Andrew Fifield On The Premiership: In football, at least, promotion is not necessarily a perk. Sammy Lee did not hesitate to accept the offer of the Bolton Wanderers manager's job this summer, but he can now reflect bitterly on how it is probably better to be known as an expert number two than a hapless number one.

Just as TV presenters should never work with children or animals, so football chairmen should never employ former England internationals or long-serving assistants. Lee - who fits into both categories - is already googling his nearest job centre after his failure to dispose of doomed Derby on Saturday and he might soon have some company. Chris Hutchings, the new Wigan manager following the departure of his old boss Paul Jewell, is growing fidgety after his team's winless run stretched to six games following the 1-0 defeat by Liverpool.

It has been ever thus. The former Crystal Palace manager Alan Smith tells a good tale about the pitfalls of attempting to dodge what has become known as the Peter Principle. "Just after I had taken over from Steve Coppell in 1993," he recalled, "we had just finished a training session and a few of the lads were in the bath. I always used to go in as well when I was Steve's assistant, but this time the players just scarpered as soon as they saw me. In the end it was just me sitting alone in the bubbles."

The sight of Smith wearing nothing but a smile and a pair of Speedos might be enough to have anyone scurrying for cover, but there is something more significant at work in his story. As a coach, Smith was one of the boys, someone who had more in common with his players than just a bar of soap. As a manager, he became - by definition - a threat: the man who dropped, disciplined and sold them. Life could never be the same again: Smith's protective bubble had burst.

There is nothing wrong with jolting players from their comfort zone. Smith may have lost 11 friends when he accepted Coppell's vacated position at Selhurst Park but the compensation arrived at the end of his first season, when he collected a Football League championship winner's medal.

At a more exalted level, Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan and Kenny Dalglish - all schooled in the preachings and principles of Bill Shankly - kept Liverpool at the pinnacle of the domestic and European games for over a decade. It was only when Anfield's powerbrokers turned away from the Boot Room by appointing Graeme Souness, together with his super-sized ego, in 1991 that the rot set in.

Then again, Liverpool were lucky. Not only were Paisley, Fagan and Dalglish strong-willed men who did not baulk at the prospect of following iconic predecessors, but they were all able to take advantage of reassuringly smooth successions.

Few clubs are granted such luxuries. As Chelsea have discovered, the changing of a manager is rarely anything less than a traumatic process and there is no guarantee that it can be smoothed over by appointing from within. In the most extreme circumstances it can actually intensify the sense of turmoil, as the new man has no convenient way of distancing himself from past failures.

This is the crux of Steve McClaren's crisis. Despite his best efforts at the 2006 World Cup, when he covertly suggested to several newspaper journalists that he had played no part in Sven-Goran Eriksson's more infathomable decisions as England manager, McClaren will always be the Swede's former right-hand man and, therefore, a legitimate target of derision.

Indeed, until England discovered how to play football with cohesion and purpose against Israel and Russia earlier this month, McClaren appeared to have inherited all of Eriksson's most infuriating foibles - the caution, the chronic lack of imagination and personality - and none of the luck. Instead, the Yorkshireman now has the rare distinction of becoming the first England manager to have been saved by an injury crisis.

McClaren and Lee can hardly be blamed for wanting to test their talents at the highest level, but perhaps it is time for football's number twos to realise their station. This does not mean they must be cast into the abyss of anonymity: without the steadying influence of his long-serving side-kick Peter Taylor, Brian Clough might have been remembered as a slightly mad person with a penchant for green jumpers. The redoubtable Pat Rice, meanwhile, is widely credited with helping people like Martin Keown grasp the more abstract elements of Arsene Wenger's Arsenal philosophy.

In fact, the combination of a large helping of power with just a fraction of the responsibility makes the position of assistant manager a dream job. And you don't even have to run your own bath.