Pundits call for more ‘accessible’ pathway for English coaches amid negative ‘perception’
Ian Wright has suggested the lack of English coaches at the highest level may be due to a lack of access to the necessary courses at lower levels, while Roy Keane says the negative ‘perception’ of British coaches count against them, fairly or otherwise.
The pair were discussing Eddie Howe during Newcastle’s FA Cup fifth-round defeat to Brighton on ITV on Sunday.
The Newcastle manager is currently one of only two English coaches in the Premier League, along with the recently hired Graham Potter at West Ham.
Russell Martin, Gary O’Neil and Sean Dyche have all lost Premier League jobs this season, and it’s pretty hard to make a case that any of those clubs got it wrong.
Wright argued that the lack of English coaches at the top of the game is a byproduct of problems lower down the pyramid and called for measures to make coaching courses more accessible to more people
“There’s a bigger question to be asked in respects of the talent pool of managers of coming through as well,’ Wright said on ITV.
“We read about how expensive it is to get on the courses, then to how difficult the course is and trying to make the course accessible to people as people probably sitting around now waiting to get on courses.
“They’ve got to do more about the actual talent pool, because when you look at it, there’s only 20 jobs to get in the Premier League. If you look at the whole league, then we’re talking about 92 jobs. There’s still not a lot of jobs.
“Unless we do something about the talent pool and the people that’s coming through, it’s not going get any better because these owners will get the elite managers.”
Fellow pundit Keane, however, felt that there may be a more straightforward answer. Managers from England and the rest of the UK simply haven’t taken the chances they’ve been given which, however unfairly, is now held against the cohort as a whole.
Keane added: “There’s different ownership models now from years ago. Obviously, foreign owners will be looking at a bigger world and different options, and we see it.
“But it’s not the English or Irish manager, Scottish manager, whatever. When do you get the opportunity? Because some have had opportunities.
“What you’ve got to do, you’ve got to take it.
“There is that perception of foreign managers, we’ve mentioned some really good ones, but there’s been a lot of bad managers come over that have been awful and left and people even forgot about them.
“So sometimes it’s that perception that the foreign manager is going to be better than English or Irish or Scottish or whatever it might be.”
Howe’s side went down to a 2-1 extra-time defeat to Fabian Hurzeler’s Brighton.
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