In his third year in charge of Manchester United, the season began brightly for Alex Ferguson. A 4-1 win against defending champions Arsenal on the opening day. The good start was short-lived, as that September brought an unholy 5-1 beating at the hands of rivals Manchester City.
That ignominy was the off ramp from league contention as United slumped to an early-season run of six defeats and two draws in eight games..
Soon came that sure sign of metastasis, as a banner that appeared during a home defeat by Crystal Palace signalled the militant mood of the fans at Old Trafford. “Three years of excuses and it’s still crap...ta-ra Fergie.”
The crusty Scot later described December 1989 as the darkest period he had ever suffered in the game, as United ended the decade just outside the relegation zone.
They wouldn’t win their first league title under Ferguson until 1993. Yet he went on to become the longest-serving manager in the club over 26 seasons. The privileged years. The indulgent years.
The current whack-a-mole attitude to Premier League managers could never allow for a Ferguson. Monthly, weekly, daily this season a manager has been guillotined, so much so the practice has taken on a viral aspect.
First was Scott Parker, then Thomas Tuchel, with Bruno Lage and Steven Gerard in October. Ralph Hassenhüttl departed in November and Frank Lampard in January, followed by Jesse Marsch and Nathan Jones in February. Antonio Conte went in March and Patrick Vieira was jilted on St Patrick’s Day, with Brendan Rogers and Graham Potter going the same way in April.
It is the league’s barely contained pandemic or, worse, a season-long episode of The Apprentice.
Potter became the 13th managerial departure from the 20-club league following his recent sacking from Chelsea. Not all were forced out as Potter left Brighton to take up the Chelsea job in September before then being forced out by the London club.
Still, the number of managers to leave clubs in-season across 2022-23 has never been matched. Last season was the previous joint-highest, when 10 managers emptied their lockers.
Potter was canned on the same day Rodgers exited Leicester City after 152 Premier League games over four years. At least Rodgers lasted longer than Potter, whose Chelsea severance came after 206 days.
The first managerial casualty of the season was Parker, who was ditched in August in the wake of a 9-0 drubbing by Liverpool at Anfield, the memory of Bournemouth’s automatic promotion from the Championship the previous season apparently having already faded.
Media used to get the blame for the brutalisation of the manager and there was some truth to that. England boss Graham Taylor was famously branded a turnip by the Sun, appearing as a front-page caricature.
More frequently now managers are written into the script as part of the sub-narrative and become main characters in the clubs’ seasonal run. Most end up as the villain.
They play it out weekly in the technical space extending one metre either side of the dugout. It’s a club career measured in televised gestures of anguish every week; in post-match, no-look handshakes; in a 500k-per-week striker skulking in the reserves.
The manager serves the bloodlust part of the football drama, the bit where there’s a good chance he will be bumped off in the fourth episode of the 12-part series.
When somebody has to get it, it’s the manager. This is so that the audience can feel empowered, the sacking giving them the sense that their demands for action have been noted and their yearning for new hope acknowledged.They then wait for the inevitable bounce from an already low base and the conceit of a caring club owner preaching a long-term future.
But when the dismissals stray into the current state of self-parody, they move away from being fully interrogated decisions to instead being performative acts. It’s surely a matter of time that the manager’s standard contractual obligation will be a final, stunning set-piece.
Golly, imagine the theatre value of a stadium departure of shame! The jilted gaffer doing the perp walk in an orange jump suit to their Calvary, a smoked-glass Range Rover in the club’s reserved parking.
Twelve managerial discharges so far and unquestionably football resides in the wild west department of Human Resources. The attitude to that appears to be yada, yada, yada.
There really is zero sympathy. Contracts make their own rules. Sky-high salaries seemingly make it okay to metaphorically blokeslap a man out the door on Christmas Eve.
The betting this week is that Nottingham Forest’s Steve Cooper will be next to be sent packing, with a 48 per cent chance of departing before the end of the season, followed by West Ham’s David Moyes with a 29 per cent chance. There is less chance, 22 per cent, of no manager leaving.
With the manager’s position uniquely precarious, the job has become about instant gratification and an obsession with weekly football news cycles rather than patiently building teams. That is too slow. There is no time.
In an age where incidents are widely shared, results not forgotten, criticism deeply personal and reactions overly extreme, terminating most of the Premier League managers is playing into the same unforgiving game.
Today the lesson of Ferguson’s reign seems to have been forgotten. If a manager cannot survive even one false dawn, he has no chance of being knighted.
