A season barely three months old has already chewed up and spat out almost an entire matchday squad of managers. Fifteen have left posts in the Football League since August, six more than at this stage last season. John Askey’s exit at Shrewsbury Town was especially dispiriting, compounding a miserable hat-trick of sackings for a triangle of coaches who moved up the managerial ladder having directly replaced one another. Harry Kewell’s exit from Notts County after 73 days was the latest reminder of the remorselessness.
Paul Hurst, the catalyst for the aforementioned merry-go-round, was presumably not alone in thinking that he was broadening his palette and moving on to bigger and better things when he left Shrewsbury for the Ipswich Town job in May. It is impossible to sugarcoat results – Askey, Hurst and Mark Yates (at Askey’s previous club, Macclesfield Town) mustered five league wins between them in 43 games – but such sackings are indicative of a problem facing British coaches aiming to better themselves.
Hurst is among the countless young managers to have namechecked Eddie Howe and Sean Dyche as beacons of hope, but attempting to bridge that gap is a thankless task, one seemingly getting harder. At the turn of the year Hurst acknowledged that winning promotion to the Premier League was the best route to a top-flight job but he would struggle to command a Championship job now, as would Askey and Yates in League One and League Two respectively. It is so easy to question a manager’s ambition but, quite simply, the grass is not always greener.
It is not all doom and gloom, with a few anomalies leading the way. Chris Wilder has done a magnificent job since taking over at Sheffield United two years ago, but Dean Smith is perhaps the most salient example of leaving behind an impressive project at Brentford to seize an opportunity that was too good to turn down, also at his boyhood club, Aston Villa.
Smith has swiftly made great inroads there, imprinting his high-intensity style on a talented but thin squad before Sunday’s derby at home to Birmingham City. As Smith said after his team beat Derby last time out, Villa have got “bums off seats”. Smith may be blessed by the riches at his disposal, particularly in attacking areas – Jack Grealish is arguably the most gifted midfielder in the division and the Chelsea loanee Tammy Abraham has 28 goals in 52 Championship appearances – but it is a tough job, underlined by Steve Bruce’s undoing. If Smith can steer Villa back to the Premier League he will successfully elevate himself to a status that, with respect, would have eluded him at Griffin Park. For Smith the potential rewards were understandably impossible to refuse.
The brutality of the business is clear but there is no shortage of interest in vacancies, with AFC Wimbledon receiving 80 applications for the post that Neal Ardley held for six years. But what happens to the next wave of hungry managers proving themselves in the lower reaches of English football?
The story so far
Gary Bowyer Blackpool (quit)
Gary Johnson Cheltenham Town (sacked)
Nick Daws Scunthorpe United (sacked)
Kevin Nolan Notts County (sacked)
Harry Kewell Crawley Town (quit)
Michael Collins Bradford City (sacked)
Dean Austin Northampton Town (sacked)
Steve Bruce Aston Villa (sacked)
Mark Yates Macclesfield Town (sacked)
Dean Smith Brentford (quit)
Paul Hurst Ipswich Town (sacked)
Phil Brown Swindon Town (sacked)
Neal Ardley AFC Wimbledon (mutual consent)
John Askey Shrewsbury Town (sacked)
Harry Kewell Notts County (sacked)
It is hypothetical but is there sufficient motivation for the likes of John Coleman and Jim Bentley – who have performed miracles at Accrington Stanley and Morecambe respectively – or Nathan Jones at Luton Town, or Danny Cowley at Lincoln City, to climb, say, one division at the risk of losing what they have built? Whenever it may be, the next move is pivotal.
Cowley, speaking in April about the future for him and his brother, assistant manager Nicky, said: “We’re ambitious, there’s no doubt about that. But sometimes the ambitions can be in the journey, and the journey we are on we’ve been lucky enough to be part of five promotions and I think that’s allowed us to have these gradual steps.
“We are very, very careful not to get ahead of ourselves and run before we can walk. This is only our second year in full-time management. We feel like we are learning and developing every day, and I’m not sure we need to get off this pathway at this moment.”
Talking points
• MK Dons have moved top of League Two but Paul Tisdale insists doing so means “diddly squat”. His side are unbeaten in the league since September and boast the meanest defence in the division. The former Arsenal midfielder Chuks Aneke has been influential, scoring 10 goals in 14 appearances. “We’re only in November,” Tisdale said. “We need to resist the temptation to feel good about ourselves.”
• Luke Varney scored twice as Michael Duff toasted his first league win in charge of Cheltenham, at Notts County. The 36-year-old striker scored his third and fourth goals of the season to help the Robins to victory. The oldest player in the Football League, though, is 39-year-old Dannie Bulman, the Crawley Town midfielder in his third spell with the club. Elsewhere, the 43-year-old former Bristol Rovers striker Jamie Cureton celebrated his 350th career goal last weekend, scoring for Bishop’s Stortford against Whitehawk in the Bostik Premier Division. “The body’s sort of holding up,” Cureton said. “There’s a few aches and pains every now and then but I think it’s more just me trying to look after myself and having the drive to want to keep going.”
• The boardroom reshuffle at Reading continues, with the chief executive Ron Gourlay resigning two months after the departure of Dutchman Brian Tevreden as the director of football. Gourlay, the former Chelsea CEO, was influential in appointing Paul Clement, the manager who has won two of his past eight matches and takes his team to Wigan on Saturday.
