/ 17 December 2010

Not only turkeys’ heads roll

Christmas must be coming — the Premier League has started to sack managers.

It is not the season of goodwill to all men if you are Chris Hughton, whose departure from Newcastle United has confirmed that at St James’s Park the spirit of pantomime is alive and well. If Hughton was Aladdin, restoring stability with the magic lamp of common sense, his successor, Alan Pardew, must be Buttons, which is about all he will have to spend.

The treatment of Hughton has been roundly condemned by fans, the media and players. It seems his biggest mistake was in taking Newcastle to fifth place with the win at Arsenal. Next to losing matches, the worst thing a manager can do is to raise expectations to levels he will find difficult to maintain.

Apparently Hughton lacks managerial experience, which seems a bit rich coming from a club prepared to put Alan Shearer, whose experience of management was zilch, in charge near the end of the season before last, when Newcastle were on their way down. Pardew is several sackings ahead of Hughton in experience and at least he is not a messiah, which should help.

Reports that Pardew first met Newcastle’s owner, Mike Ashley, in a Mayfair casino, should not be held against him. After all David Dein decided that he wanted Arsene Wenger to be Arsenal’s manager when the Frenchman, invited to Dein’s home following a visit to Highbury, joined in a game of charades with much enthusiasm, despite his halting English.

Maybe, just maybe, Ashley will get this one right. Hughton was popular with the players but not so popular, apparently, that the team felt like breaking into sweat at West Bromwich Albion last weekend, when Newcastle did not so much have an off day as a day off. A manager should never be one of the boys because boys occasionally play truant.

Newcastle’s record since Hughton brought them back to the Premier League has been surprisingly good. Yet impressive performances against Aston Villa, Sunderland, Arsenal and Chelsea have been offset by losing at home to Blackpool, Stoke and Blackburn. It seems that under Hughton Newcastle were up for some fixtures but not others, a bit like Middlesbrough under Gareth Southgate.

Christmas departures are sad but not necessarily bad. At least Bolton waited for the turkey to go down last December before off-loading Gary Megson, whose pragmatic style had kept the team in the Premier League but was boring fans rigid. Under Owen Coyle Bolton have started to win in a style to which the Reebok was unaccustomed.

Six days before last Christmas Manchester City’s Middle Eastern owners decided Roberto Mancini was the man to lead them to new glories rather than Mark Hughes. The jury is still out on that one, although some City players appear to have made up their minds.

Text-message resignation
Two Decembers ago Roy Keane resigned the Sunderland job via a text message. Now Keane is struggling at Ipswich Town while the Stadium of Light has become rather brighter under Steve Bruce, if you put the 5-1 thrashing at St James’s Park to one side.

Blackburn parted company with Paul Ince the same month and have not done too badly under Sam Allardyce, although he has now also been sacked.

Fulham dismissed Lawrie Sanchez on December 21 2007 and gave Roy Hodgson the job of keeping them up, which he did with distinction.
The January transfer window has given boardrooms a stricter time­scale when they are deciding whether a manager is to stay or go. Leave things too late and the new man will have his hands tied if he wants to sign players.

Yet even before the transfer system was changed, Christmas could still be a cruel time for managers.

Less than a week before the festivities in 1972, Manchester United, bottom of the table at the time, fired Frank O’Farrell, with his coach, Malcolm Musgrove, and the chief scout, John Aston. On the same day George Best announced his retirement from football, prematurely as it turned out. Not much comfort and joy for Old Trafford that year.

The following season Sheffield chose Christmas Eve to sack Derek Dooley, whose playing career at Hillsborough had ended at the age of 23 when he had to have a leg amputated after colliding with the Preston goalkeeper.

A bitter Dooley stayed away from the ground for the next 20 years.

Perhaps Hughton will be more forgiving. —