Slash and Burn – the new method of manager management.

Surprisingly in the time of season normally dominated by talk of player transfers, the paddy few weeks have seen a focus on a glut of transfers or managers to and from the dole queue, but there’s little shortage of people willing to jump right back into the frying pan.

There seems, at times, little justification in the reasons given by owners or chairmen as to why they choose to get rid of a manager. In days of yore, a manager’s position was rock solid; a time spent in the trenches as a coach, career defining chats in the boot room (or pub) and a guiding light in the form of a mentor all helped shape the style of a future boss. When the time was right the club would come calling and often promoted from within.

Those days are long gone.

Nowadays, players frantically look to complete their coaching qualifications towards the end of their careers when it dawns upon them that life could either get a) boring or b) hard work if they choose not to work in football. What job? Any job as long as I can remain in the environs on the football world. Many players become physios, fitness coaches or analysts – some take the traditional root as youth team coaches and then progress up through the ranks. However, for many, the eye is still on the big prize as Manager of the Football Club.

There are few careers, if any, where without any formal training or experience, the keys to the company’s safe are thrown to an amateur – however well intentioned he is. With a budget of millions, possibly, to spend and management of an often, highly qualified group of staff to manage, is it little wonder that so many first time managers fail. Over 50% never return to the hotseat.

Liverpool have this week bucked the trend by appointing from within, a man who embodies the ethos of the club a a whole. Kenny Dalglish has been there and done that in football and was brought up through the management methods of old. Now older and wiser, he has been charged with enlivening the Liverbird. A club which is on it’s knees has turned to it’s greatest son.

Will it work? Time, as they say, will tell. Ah time! The resource which,unfortunately, most managers today don’t get!