On The Premier League:Gary Megson set a record last week. Football managers have become grumpily accustomed to losing votes of confidence at the fag-ends of their reigns, but the new Bolton Wanderers boss is surely the first coach to receive a resounding thumbs-down before even signing his contract.
According to a poll in a local newspaper, just 1.7 per cent of Bolton fans were happy to see the 48-year-old succeed Sammy Lee and "Mystic Megson", as he was dubbed by one verbose radio commentator many years ago, does not need well-honed psychic powers to know this spells trouble. Bookmakers are already offering distinctly ungenerous odds of 5 to 2 that he becomes the former Bolton manager before Christmas and their stinginess is understandable: Megson's track record should come with a health warning.
This is clearly the silly season for managerial appointments. Chelsea's replacement of the effortlessly charismatic Jose Mourinho with Israel's leading Boris Karloff impersonator, Avram Grant, was odd enough - although, if Saturday's thrilling demolition of Manchester City is anything to go by, it may yet prove a master-stroke, but Megson's return to the Premier League might just be the most bizarre move since Harry Redknapp's undignified shuttle-runs between Portsmouth and Southampton in 2005.
Megson was all smiles at last Friday's press conference, and no wonder. When he was unceremoniously sacked by Nottingham Forest in February 2006, he was faced with the ghoulish prospect of having to rebuild his reputation in places like Bournemouth and Carlisle: now, having already been handed an unexpected leg-up with Leicester City, he has been given a golden ticket back to the top flight. If Napoleon was right, and a leader's best asset really is luck, then Megson is a prize asset.
But his promotion has come at a price. For a start, his integrity is in tatters: in brazenly walking out on Leicester just six weeks after accepting the post, Megson has revealed himself to be the kind of character who spells "loyalty" with a pound-sign.
His cynical attitude, to put it mildly, stinks and in treating a famous old club with such contempt, Megson has done the seemingly impossible and made the footballing world feel a twinge of sympathy with Milan Mandaric.
By rights, his behaviour should have been greeted with official condemnation from the League Managers' Association, the body who are always so quick to bleat when one of their number is dispatched. The next time a chairman acts with such indecent haste, the LMA might like to remember that loyalty runs both ways.
Quite why Bolton were falling over themselves in their rush to appoint Megson is anybody's guess. He has had no success in management since leading West Bromwich Albion to promotion in 2003 and has been relegated on no less than three occasions. Not exactly shining credentials for a manager who has been brought in to perform a salvage operation on a sinking season.
Then there is the issue of Megson's managerial style. Even in the determinedly old-fashioned Football League, Megson was long ago written off as a dinosaur. A man who, according to his former Stockport captain Mike Flynn, "never liked the idea of flash cars and big watches" is not, perhaps, the best man to be taking on Lancashire's King of Bling, El Hadji Diouf, or the equally surly Nicolas Anelka.
It is all very well for Phil Gartside, the Bolton chairman, to suggest that Megson has been hired precisely because of his no-nonsense approach, but recent history suggests there is only ever one winner when a tough-talking manager squares up to a disillusioned and sceptical squad. Just ask Graeme Souness.
Perhaps Gartside failed to see the irony in the "Ginger Mourinho" nickname bestowed on Megson by distinctly non-plussed Leicester supporters. Whatever his reasons, in future he will surely come to look at this week as the one which sealed Bolton's fate and effectively undid all the remarkable achievements chalked up over eight years by Sam Allardyce.
What a pity. Following Allardyce's departure, Bolton had the perfect opportunity to flex their new muscles and attract a coach befitting a club which had just qualified for the Uefa cup with a handful of genuine world-class players.
Instead, Gartside - doubtless anxious to save a few pennies - appointed the palpably unsuitable Sammy Lee. And now, in the wake of Lee's utterly predictable sacking, he has plumped for Megson, whose chief talent appears to be his unerring ability to fall out with senior players.
Gartside insist he has the right man for the job, but then he has to. Bolton's fans have already shown they know better and, ultimately, it is they who will suffer most when the club crumbles beneath their feet.
