Sunday Times article re tenure in the Champ

[City Ben]

This was mentioned on another thread. I thought it was interesting enough to post here. Sorry about the formatting! 

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Money talks, of course. But it also does other stuff. Warps the psyche a little, especially if we are dealing with humongous amounts of it. Or, better put, the not-too-distant promise of humongous amounts of money. For proof of this assertion, take a look at the Championship.

Managers get sacked rather more frequently than was once the case across all four divisions. The average tenure of a manager these days is just 1.23 years. But in the Championship it is a remarkable — some would say ludicrous — 0.86 years, easily the worst of all four divisions.

If you manage in our second tier you can expect no more than a single season, followed by a large payoff, which will increase your former club’s liabilities. Such is the febrile desperation to reach that sunlit upland where clubs at last can become money-making ventures, the Premier League.

But of course the very rapidity with which Championship clubs change managers because they are not striding ahead of the division, as expected, but languishing in mid-table, more usually leads to the clubs performing even less well than the most pessimistic supporters expected. And can lead to teams exiting the division via an altogether less preferable route. As we have seen recently with Charlton Athletic, among many others.

Or take Nottingham Forest. Since Fawaz Al-Hasawi took over ownership of the club in mid-2012, Forest have been through nine managers — if you count Gary Brazil’s two stints as caretaker manager. No wonder, then, that there were few candidates anxious to get their hands on this particular greasy tiller after the unfortunate Philippe Montanier was sacked a couple of weeks ago. Hell, even Nigel Clough said no thank you.

Montanier had been in the job for seven-and-a-half months — a stalwart, then, in Forest’s terms. But his team are lying just above the drop zone to League One, while the supporters and the owner expect them to be about eighth in the Premier League.

This policy of continual, relentless sackings does not work and has never worked. In general terms, the longer a manager has to impose himself on a club, the better that club’s chances of meeting whatever target it is that they have set. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but by and large a manager needs a good couple of years in charge to prepare for success.

Look at the clubs who finished first and second in the division last year and thus gained automatic promotion — Burnley and Middlesbrough. Between them, Sean Dyche and Aitor Karanka had almost eight years of tenure at the time of promotion. The season before, Bournemouth were the unlikely winners of the league with a manager, Eddie Howe, who had been there for more than two years, having returned after a two-year interregnum at Burnley. Howe knew the club inside out, the budgetary constraints, the expectations. The year before that, Leicester City won the title with Nigel Pearson, who had been there for more than two years.

I wonder a little if the impatience to get the hell out of the league is one reason why the smaller, less fancied, clubs have somehow wriggled through in recent years. Burnley, Hull City, Bournemouth — clubs where a certain sanity prevails and where the expectations of the owners are not predicated upon mindless optimism and greed. And below them flounder the big clubs who think they have a right to Premier League football — like Forest and Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds United and Derby County — and so change managers with the frequency with which you take the bins out.

So here’s a tip for Leeds — if you fail to go up this season (and my guess is they will go up), don’t sack Garry Monk out of pique. Stick with him. And Derby should stick with Steve McClaren. If both clubs do that, having failed this year, I would tip them for automatic promotion next season, regardless of who goes down from the Premier League. A sense of continuity works. (Unless we’re talking about Ian Holloway. In which case I’d get rid of him as soon as he walks through the door. Come on — there are exceptions to every rule).

Even at the top of the Championship, with the Premier League almost within touching distance, there is a tremulous and fragile atmosphere. Managers of Newcastle United can never quite do enough to keep either the supporters or the owners happy. At the time of writing Newcastle are top of the division, and the fans are behind the manager Rafa Benitez. But Rafa is not a happy man. The club seems to have reverted to its old policy of allowing people with no footballing knowledge to take control of who comes in and out of St James’ Park.

This policy has not worked before and will not work now. Trust in your manager a little, Mike Ashley. Stick with him and let him make the decisions. You may think you know better than he does, but, as the last five years would attest, you certainly do not.

[Inactive user]

3 minutes ago, City Ben said:

This was mentioned on another thread. I thought it was interesting enough to post here. Sorry about the formatting! 

------------

Money talks, of course. But it also does other stuff. Warps the psyche a little, especially if we are dealing with humongous amounts of it. Or, better put, the not-too-distant promise of humongous amounts of money. For proof of this assertion, take a look at the Championship.

Managers get sacked rather more frequently than was once the case across all four divisions. The average tenure of a manager these days is just 1.23 years. But in the Championship it is a remarkable — some would say ludicrous — 0.86 years, easily the worst of all four divisions.

If you manage in our second tier you can expect no more than a single season, followed by a large payoff, which will increase your former club’s liabilities. Such is the febrile desperation to reach that sunlit upland where clubs at last can become money-making ventures, the Premier League.

But of course the very rapidity with which Championship clubs change managers because they are not striding ahead of the division, as expected, but languishing in mid-table, more usually leads to the clubs performing even less well than the most pessimistic supporters expected. And can lead to teams exiting the division via an altogether less preferable route. As we have seen recently with Charlton Athletic, among many others.

Or take Nottingham Forest. Since Fawaz Al-Hasawi took over ownership of the club in mid-2012, Forest have been through nine managers — if you count Gary Brazil’s two stints as caretaker manager. No wonder, then, that there were few candidates anxious to get their hands on this particular greasy tiller after the unfortunate Philippe Montanier was sacked a couple of weeks ago. Hell, even Nigel Clough said no thank you.

Montanier had been in the job for seven-and-a-half months — a stalwart, then, in Forest’s terms. But his team are lying just above the drop zone to League One, while the supporters and the owner expect them to be about eighth in the Premier League.

This policy of continual, relentless sackings does not work and has never worked. In general terms, the longer a manager has to impose himself on a club, the better that club’s chances of meeting whatever target it is that they have set. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but by and large a manager needs a good couple of years in charge to prepare for success.

Look at the clubs who finished first and second in the division last year and thus gained automatic promotion — Burnley and Middlesbrough. Between them, Sean Dyche and Aitor Karanka had almost eight years of tenure at the time of promotion. The season before, Bournemouth were the unlikely winners of the league with a manager, Eddie Howe, who had been there for more than two years, having returned after a two-year interregnum at Burnley. Howe knew the club inside out, the budgetary constraints, the expectations. The year before that, Leicester City won the title with Nigel Pearson, who had been there for more than two years.

I wonder a little if the impatience to get the hell out of the league is one reason why the smaller, less fancied, clubs have somehow wriggled through in recent years. Burnley, Hull City, Bournemouth — clubs where a certain sanity prevails and where the expectations of the owners are not predicated upon mindless optimism and greed. And below them flounder the big clubs who think they have a right to Premier League football — like Forest and Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds United and Derby County — and so change managers with the frequency with which you take the bins out.

So here’s a tip for Leeds — if you fail to go up this season (and my guess is they will go up), don’t sack Garry Monk out of pique. Stick with him. And Derby should stick with Steve McClaren. If both clubs do that, having failed this year, I would tip them for automatic promotion next season, regardless of who goes down from the Premier League. A sense of continuity works. (Unless we’re talking about Ian Holloway. In which case I’d get rid of him as soon as he walks through the door. Come on — there are exceptions to every rule).

Even at the top of the Championship, with the Premier League almost within touching distance, there is a tremulous and fragile atmosphere. Managers of Newcastle United can never quite do enough to keep either the supporters or the owners happy. At the time of writing Newcastle are top of the division, and the fans are behind the manager Rafa Benitez. But Rafa is not a happy man. The club seems to have reverted to its old policy of allowing people with no footballing knowledge to take control of who comes in and out of St James’ Park.

This policy has not worked before and will not work now. Trust in your manager a little, Mike Ashley. Stick with him and let him make the decisions. You may think you know better than he does, but, as the last five years would attest, you certainly do not.

Great article a LOT of truth in this. Especially the Holloway bit