[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/jan/06/premier-league-managers-sackings]Paul Hayward[/url] said:
As a brutal set of results rolled in on Wednesday evening a night of the long knives beckoned. The Sun was about to speculate in its later editions that as many as four Premier League managers could be fired on the day of Epiphany. We are close to the moment when sackings become an official sport with their own television deal.
At Arsenal, Manchester City's Roberto Mancini could reflect on a night of expert negation. But he too has seen his job "linked' with other elite coaches while never quite making it to "the brink" of dismissal. Lucky him.
For Roy Hodgson (Liverpool), Carlo Ancelotti (Chelsea), Gérard Houllier (Aston Villa) and Avram Grant (West Ham) there was no refuge in a cosy 0-0 draw. Each had seen their team beaten and went to bed knowing they would be abused in the great new media talkosphere while employers potentially weighed-up "other options."
What rendered Wednesday so distinctive was that four managers with European final pedigrees all came in for a whipping. In this more democratic campaign, 10 of the 20 Premier league bosses have been sacked, tipped for dismissal or subjected to ridicule and rage. Chris Hughton, who conceived wins over Arsenal and Sunderland in Newcastle's first season back at the top, was the first to go, followed by Sam Allardyce, canned at Blackburn by owners who thought Ronaldinho might quite like a new mid-table life at Ewood Park.
Also grumbled about this winter have been David Moyes (Everton), Mark Hughes (Fulham) and Roberto Martínez at Wigan. Every time Martínez opens his mouth sense flows out. He thinks Wigan need to evolve beyond relegation toil, attract more fans with an entertaining style and stop being a recruiting sergeant for bigger clubs. His problem is that he has won only four of his 21 games and may find his coolness and intelligence stranded in the Championship.
With the four big-name victims from Sunderland's 1-0 win at Villa, Chelsea's defeat at Wolves, Liverpool's tumble at Blackburn and Newcastle's 5-0 pummelling of West Ham we reach the magic ratio of 50% of managers with sleep disturbance, though Mancini is probably now conking out for the full eight hours. And now the real question: how many players are assailed by night-time fear? How many dread the game's capacity to trash a lifetime's work on the back of a few bad results?
The manager is out there on his own, and though six-figure compensation can soften a fall there is no recompense for being cast as an idiot after decades of careful toil. Sure, from the sacking culture will emerge a new breed of opportunist whose main concern before entering a dug-out will be his severance clause. But Hodgson, Houllier, Ancelotti and even Grant are slaves to a passion as well as politicians and realists. The first thing lost in the rush to humiliate and condemn is the human element: the man's life and work.
What about their records? First: Hodgson was a Europa League finalist in May with Fulham and was Manager of the Year for 2009-10. At Craven Cottage he conceived victories over the kind of clubs people are now saying he is unfit to manage. Whether he is equipped to reverse decline at Liverpool is a debate the club's fans are addressing with wince-inducing vigour. No-one, though, can caricature him as an overnight chump. Modern fan-pressure has established a point of no return beyond which managers are dumped because everyone assumes they will be.
Ancelotti, meanwhile, won the Double in his first year at Stamford Bridge. While Hodgson writhes and resists, Chelsea's commander sports a more fatalistic look. Life as an employee of Silvio Berlusconi in Milan is the ideal preparation for exposure to proprietorial whim. Equally Roman Abramovich's meddling is the perfect shield for Chelsea's players, who have escaped the scrutiny inflicted on their leader. Further north we could ask Fernando Torres about this too, assuming we could find him.
The same Chelsea players who took the credit for Grant reaching a Champions League final (2008) now escape censure for a shocking run that could soon put Ancelotti on a flight back to Italy. At Villa, Houllier picks up the tab for disinvestment. Never mind that he won two French league titles with Lyon after his Treble at Liverpool in 2001, or that Villa are in financial retreat post-Martin O'Neill. The right response is enslavement to the rolling ticker of results, then panic.
All of which infantilises the players. For "I blame the parents" read "I blame the manager". Houllier, Hodgson, Ancelotti and Grant, who guided imploding Portsmouth to an FA Cup final, have all reached/won European finals in the last 10 years, but their achievements are written in chalk on a board with a wet sponge nearby.
