Ordinary Gweilo

One of the more enduring mysteries in football is how certain managers seem to pop up time and again in spite of their conspicuous lack of success.

Graeme Souness, for example, who was interviewed for the job of Bolton manager:

Graeme Souness was a candidate on our target list and he has now decided to remove himself from the interview process,” said Bolton chairman Phil Gartside. “Having interviewed him last week, I know he would have been an exceptional candidate for the role.”

He added: “However, I respect Graeme’s decision to pull out of the process and I wish him well for the future.”

Personally, I think he should stick to being a football pundit, and I suspect that fans of Liverpool, Blackburn, and Newcastle (amongst others) would agree.   Daniel Taylor in The Guardian has a theory about why Souness pulled out (The strange case of the resistible rise of Gary Megson).

Football is truly unique: which other industry would be so forgiving to men who have, on the whole, shown so many reasons against employing them?

In the peculiar case of Gary Megson, the supporters of Bolton Wanderers demonstrated what they thought of it by greeting his first appearance in the dug-out with calls for the chairman, Phil Gartside, to be removed from office and anguished cries questioning the new appointment in the strongest terms.

It is difficult to sympathise with Megson when looking at his appointment and the role of Mark Curtis, the agent appointed by Gartside to headhunt a replacement for Sammy Lee. For those who do not know him, Curtis has been the subject of complaints to the FA and Fifa and is one of relatively few agents to be disciplined by the football authorities, dating back to November 1999 when he was fined £7,500 for improper conduct, which included an illicit payment, when the 15-year-old Jermaine Pennant moved from Notts County to Arsenal.

For a long time he has also been the first port of call for anyone in football wanting to get hold of Megson, and he also helped to negotiate the finer points of his contract with two previous clubs. Souness was so shocked by Curtis’s presence at his own interview with Gartside that he withdrew his interest, perceiving it to be a done deal, regardless of the fact that Megson’s win-rate from his only other spell in the Premier League, with West Brom, stands at 15%.

Meanwhile, it seems that Souness thinks he has a better chance of replacing the recently sacked Steve Staunton as manager of the Republic of Ireland – but he’s up against, er,  David O’Leary.  Well, at least he’s Irish. 

I suppose Bryan Robson is missing from the “shortlist” because he has a job, but what about Glen Hoddle?  Or Peter Reid – surely he must be available?

Roy Collins in the Daily Telegraph was also not impressed:

After nurses, the most under-valued, under-paid group of British workers must surely be football managers, who earn little more than the minimum wage and who have as much job security as a one-legged lion tamer. On top of this, they show nothing but undying loyalty to whichever club they find themselves managing in any given month.

Look at Gary Megson who, after giving up six weeks of his busy, demanding life to try to turn around struggling Leicester (19th in the Championship when he left) felt he deserved slightly better working surroundings at Bolton. But did he receive the blessing of Leicester chairman Milan Mandaric? No, twice Mandaric refused Bolton permission to speak to him until justice prevailed.

We now await another tug-of-war as Mandaric seeks to appoint Iain Dowie, who surely deserves a fresh challenge after eight months brilliantly resurrecting the fortunes of Coventry (anonymously mid-table in the Championship). Dowie, you will remember, was ordered by a court to pay almost £1 million to his former chairman at Crystal Palace, Simon Jordan, after claiming that he was leaving to return north. His new club, Charlton, were indeed north of Palace but Jordan waived a compensation clause because he thought Dowie wanted to be closer to his family in Bolton. A move to Leicester would suggest he is planning to get there in instalments.

It shows how quickly change in football, because it’s not that long ago that Dowie would have been favourite for the Bolton job itself – and frankly it’s hard to see how he could be any worse that Megson.  Maybe he’ll get his chance in a few months.