Steven Gerrard avoided the sack last week, according to reports from his golden cage in Saudi Arabia. Al-Ettifaq, the Saudi Pro-League team he manages for a reported salary of €18.2 million a year, have won just three of their opening 10 league matches, and sit 12th in the table, 17 points behind the leaders.
Having reportedly considered Gerrard’s position, the Al-Ettifaq hierarchy took out a couple of soft targets instead, assistant manager Dean Holden and sporting director Mark Allen. The buck stopped short.
Meanwhile, on another planet, in a galaxy far away, Frank Lampard was being linked with a return to management at Coventry City, following the risible sacking of Mark Robbins. Lampard – Gerard’s once-upon-a-time partner at the heart of England’s midfield – has not worked in management since a disastrous spell as interim Chelsea boss in the final two months of last season.
Having lost his last six Premier League games as Everton manager, and his first four at Chelsea, Lampard flirted with Daniel Farke’s all-time Premier League losing record of 16 in a row (across two seasons). A 3-1 win at Bournemouth saved Lampard’s blushes – his only win in 11 games in his second spell in the Chelsea dugout.
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Having suffered further reputational damage Lampard said that he would need to choose his next job “carefully”. Coventry, who sit 17th in the Championship, have had 80 applicants for the vacancy.
Lampard and Gerrard are interesting additions to the never-ending list of successful players who cannot recycle that magic in the dugout. The extraordinary thing is that these high-profile failures never seem to turn into a cautionary tales. They must know the odds, they must have noticed the trail of destruction, but they mustn’t see it like that. And yet, in football’s hall of mirrors, their reflection changes in front of their eyes.
Lampard and Gerrard both won more than 100 international caps and were part of what was dubbed England’s “Golden Generation”. Ultimately, that group of players was crushed under the weight of hysterical projections. Knocked out at the quarter-final stage of three successive tournaments, they failed to even qualify for Euro 2008, by which time their sobriquet was a source of bitter ridicule.
But it is fascinating to look at, say, England’s 2006 World Cup squad and trace what they did next. Apart from Lampard and Gerrard, five others have tried their hand at management: Gary Neville, David James, Michael Carrick, Sol Campbell and Wayne Rooney. John Terry has risen to the level of assistant manager, where his career has flattened out; Ashley Cole has carved out a niche in that role too, with maybe no desire to climb any higher.
As many as 10 of them have peddled their wares as pundits, or are still doing so: Neville, James, Jamie Carragher, Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, Owen Hargreaves, Michael Owen, Peter Crouch, Stewart Downing and, until recently, Jermain Jenas.
Of those, Neville had an ill-starred 28-game spell as manager of Valencia, and spent four seasons as assistant manager with England, but there is no suggestion that he will return to the dugout. As a pundit, being wrong enjoys much better indemnity.
The other managers from that squad, though, are interesting for different reasons. The feeling that Wayne Rooney has been living off his name is hard to suppress. Derby were a financial basket case in his second season as manager, but he had led them to the brink of relegation from the Championship in his first season.
He parted ways with DC United in the MSL after just one season, and lasted less than four months at Birmingham City, inheriting a team that was sixth in the table and leaving them in 20th.
Rooney is manager of Plymouth Argyle now, in just their second season back in the Championship after a long hiatus. Expectations are modest, and Rooney has done nothing so far to raise their hopes. But if he doesn’t show a spark with Plymouth, how many more chances can Rooney expect?
James had a short spell in 2018 in charge of Indian side Kerala Blasters. It started brightly but ended after a run of one win in 12 matches. Carrick, meanwhile, looks on early evidence like he will outlast them all. Having served his time on the coaching staff at Manchester United he took Middlesbrough from 17th to the play-offs in his first season and has them just outside the play-off spots in his third season.
Middlesbrough is a club with Premier League pretentions and an inflated self-image, and before Carrick took the reins, they had flipped nine managers in 5½ years. But he has brought some stability, and it looks like he has the head for this madness.
Campbell, however, says he is no longer applying for jobs. His two opportunities were at Macclesfield and Southend, both stressful and thankless. Macclesfield escaped relegation on the final day of the season, but they were in financial free fall, and when Campbell walked away, he claimed that the club owed him £180,000 in unpaid wages.
At Southend he couldn’t save them from relegation to League Two. They had no money either. That was his last job in management, four years ago. In 2021 he told the football writer Henry Winter that he had applied for 16 jobs in 11 months and had been granted just one interview, at Sunderland. Campbell said in the same interview that he believed being black “inhibited his opportunities”.
Last year, he threw in the towel. “Some of my peers have had jobs and it’s not worked out and then they have opportunities again straight away,” Campbell told Sky Sports. “They’ve always had a lifeline. That is a nice position to be in. I am not in that position.”
For Campbell’s peers, though, those lifelines are growing scarce. Gerrard’s stock plummeted at Aston Villa and whatever he does in the Saudi Pro League, his next job in Britain will be a leap of faith for somebody. Lampard is hoping for Coventry to take that plunge now, but investing in him has become a huge risk. And Rooney? Plymouth was the best job available for somebody with his shortlist of managerial accomplishments.
And what about David Beckham, England captain at the 2006 World Cup? Never bothered with management, or punditry, but according to The Sunday Times Rich list, Beckham and his wife Victoria have a combined fortune of about €544 million. Gold was his thing.
