Trigger-happy owners stifle coaching talent

ONE DAY, an owner of a football club will hold his hand up, admit responsibility for a series of mistaken appointments - and sack himself.

One day. But not one day soon, if recent events are any guide.

The managerial merry-go-round was originally given that name as a reference to the way football bosses appeared able to shuffle around between jobs. It virtually seemed to be a closed shop, with the same old suspects swapping posts with apparent impunity. Now, though, as it approaches dizzying speeds, talented coaches are starting to spin off and become lost to the game.

The fortunate can still clamber back on board for a second chance, as Craig Levein did at Dundee United yesterday and John Robertson has done at Livingston. But, while those two former managers of Hearts have revived their fortunes, other members of the same profession have not fared so well - particularly those who have been employed at Tynecastle and Tannadice.

The men in charge there - the Hearts majority shareholder Vladimir Romanov and the United chairman Eddie Thompson - have become the most glaring cases in Scottish football of power without responsibility. Since taking over at Tynecastle less than two years ago, Romanov has got rid of Robertson, George Burley and Graham Rix, and has also allowed Valdas Ivanauskas to go on sick leave, replacing him with Eduard Malofeev. Thompson, meanwhile, has parted company with Alex Smith, Paul Hegarty, Ian McCall, Gordon Chisholm and now Craig Brewster, making Levein his fifth appointment since becoming chairman four years ago.

Given the level of compensation many sacked managers receive, we may find it hard to feel too much sympathy for them. But Smith, now the chairman of the Scottish Managers and Coaches Association, makes the point that it is players just as much as his members who are adversely affected by trigger-happy chairmen.

"People don't realise the folly of making changes," he said yesterday. "Maybe in the short term a team may improve after a manager is sacked, but in the longer term they are bound to be affected by the instability.

"These changes have happened far too quickly. The thing that worries me most is we're going through an awful lot of promising young managers, and we're not a big enough country to do that.

"Craig Brewster will know he has made mistakes along the way, but he's a young manager learning the job. Eleven months ago, Craig Brewster was a promising young manager who was doing well in Inverness: now he's looking like a broken man.

"John Robertson was successful at Inverness too, and did quite well at Hearts, but he suffered a heavy blow when Hearts replaced him. And Ian McCall was a very promising manager, too."

Smith argues that even those managers who do get back into the game at a decent level may have suffered because of a break in their learning. It takes decades, he believes, for someone to reach his peak as a coach or manager, and only then if an understanding chairman allows him the time to grow into the job.

"Things need to be calmed down a little bit, and young managers like that need to be given time. You improve a team brick by brick, building away gradually. It takes a fair bit of time, not a few weeks or months.

"The game now has a lot of a certain type of people in it - people who have been very successful in their business. 'I'm a winner in business, and I'm going to be a winner in football', they say. But they don't realise that normal business methods don't work in football.

"A chairman's interference is absolutely suicidal. They don't have the depth of knowledge required to get players playing to the level required.

"I couldn't walk into an operating theatre in a hospital and tell the doctors what to do. I know that's an exaggerated comparison, but the point is you do have to work for a long time at becoming a good football manager."

And a long time is precisely what fewer and fewer managers are getting. We were barely a handful of games into this season before questions began to be asked of Maurice Malpas, who moved up to replace Terry Butcher at Motherwell.

The former Scotland international has remained in his post, but others have not been so lucky. Besides Brewster and Ivanauskas, Jim Leishman has stepped upstairs at Dunfermline, Iain Stewart has been sacked by Peterhead, Graham Roberts has gone from Clyde, and Gordon Dalziel was shown the door by Raith Rovers.

If anything, things are even worse in England. In addition to those managers who have already gone, Alan Pardew was under severe pressure until his West Ham side at last managed to score a goal on Sunday, while at Manchester City Stuart Pearce is also feeling the heat.

"It's much worse than it was," Smith says of the scene in general. "I don't think there's any doubt about that. The last seven days or so have just been horrendous."

From his own experience decades ago, Smith knows the value that can arise from stability, and the long-term damage to a club that can arise from a hasty dismissal. The obvious case in point, he says, is Sir Alex Ferguson.

"I remember when Fergie took over at Manchester United he told me it would take five years to sort that club out from top to bottom and get it in a fit state again. He was nearly right - I think it took him a wee bit less than that.

"But the thing is, he almost didn't get that time. There was a period when some of the fans wanted him out, and when people thought he was maybe just one more defeat away from getting the boot. The board stuck with him, though, and after United won the FA Cup in 1990 they kept winning trophies."

For Smith, the equation is clear. If the managerial continuity at Old Trafford had been interrupted in the late 1980s, there would have been no Champions League triumph at the end of the following decade. Few managers, of course, have it in them to become as successful as Ferguson, but at every level the case remains the same: greater stability within the coaching set-up makes for greater harmony in the dressing-room, and hence better performances on the pitch.

There may be little evidence that Thompson and Romanov are able or willing to learn from their own excesses, but Smith believes they must do so for the sake of their clubs. "There is no point in Craig Levein being given half a season. He has to be given time at Tannadice.

"That's the case even more so at Hearts. They're like a ship on a stormy sea without a captain, and they need someone to take charge."

Levein has been given a two-and-a-half-year contract at Dundee United, whereas officially Malofeev is so far only holding the fort at Hearts, as Ivanauskas is supposedly going to return soon. It remains to be seen, though, how either man will cope with the biggest challenge facing him in his post - a club owner who is unwilling to accept that his own impetuosity has become a greater problem by far than supposedly under-achieving managers.

Taken from the Scotsman