An Impossible Job

He had just seen his team claw back a two goal deficit against Swansea and rescue an unlikely point ending a run of 5 straight defeats so you might think that the, then manager of Wolves, Mick McCarthy would have been happy when the Sky commentator shoved a microphone in his face at the end of the match. As it turned out, McCarthy was in no mood to exchange pleasantries.

He had made two late substitutions which had changed the game in his favour, but as he was doing so, his own fans were chanting "You don't know what you're doing" and "You're getting sacked in the morning". This, to a manager that kept a moderate team like Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Premier League for three consecutive seasons against all the odds.

Of course, Mick McCarthy is as thick skinned as only a Yorkshireman can be and has had to put up with far worse, such as a verbal volley from Roy Keane who, after a vile, foul mouthed tirade at McCarthy, spat out his dummy and walked away from the Republic of Ireland team at the 2002 World Cup because the training facilities weren't to his personal taste.

But the volley of abuse blasted at McCarthy during the Swansea match was simply further evidence of what managers are increasingly facing and have to work with. One can reasonably argue that they are paid much better than ever, but never before have they been subjected to such intense scrutiny from just about everybody from the press and TV media, to employers and their stakeholders.

Football in Britain has almost completely moved away from being a sport to a business. Moreover, it has become the ultimate results oriented business and the authors of the superbly written The 90 Minute Manager, Professers Chris Brady and David Bolchover identified football management as the perfect role model for successful business management.

The basis of their argument is that football management is that rare example of where results are instantly exposed to all stakeholders. This is against a backdrop of having to deal with a myriad of difficulties that range from players personalities and egos (not to mention their agents) and often unrealistic expectations from Chairmen, the Board and the supporters, all in the full glare of the media spotlight.

There is no doubt that the pressure on managers is exacerbated by the vast sums of money circulating in football's obscenely inflated transfer market. Fans expectations have become ridiculously unrealistic and the increase in the number of foreign investors, many of whom have no understanding of the complexities of the game, has not helped.

We are now only a few weeks away from the start of the new English season and already managers will be starting to feel the pressure building. Fans expect, daily, to read about expensive, high profile additions to the playing staff and big name players at every club play the "club's ambition" card in their contract negotiations. Robin van Persie at Arsenal is the latest to do this, blaming his desire to leave the club on their "lack of ambition". This puts the onus for his departure squarely at the manager's door in the eyes of the fans who believe the club should throw money they haven't got around like confetti in order to build a team that will match their beloved Mr van Persie's expectations and therefore keep him at the club.

Should van Persie leave, and Arsenal fail to win a trophy for an 8th successive season, the pressure on the Arsenal board to sack Arsene Wenger, a manager who has produced 17 consecutive seasons of Champions League football, a feat matched only by Manchester United may become intolerable. He produced a Championship winning team that went an entire season undefeated (something that may never be equalled) and some argue that his sophisticated style of play has transformed English football radically. That will cut no ice with some fans, who think that simply having the name "Arsenal" gives them a divine right to winning cups and championships.

Wenger rode out the Fabregas "Will he go to Barcelona, won't he go to Barcelona" storm and so far the Arsenal board have been made of sterner stuff than to give in to the fans, but can that position be guaranteed if another barren season transpires..?

At least Arsenal sit at the top end of the league. At the other end, things can be even worse. One only had to sit and watch on TV, the awful, terrible spectacle of Blackburn Rovers fans turning their anger on manager Steve Kean in a match versus Bolton Wanderers before Christmas 2011. It was as disgraceful and sickening a public lynching as the human mind can imagine.

So, who in their right mind would want to be a football manager..? Most managers get paid far less than their top salaried players, and yet, it is their heads that invariably roll when the players decide they're not going to put the effort in for the man in the dugout anymore. The phrase "He's lost the dressing room" has become the players way of telling the Chairman "Sod results. We're only going through the motions until you sack him."

Perhaps some managers have a stubborn love of the game or an inner belief that they really can do the job successfully. Some must truly believe they can turn a struggling team's fortunes around and get a set of overpaid, preening, pampered prima donna multi-millionaires to behave like adults and professionals, and work honestly to achieve the results that their hyper-inflated wages suggest they should be capable of.

Some very experienced players who could have become managers have taken the easy option of going into TV punditry. Alan Hansen was offered the Liverpool job when Kenny Dalglish first quit Anfield in 1991. Instead, he took the "cumfy sofa" at the BBC and as a result, still has a full head of thick hair, something King Kenny conspicuously does not.

Andy Gray even interviewed for the job of manager at Everton before being recruited by Sky, where he'd still be today, on a seven figure salary if he hadn't committed professional suicide by being obscenely sexist to a female assistant referee directly into an open mic.

Punditry has offered many ex-players a lucrative and safe alternative to the pressures of management and who can blame them for taking the Sky shilling..?

Back in 1994, Channel Four screened a fly on the wall documentary that followed the hapless Graham Taylor's attempt to take England to the USA World Cup. His beleagured qualification campaign spawned the phrase "Do I not like that" and it summed up the title of the documentary: "An Impossible Job." At the time, it was believed that this applied only to the England manager's position, but 18 years later the same candid camera could be in any English football team dressing room and the story would no doubt draw the same conclusions.

Football management everywhere, has now become an impossible job.

Not on Football Manager 2012 it hasn't...Solihull Moors getting repeated promotions into the Premiership and all that jazz.