When all it takes is just 90 minutes to turn things around, club owners are resisting the urge to stick solid as the sack-happy culture of football managers continues.
Cardiff City boss Malky Mackay is now just a statistic in what could be one of the bloodiest on record for the managerial sack race.
The axe falling on the popular Scottish boss despite guiding the club to the top flight for first time since 1962.
Before his very public demise, there have been six sackings and departures of Football League bosses this term, with bookmakers even going as far as posting odds against at least nine – or more – top managers getting the push before the end of the season.
Just for the record, Martin Jol, Owen Coyle, Dave Jones and David Flitcroft all lost their jobs after poor results for Fulham, Wigan, Sheffield Wednesday and Barnsley respectively while Ian Holloway left Crystal Palace before he could be pushed.
West Ham’s Sam Allardyce and Norwich City’s Chris Hughton are now being mentioned as those under pressure to hold their positions within their respective clubs.
Despite these staggering numbers, the sorry catalogue of sackings did not top the record for the most managers to leave their jobs in the Premier League before Christmas, which is seven, happening in 2007 and 2004.
Almost half of the managers sacked so far have been given less than one year in the job.
This highlights the short-term pressures in the game when managers have months rather than years to make an impact at a football club.
The merry-go-round cannot be healthy for any club, consigning them to a circle of inconsistency where players find it difficult to commit all their energies to long-term success.
The sacking of a manager is not only a massive risk it can be at an even bigger expense.
To support the idea of stability owners must acknowledge the 27 years of success of Sir Alex Ferguson.
Having taken on the job in 1986, it wasn’t until 1990 that the club started to reap the rewards. They won the FA cup then they beat Barcelona in 1991 to win the European Cup. In the 1992/93 season, they went on to win their first Premier League title since 1967 as well as taking out the League Cup in 1992.
There aren’t many clubs around the world that have stuck solid with their managers and I very much doubt whether there are many that would have stuck solid, as Untied did, if Ferguson was at their club.
The pressure of success and trying to play attractive football continues to drive the high turnover of managers.
All clubs are looking for success, and I think all clubs are getting to the stage where they want to see, right at this moment, a particular playing style.
A possession-based playing style is an extremely broad term, but seeing that implemented into football clubs it is obviously very effective as we’ve seen the best clubs in the world do it and do it well.
But this style is near impossible to implement in only a season or two, especially if you don’t have the ‘cattle’ to do it.
In the sack-happy culture of football, next week could very well prove to be a landmark in the fragile life of a manager.
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