The Sports Buff ⚽️ ⚾️ 🏈

Hello and good evening ladies and gents, dear readers. Praying you’re all well, looking after yourselves and keeping warm! The world of football is like another universe for many, as they step into the world of football and being a fan, as demonstrated in this piece here https://the-sports-buff.com/2021/10/07/the-types-of-sports-fans/ and then step into normality.

This parallel universe is felt none more than the football manager. As mentioned in past articles https://the-sports-buff.com/2021/09/27/the-essence-of-time/ the job of a football manager is unforgiving. Messers Solskjaer and Arteta (both who despite criticism in abundance) can relate to this unforgiving nature.

The impatience football clubs have with their managers is a pet peeve of mine. Sir Alex and Arsene Wenger were able to achieve their success because they were supported. Managers these days that get this support are rare.

Sean Dyche, Diego Simeone and even Daniel Farke (four years as Norwich boss) have been given time to succeed at their respective clubs. But how many more managers can you name that have been given time?

It’s perceived, that every manger needs money to succeed. Well, not all managers some could do it by being given time, look at David Moyes for example. Now, of course the Scot has signed some players, but Moyes hasn’t spent the money like Pep Guardiola for example, but he is still working wonders, is he not?

The art of being a football manager is amazing to me. You get money to spend on players, like at PSG, but to me bar Tuchel all the other managers at Paris Saint Germain have been disappointing on the whole.

Maybe lack of knowledge on how to inspire players? Get a club legend into the club, a former player who coaches elsewhere and bring him back to the club. This isn’t always successful, yes Antonio Conte and Zinedine Zidane are success stories of players managing clubs they used to play for, but there are some non success stories too.

Alan Shearer managing Newcastle, Tim Sherwood managing Tottenham and if you ask United and Arsenal fans (some of them) they will say they have been failures too. What inspired me to write this, is that with the case of Chelsea for example (who sacked Frank Lampard and replaced him with Thomas Tuchel) success and failure is not guaranteed.

Eddie Howe and Xavi, the new man due to take over at Newcastle and Barcelona respectively, aren’t guaranteed anything, good or bad. So just think,the next time you abuse a manager, they have a hard job. as it is.