John Nicholson

Manchester City's owners know nothing about British football. If they did, they wouldn't have sacked Mark Hughes and appointed an Italian because in this country if you want your club to be successful, you get in a northerner or a Celt as a manager.

British football management is dominated by Celts (Scots, Welsh and Irish) and northerners. Contrary to popular belief, you don't win much with a foreign coach either. In the history of the British leagues, only two overseas coaches have won a league title, only three have won a European trophy.

In appointing Roberto Mancini they have chosen to avoid appointing a southern-born English manager. In doing this they are following a long-established trend.

The history books tell us the pedigree bosses going back many decades are almost all northern and Celts.

Given that the bottom half of Britain - I'm drawing the line under Nottingham - is where the vast majority of people are born, this is an extraordinary fact.

Currently, Celts and northerners outnumber southern-born managers by three to one. Only around 20% of Premier and Football League managers were born in the south. And to boost that figure, I'm including not-really-southern-at-all people like Sam Allardyce, born in Dudley.

In Scotland, of the 42 league clubs, 38 are managed by Scots, one by a Teessider, one by a Hungarian, leaving Terry Butcher as the south's only representative.

This isn't a modern development.

Look at many clubs' legendary managers.

Arsenal - George Graham, a Scot; Herbert Chapman, Yorkshireman; Bertie Mee - born in Nottinghamshire.

Spurs - Bill Nicholson, a Scarborough lad and Keith Birkenshaw, a Barnsley boy.

Liverpool - Shankly and Dalglish, both Scots, Paisley, a Geordie and Fagan, a Scouser.

Manchester City - Cheshire-born Joe Mercer.

Manchester United - Busby and Ferguson both Scottish to their core.

Chelsea is an exception - Dave Sexton was, before Jose Mourinho, their finest manager and he's straight outta Islington. However, their manager with the best win % since the war is Bobby Campbell - a Liverpool man.

No British club has won a European trophy without a North Country boy, a Scot or a foreigner at the helm, except Chelsea's Cup-Winners' Cup under Sexton. And of those 29 European victories, only three have been won by overseas managers (Gerard Houllier, Rafa Benitez and the lovely Luca Vialli), the rest by the northern mafia.

European Cup and Cup-Winners' Cup champions, Jock Stein's Celtic and Rangers' Willie Waddell were both south Lanarkshire mining village men. Middlesbrough-born Brian Clough won two European Cups with Forest. Shankly and Busby, two more south of Scotland sons of mining stock, won a UEFA and European Cup.

Bobby Robson won the UEFA Cup with Ipswich, as did Villa with Birkenhead-born Ron Saunders.

Spurs' UEFA Cup successes were under Nicholson and Birkenshaw, United under Ferguson, Arsenal's under Graham, Liverpool's under the boot room dynasty.

West Ham won the Cup-Winners' Cup under Ron Greenwood, who was born near Burnley.

Leeds' all-conquering side of the 60s and 70s that won two Fairs Cup, the predecessor to the UEFA cup, were bossed by Middlesbrough son Don Revie.

Everton's European success came under County Durham-born fella Howard Kendall. All British European Cup an Champions League winning sides were managed by northern Britishers with the honourable exception of Benitez in 2005.

But even at home this extraordinary north-country dominance continues.

Not a single British manager has won the top-flight division who wasn't a Scot or a Northerner since Alf Ramsey won the 1961-62 title with Ipswich. That's nearly 50 years of northern dominance! Only the stellar talents of Mourinho and Arsene Wenger have penetrated the northern hegemony.

But it doesn't stop there. In the last five seasons, the top two in the Championship have all been managed by northerners and Celts, and four out of five of the play-off winners were managed by northerners and Scots - Alan Pardew being the southern exception.

Currently the team top of every division down to the Blue Square Conference North is managed by a northerner - Chris Hughton is the only exception at Newcastle and he only got the job by default.

So we've got to ask the question, what's wrong with southerners? Why doesn't anyone want a southern manager? This is all too one-sided to be a mere coincidence. Alf Ramsey won the World Cup, after all, and Hughton - not normally mentioned in the same breath as Alf - is proving a tiny, squeaky Stratford boy can do really well even in a northern heartland.

Surely there isn't something innately worse about southern men that makes them unable to lead a side to victory is there?

Do southern accents and expressions not stir the blood like a northern or Scottish voice?

It's certainly the case that most of us would find the oratory of Bill Shankly more inspiring than the thin, nasal cockney whine of Dennis Wise. But is it as simple as accent?

The peoples of the north of this island have always had to move south to get work. The south is where the money has always been. Maybe the managerial culture reflects this. Northerners will come south to manage but southerners are less flexible and less willing to travel to get work; less willing to leave their home area. Perhaps there are just more northerners applying for managers' jobs.

Harry Redknapp is the most successful southerner in work today as a manager with four trophies in 27 years of graft to his name. Interestingly, Croydon-born Roy Hodgson has been successful abroad but not yet in the UK, though Fulham are doing so well. But again, he is proof that a southerner can be damn good.

The further you dig, the more it starts to look like football is institutionally biased against employing southern-born managers. I'd love to know how many apply and how many are successful. Do chairmen wince as soon as they hear a southern twang?

But it doesn't stop there. There are a huge, perhaps disproportionate, amount of northerners and Celts on our TV and radio.

Charlie Nicholas, Alan Hansen, Andy Gray, Craig Burley, Gary McAllister, Alan McInally, Joe Royle, Jon Murray, Alan Green, Conor McNamara, Roddy Forsyth, Dave Woods, Kevin Gallagher, The Waddler, Gary Pallister, Ray Stubbs, Kevin Keegan, Alan Shearer, Phil Thompson, Lee Dixon, Mark Bright, Mark Lawrenson, Jimmy Armfield, Graham Taylor, Pat Nevin, Colin Murray, Ian Brown, Ian Dennis, Stuart Hall, Gabby Logan, Mike Ingham, Jeff Stelling and you begin to see the northern/Celtic mafia has truly invaded the media too.

There have been many inspirational southern captains from Bobby Moore, to Tony Adams and John Terry. But that's where it ends. Odd isn't it?

Presumably chairmen and owners know their football history and thus instinctively favour someone who knows their mushy peas from their guacamole. Perhaps that explains why the likes of perennial lower-league club-hoppers Danny Wilson, Mickey Adams, Paul Jewell, Brian Laws, Aidy Boothroyd, Chris Turner and Paul Sturrock are rarely out of work for any longer than they want to be.

Having a Celt or a northerner in charge guarantees nothing and there have been plenty of rotten northern managers, but clearly, to many chairmen it seems to make some sort of success more likely and the more that belief entrenches, the more it will become self-perpetuating.

It doesn't look likely to change soon. Look at the men regarded as the best up-and-coming managers. Owen Coyle, Billy Davies, Darren Ferguson, Simon Grayson, Nigel Pearson, Phil Parkinson, Paul Lambert and even mad Lee Clark (who'd have thought he'd make a good manager?) at Huddersfield. It's a new Celtic-northern wave.

Does this apply in any other walk of life? Are there more successful northern managers of businesses and corporations? Or is there something special about northern and Celtic football men? Football's employers certainly seem to think so - except those based in the Middle East it would seem.

Well I'll go t'foot of our stairs.