"The Sack Race X2"

Basically the right-wing press really hate AVB, so stories that make him sound like a dick are less likely to be true than with other managers.

 

You think so?

It might just be a stupid, Venkys-style decision, we'll see when we know the replacement. But I never really liked the idea that the only legitimate reason to let a manager go is that the team has dropped below a predetermined level of shitness. It depends on all kinds of things but the most important one is the standard of replacement. I like the idea of giving Moyes a bit of time to learn the job, but I still think that if Klopp came available we should show Moyes the door tomorrow even if he'd won his last five games.

 

I do sort of agree with all of this. You're spot on about the need for stability and long-term planning.

There's a bit of context that you're missing though. There's a wave of thinking in football lately stating that achieving stability by keeping the same manager in place is a pipe dream. If he does badly, the fans, media and possibly players turn against him, the entire club descends into a mess of negativity and his position becomes untenable. If he does well, he leaves for a bigger club. I mean, we talk about impatience, but managers in England get more time than they do anywhere else in the world. It just seems to be a fact of football that clubs regularly change their manager.

That's why clubs appoint a 'director of football' to provide long-term planning and direction to the club. He buys and sells players, runs the academy, appoints the coaching staff, and so on. The manager just picks the first team and deals with the media. So when he leaves for a better job or the media hound him out, you don't need an overhaul. Lyon really kicked the movement off by winning Ligue 1 for seven years in a row with four different managers.

A lot of European clubs are now run the same way, and it's spreading to England too. West Brom are one of its big success stories (although they lost their director of football to the FA this summer). If it was another club I'd probably agree that it's totally knee-jerk and unnecessary, but for West Brom it's not an especially radical move and will barely affect the stability of the club at all.

 

This is true too. The West Brom fans, in contrast to everyone else, don't seem to be surprised at all. They've actually won two less games in 2013 than Jol did.