- Why PL managers are sacked so often – and why it usually doesn’t help
- An amazing win: can there be more to come? It seems to look as if there can.
By Tony Attwood
Moving on from my last piece about managers being sacked, I found an article in the Guardian which looked at the managers who have, in recent years, spent the shortest amount of time at a club in the upper divisions. The list includes 28 days for Tommy Docherty at QPR in 1968/9 (when they were in the 1st division), 40 days for Ange Postecoglou at Nottingham Forest just recently, 41 days for Les Reed at Charlton Athletic in 2006 (again in the Premier League) and 44 days for Brian Clough at Leeds United in 1974. And that is not the end of the famous names, as next on the list is Jock Stein at Leeds United between August and October in 1978.
And yet, despite these near-instant dismissals, no one is asking of “why do big-name managers fail at big-time clubs?” Most (if not all) of the people who run football clubs have run (or still do run) other businesses. And indeed have made a lot of money doing so. So presumably they know a bit about both football and making senior appointments. But even so, they still make bad appointments, leading to clubs going backwards nor forwards. And I wonder, why does this happen?
As a perfect example of the oddity of football clubs and their managers, consider Manchester United. Since Sir Alex F left the club in 2013, the club has had ten (yes 10) managers in 12 years. In the same period, Arsenal have had four managers (including managers designated “temporary” or “interim” or some similar title).
So why does it all go so wrong? It could of course be that the club has promised the manager “free rein”, only to find the club in turmoil, players in revolt and league form declining. But it can also be a case of people who don’t understand the football club and how it works, demanding instant improvements, and not getting it.
Take for example, Postacoglu’s run with Tottenham. From 22 December to the end of the season, Tottenham played 22 league games. They won four of them. And these were not his first 22 games, but his last 22 league games, and the manager oversaw four wins!!!
Of course, the manager could say, “But I won the Europa and so Tottenham now have all the money from the Champions League,” and that would be fair enough. But I don’t think that is the main point. The main point is that any club that employed Postacoglu after Tottenham will have known this fact. And yet they still employed him!!!
But then when the results at Nottingham Forest were just as awful as the results he got at Tottenham it seems the Forest owners were surprised!!!! Postacoglu got a run of seven league defeats and two draws this season with Nottingham Forest. But with a team that he had bought and built at Tottenham, from December 2024 he had a run of six defeats and a draw with Tottenham. That is, the team he had been building and managing since June 2023.
In other words, his performance with Nottingham Forest was of exactly the same type as his performance with the team he built at Tottenham. So surely any logical and reasonable person would have concluded that this is what happens to this man’s teams. Why would anyone consider that somehow on going to Nottingham F he would deliver anything different from that which he delivered with Tottenham H? It makes no sense.
Or at least it makes no sense unless Mr Posta spun the Nottingham F owner a wild tale of excuses. Now of course, I am certainly not accusing the manager of making things up. It is just that I can’t see is how the story of his time as a manager of a Premier League club can be explained in terms other than the fact that he’s not very good at it.
In the five years before Postacoglu came along, Tottenham ended up 6th, 7th, 4th, 8th and 5th in the league. That was clearly what they were and who they were. A team languishing outside of the magical top four. The manager turned them into relegation candidates. Yes, he had created treble winners in Celtic, but surely the Tottenham directors did not think the Scottish league, fun though it can be, is the Premier League. Did they?
I have no idea of the answer except that both Tottenham and Nottingham Forest were just hoping that maybe, somehow, perhaps, it might work out. For there was simply no evidence that he was a man who could deliver in the Premier League.
My point thus is simple. In some cases, directors can be fooled and can act stupidly. It didn’t happen at Arsenal with Arteta because Arteta was well known to Arsenal, obviously. But with Nottingham Forest, and possibly one could argue with Tottenham H before them, well…
Was there no due diligence? Was it a case of “there’s no one else, let’s try him”? Was it, “We can always sack him if it goes wrong?” Were they all distracted by their owner being fined $5m after being found guilty of serious crimes while his company was fined a further $44m for crimes that “strike at the integrity of our markets.” (And just to be clear, it’s the Tottenham owner I am writing about, and he pleaded guilty).
Of course, I have no inner info about why Tottenham and Forest appointed Postecoglou, nor how much Forest paid him to go away. But I did spend many years as chairman of a plc in England, and although none of the companies I ran were ever charged with any financial crimes, I’d say that in my experience, some company owners and directors can come to believe that if they do it, it will work, because it always does.
