Man Utd, Chelsea and Celtic all gone in a few days.
33 days for the Celtic chap…must be a record.
Nice pay-off I am sure.
Is football management the most mad profession in terms longevity?
Who would choose football management as a career?
by 24 Comments
Brilliant so funny thank you for sharing that.
New Chelsea boss has been given a 6 year contract. Unbelievable! If he lasts that long I will eat my hat. More likely he will be fired latest this time next year and they will pay him 10 million quid or something. So it’s a pretty good career move, succeed and you get millions, fail and you get millions.
Bob Mortimer performs an occasional comedy scenario involving a regular meeting of sacked football managers at a boozy lunch, where they boast to each other about the damage they have done and how much of a payout they managed to wangle from their hapless previous club.
The days of such predatory big-personality managers are over, I think. The Man U guy said in his last press conference that he was not a “manager” – he was told he was a “coach”.
He was sold down the river.
6th at this point of the season compared to finishing 15th last year he was doing well.
Clearly the non-football aware bosses above disagreed.
I am pretty sure he wanted to leave, he has never seemed very comfortable in the job and for Man U 6th place is no good, 17 pts behind the leaders (and only 4 points above 14th place). He left the grounds yesterday with a huge smile on his face (and a few million in his pocket)
Slot will be next I think, possibly after a hammering tomorrow
As a Hammers fan, somewhere between disbelief and despair after tonight’s result and the implications of it, I wish we had a luckier manager. He’ll probably get the boot tomorrow and be generously compensated for it. In a year’s time, he probably won’t even look to see how West Ham have fared away to Birmingham City. It’ll be the likes of me who will carry the pain. He’ll be considering whether to coach in the Portuguese League or to take on the tempting post as Austria manager.
You wuz robbed last night, with that penalty. Mind you the 80 minutes before that was not a showcase of “the academy” to be frank.
The pen looked more like a pen every time you saw it though. Late and misjudged. Not a deliberate foul but still a foul. Goalkeepers don’t get special treatment – if that was a tackle, it would have been a pen all day.
Hmm, I’ve definitely seen many similar instances in the past when nothing was given. One happened in a Leeds game I believe.
E2A just asked someone, it was against Wolves and Rasmus Christiansen (sp?) was punched in the face. No penalty awarded.
That’s about consistency not whether or not it’s a foul. The keeper punched the player in the face because he committed himself so early that he couldn’t stop himself when the ball was cleared by another player. It’s a late tackle in the area – a pen. There seems to have been no intent hence no red card.
I can’t remember Rasmus effectively punching a Wolves player in the face and it not being given but, as ever, these things even themselves out (we have had several good shouts for pens not given this season alone). Rasmus is clumsy enough to have done that though.
Rasmus got a punch from the keeper not vv.
My point (perhaps not clearly stated) is the very lack of consistency.
Then we agree. I don’t understand how there is still inconsistency with VAR but it still seems to be there.
And I certainly think Forest pen was more of a pen than the Newcastle one last night. But then I am slightly biased.
I can understand the penalty being given. It’s the disallowed second goal that hurts. Summerville for West Ham didn’t attempt to make a pass or kick it against the defender. The defender tackled him kicking the ball deliberately away from Summerville. How our player is offside from a deliberate action by the defender is the bit I can’t fathom. Ridiculous and it probably cost us at least one point, possibly three.
I’m still not over the ridiculous justification for the Brighton equaliser against us a few weeks ago where a boot 7 feet above the ground made contact with our defenders head and the ball was controlled by a clear handball before our goalie saved a shot that would have been disallowed had it gone in. VAR is as open to human failing as referee’s shortcomings always were.
Nuno was fired earlier this season after Forest lost to West Ham, now he may well be fired after West Ham lose to Forest. He is living a circular life
Football is too big a business to let one person be in charge. Sometimes it looks like that (Klopp and Pep) but, ultimately, they just have more clout.
Maresca and Amorim both wanted to leave. They may have been being honest in their interviews or it may have been planned but moaning about the hierarchy is the best way to resign with a pay off. I expect managers contracts will soon have some clauses to cover this.
Some sackings are just sensible. Celtic is a good case in point – the manager seems genuinely inept at that level. But the people that hired him are responsible and should also be clearing their desks.
Football really is like big corporate business now. Have a look at how long most executive leaders in industry last in roles and it is pretty short. With generous pay offs. One poor year and they have to go.
Yes that’s right. Large organisations end up concentrating on revenue and returns to shareholders/owners.
Without dwelling on the specifics merits of the managers you mention, what’s remarkable is that so many are paid huge sums for failure, rather than being dismissed without compensation for failing thier probation or a capability process. In fairness, the same often applies to very senior business leaders. The public sector used to solve the problem by offering a very handsome voluntary redundancy or early retirement package.
I know almost nothing about football but I’m available at short notice and a bit skint.
Is there a premier league club willing to take me on a long contract and sack me after one game? I could do with a pension top-up.
I think you may well not make West Ham worse.
I think the rot set in at Manchester United when Sir Alex fell out with the clubs significant share holders John Magnier and JP McManus, over the stud rights of the racehorse Rock Of Gibraltar. This led to them selling their shares to the Glazers, which has proved to be an unpopular move to say the least. A string of failed managers since has led to millions being paid to them in compensation and still waiting for the club’s first Premier title since Fergusons’ departure. If you’ve got a thick skin being a football manager must be a dream job.
Jose Mourinho has a very thin skin, but latest estimates suggest that he has earned over £100 million in severance payments.
Dreamtime for him.
How long before Benfica decide that he wasn’t the saviour after all and send him on his way with yet another payment, and the next gullible club open their bank vault in the forlorn hope that somewhere beneath that prickly exterior the Mourinho of 20 years ago is waiting to flower once again.
Rant alert…please move on if lower league football isn’t your thing!
It genuinely never ceases to amaze me just how many astonishingly stupid decisions are made in the world of football. Appointments made by wealthy but clueless club owners, self-appointed “football experts” or expensive consultants are rife. This is a world where incredible BS on LinkedIn (for example) seems to work wonders and is presumably just taken at face value. It’s a jobs for the boys world, where it’s not what you know, it’s who you know or how much money you have. Previous credible experience, evidenced results or measurable outcomes don’t seem to count for much at all. Examples at Chelsea, Man Utd, West Ham and Celtic are obvious, but this type of thing also unfortunately happens much further down the pyramid as well.
Some background…my local team (in the National League South) were a few years ago taken over by new owners, promising that we’d be in the Premier League and Champions League in ten years time under their stewardship, (this is one of the most over used cliches from new investors in non league football) that the club and ground would be transformed, a world-class manager and squad would be assembled and the sky would be the limit, blah blah blah. The alternative, according to them, if they weren’t given the go ahead to take over, was that the club would imminently be backrupt and almost certainly go under. (Erm…no it wouldn’t have. We would have just cut our coat accordingly and probably been relegated to the Southern League, the tier below where we already were-not necessarily the end of the world.)
Anyway, I digress, these people did take over, (the club’s previous hierarchy probably wondering what they had to lose) almost instantly sacking the poor beleaguered existing management team and appointing a “Consultant” to identify a new Manager, who suggested an old team mate/colleague of his, in a decision which must have taken, ooh, a matter of minutes or a period of intense scrutiny and research, well you can decide. This Manager lasted until the end of the following season, arguably given far too long (the owners didn’t want to be proved wrong of course) after some admittedly initial promise but also long periods of staggering ineptitude on an inflated budget.
Why is any of this relevant? Well, weirdly, there is a Celtic connection. This Consultant was in 2024 appointed Head of Football Operations at Celtic, eventually appointing the now departed Wilfred Nancy as Manager, lasting only a month into his appointment before showing he was almost comically out of his depth at that level.
And the club owners? Now thankfully departed, one of them is now in charge of women’s football development at a top European club, (a genuinely huge role given the rise in status and popularity of women’s football) claiming all over LinkedIn and social media about how he “transformed” our club and is therefore an expert in these kind of football matters.
Consultants? Owners? Pah. The only way for football to claw any credibility back is to adopt a supporter owned model, or failing that to introduce “fit and proper person’s tests” at all levels, with legally binding government appointed regulatory powers to get rid of clowns where it is clearly needed, whatever their investment.
I know, I’m right naive me…
A brilliant article by Jonathan Liew in the Guardian about this whole farrago:
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jan/06/ruben-amorim-manchester-united-jason-wilcox?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other