transfermarkt have published a table on managerial changes and they show us that.
Insane though it seems, the number of Premier League club managerial changes last season was an astounding 23. Now that seems bonkers given there are only 20 Premier League clubs but some clubs just changed and changed again.
Of course that 23 does include the temporary managers who were put in charge while the club was trying to negotiate the new man for their position, but even if we take out those temps, we still get 15 managerial changes in the Premier League last season. And we shouldn’t take temps out of the equation because they can be utter disasters but are part of the process. But so bonkers are some owners that they sack their manager, appoint a new permanent manager and then sack him and appoint another !!!
And last season with 12 clubs changing managers and 15 permanent managers being appointed in a league of 20 clubs, was still not the craziest of all time. 2022/23 was worse!
Now we have noted on this site time and again that of the various ways of improving a club’s well being changing managers is one of the least reliable. Indeed even Arsenal found that out having brought in Unai Emery, and then having to move him on. At least the club had the sense with Arteta to ignore the demands for him to leave after his opening two and a half seasons resulted in an eighth finish in his first part season, a second eighth finish, and then a finish in fifth.
And as I have noted we have complaints coming in here after three second place finishes that Arteta didn’t have a winning mentality and should be kicked out.
The figures show that in Sir Alex Ferguson’s first season at Manchester United they ended up 11th. That they didn’t sack him was probably because the club was in the relegation zone when he came, but whatever the reason they will undoubtedly always be happy that they kept him on. And it is forgotten now but his first four seasons at ManU ended up with them 11th, 2nd, 11th, 13th!
Now I can’t imagine any club keeping hold of a manager who had been brought in to return the club to its “former glory” as it is often called, who delivered a series of league finishes like that. But they did and then after a sixth finish place they were in to a run of 1st and 2nd finishes. He’s not a man I like, but he got results.
The point is very simple and very alarming. Club owners these days often believe that a manager can turn a team around in half a season and then deliver trophies! That is simply not true, but nevertheless they keep on sacking managers until they find one that can. Maybe they think they will eventually find a new Arsene Wenger, but even if they do I doubt they would keep him. Mr Wenger came fifth in his first Arsenal season, and the way some of these clubs are they’d probably sack the manager for that.
Although if you remember your Arsenal history you’ll know that after that first season he won the double.
Of course I am not suggesting Tottenham learn from Arsenal – I am delighted to see them have Postecoglou, Frank, Tudor and de Zerbi since 2023, because it has of late ended up with two consecutive 17th place finishes. And I am sure none of them would ever read Untold Arsenal, let alone take any notice of it, so that’s not a problem.
But really, changes managers a lot doesn’t work. To answer my question at the top, you make a poor club better either by finding a manager who knows the club intimately or who has had experience at winning (perhaps as a deputy) elsewhere. Or in our case, both.
