Sacking managers is not always the solution

Chelsea sacked Avram Grant after they lost the Champions League Final on penalties to Man Ure. They weren’t trounced 4-0, they were one strike of the ball away from winning the Final. Had John Terry not mis-kicked his spot-kick, it would have been Grant and not Ferguson waving that big cup at a load of plastic supporters. Would he have been given the boot then? There was a media-lead perception that Grant was a shit manager but actually he led his team into the final day of the League season with a chance of being Champions if Man Ure failed to win and was just one penalty-kick away from winning the European Cup. Managers perceived as being superior such as ‘Big’ Phil Scolari and Guus Hiddink subsequently achieved nothing more despite essentially inheriting Mourinho’s team just as Grant did. Were Chelsea really any better off for giving Grant his P45? Or for giving Scolari the boot? Or letting Hiddink waltz off back to Russia?

Some managers need to be sacked for the good of the club. Souness (who wasn’t) and Houllier (who was far too late) spring to mind. However, there are too many knee-jerk reaction-sackings in football that ultimately cause more harm than good (this is known as Newcastle United Syndrome). With muppets calling for Rafa’s head, even now when we’re actually on a decent run, I just despair at their inability to look at the bigger picture and realise that perhaps it’s better to build something good over time than cobble up something in a short space of time that isn’t built to last (known as Leeds United syndrome).

Liverpool could have won the Premiership last season. They didn’t but if just one or two more details had gone in their favour – for example if Andre Mariner had not disallowed Stevie G’s perfectly legitimate goal at home against Stoke, or if Howard Webb had not given an indisputably incorrect penalty to United when they trailed Spurs at home 2-0 – we would have been Champions.

Had we gone into this season as Champions, our performance thus far would still have been a massive disappointment but I wonder if Rafa would have taken quite as much stick. Certainly no one would have been able to say “We blew the title last season” or “We’ve gone three seasons without winning anything” or “He’s spent all this money and not won the League”. However, I’m sure people would have been happy enough to dismiss the previous season as a fluke or conveniently forget it entirely as they bombard the moan-ins and internet forums deriding the “worst Liverpool team they have ever seen”.

The impatience shown this season has been staggering. Even The Kop magazine which I have been reading for 10 years has embarrassed itself by making snide remarks about the manager’s transfer record, team selections, zonal marking tactics, etc. and effectively stating he should be sacked if we do not meet the “minimum acceptable target” of fourth place and possibly should be sacked anyway because we went out of the FA Cup to Reading.

Is a manager not allowed one bad season? Yes, it’s horrible to watch but it’s not as though there hasn’t been mitigating circumstances. Have we been awful for the whole of Rafa’s five and a half years in charge? No. We’ve won the Champions League, been to another final, won an FA Cup and achieved our two best League seasons since the Premiership began. We’ve also knocked out Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea and Arsenal in the Champions League, winning in the Bernabeu, the Nou Camp and the San Siro. Other than the League title itself, what more can you want?

If next season showed no signs of improvement in terms of the quality of performances, as opposed to necessarily the League position which I would only expect to change when investment arrives, then perhaps there would be an argument for parting with Rafa although even then I think he is the best we could get given our off-field problems. However, history is replete with examples of how keeping faith in a manager – even when there seems to be little evidence or hope of a brighter future – can reap untold rewards for a club and its supporters.

It’s often pointed out that it took Alex Ferguson six full seasons before he finally led Man Utd to the title. However, what commonly slips under the radar is the performance of his teams in the five seasons prior to that first title. Having inherited a team that had not finished outside of the top four in the 5 previous seasons, Fergie oversaw the final two months of a campaign that saw the Mancs finish 11th. Impressively, Fergie immediately reversed the team’s fortunes leading them to a 2nd place finish in 1988 but in the seasons that followed United finished 11th, 13th and 6th. Can you imagine a manager of Liverpool keeping his job with that record over three years? No wonder the Mancs wanted him out.

History shows that sticking with Fergie was the best decision in the Mancs’ history. Who would have believed when 13th place followed an 11th place finish that the club were three years away from winning the title? But then, who would have believed that season’s Champions were three years away from 6th place and at least 20 years away from their next League title?

Of course, Fergie wasn’t the first manager to appear to be taking a club backwards before leading the club to success. I was fascinated to discover that in the season after Bill Shankly’s first title, we finished 7th. The following season we regrouped to win the title again but a year later we had dropped to 5th. We then finished 3rd, 2nd, 5th twice and 3rd before finally landing Shankly’s third title. So even the great Bill Shankly went 6 years without winning the title finishing 5th three times and finishing as high as 2nd just once.

As a more recent example, I give you David Moyes. OK, the man has never won anything and probably never will but by Everton’s standards, the man has pulled up trees. Arriving in March 2002, Moyes saved the Blues from relegation steering them to 15th place. In the following campaign, the “People’s Club” spent much of the season in pole position to finish fourth before eventually dropping to 6th. In the eyes of Evertonians, the man could do no wrong – at least until the following campaign when he got pretty much everything wrong when presiding over Everton’s worst ever season in the top flight. Finishing 17th with just 39 points would have seen most managers sacked but Everton showed faith in their manager and got their reward when in the next season they finished fourth and, more importantly for their supporters, above us! Though the next season proved something of a disaster and the club dropped to 11th in the final standings, the club again kept faith in their manager and in the three years since they have finished 6th, 5th and 5th again. Again, by Everton’s standards (and I don’t mean that as a dig) Moyes has done extremely well in recent years but he could easily have been out of a job on numerous occasions if not for an extremely supportive board behind him.

And then there is the example of Valencia. Valencia ended their 31-year wait for a La Liga title in 2002. The following season they had dropped to 5th. There must have been a fair few Valencia fans who thought 5th place was not good enough. There must have been those who dismissed the previous season’s title as a fluke. There must have been plenty of supporters who thought their coach had taken them as far as he could and needed to be replaced. A year later they were Champions again. What was the name of that coach again?

Oh yes, it was the same coach whose name was being sung on the Kop last season by supporters who were also singing "And now you're gonna believe us / And now you're gonna believe us / And now you're gonna believe us / We're gonna win the League!" Fickle?