Whatever happened to the Premier League’s managerial merry-go-round?
Back in the Good Ol’ Days™, when a mid-table Premier League manager got the sack, the club would spin a wheel and land on one of five or so replacements who could fill the spot.
Think Tony Pulis, Sam Allardyce, Alan Pardew, Neil Warnock and Harry Redknapp.
Each had their own shaped hole to fill. Get Redknapp in if you’ve got a bit of cash to spend; get Warnock in if you have a relegation-threatened squad needing of a kick up the arse; get Big Sam in if you want effective if not overly attractive football.
It was an established part of Premier League lore but lately you are more likely to find these managers on TikTok than the touchline. The concept of the managerial merry-go-round has entirely left football.
In the summer, a record nine Premier League clubs had vacancies but of the men hired, just three were already in the league; five of them had never even managed in the division before.
It is only Gary O’Neil who feels somewhat close to the managerial merry-go-round of yesteryear.
But why? Why have these managers become extinct?
The most likely answer is that there is no one simple answer.
An ideal place to start is looking at how different clubs are now compared to the last decade or two.
If we asked you ten years ago what the philosophy of Watford was, or West Brom, Stoke, Sunderland or Norwich, it would not be entirely easy to answer.
Perhaps the best example of this came the following summer when in looking for a man to replace Allardyce, Crystal Palace came up with a 37-strong shortlist with managers ranging from Sean Dyche to Marco Silva to Roy Hodgson to eventual winner Frank de Boer.
Now, though, all 20 clubs in the Premier League will talk about styles, future goals and vision. Hiring a Premier League manager these days feels less like a gut feeling and more the final piece in an already assembled jigsaw.
The driving change behind that has been the rise in the importance of sporting directors. Back in the Barclays era, sporting directors were treated as the enemy by managers, someone seen to be invading their authority. Now they act as the steady hand throughout the up-and-down nature of football.
Each (competent) club and its sporting director has established such a clear identity that when it comes to choosing the new boss, the shortlist is much closer to five than it is to 37.
A byproduct of that research is that you are far more likely to trust a foreign import. This time ten years ago, eight of the Premier League bosses were from home nations. That number is down to four for this current campaign.
Nine of the current 20 managers had not held a Premier League job before their current one and a total of nine nationalities are represented, suggesting clubs are happy to cast the net far and wide to find the ideal fit.
It is how managers like Fabian Hurzeler get chosen. Brighton are the shining example of a forward-thinking club but even they have changed their managerial targets.
Chris Hughton, while being highly successful for the Seagulls, had already managed Newcastle, Birmingham and Norwich before taking over at the AMEX. Hurzeler’s CV of stints at Pippingried and St Pauli is practically bare in comparison.
In 2017, Palace hired De Boer, a manager who had been in charge at Ajax and Inter Milan. Pierre Sage has just three seasons of experience at Lyon and Lens.
Managers are being given a job based on what they could do rather than what they have already done.
Another aspect that has contributed to this change is the threat of relegation no longer being the sole focus for any club other than the top six. A particularly poor run of promoted sides gave the existing Premier League clubs the breathing room to focus on things other than just survival.
It also explains why the ‘survival specialist’ has not really been needed in recent years. Nottingham Forest had theirs in Sean Dyche last season but he was hired in October and after the club had already sacked two managers. His eventual replacement, Vitor Pereira, a man who had already been sacked by a Premier League club, was hired not due to his ability to keep teams up but because of the way his teams played football.
Tottenham, who don’t make a lot of sense, considered a survival specialist before Dyche turned them down and they chucked an enormous amount of money at Roberto De Zerbi, who would likely consider himself above that role.
Earlier when the club had needed a steadying of the ship after Frank, they chose Igor Tudor and even if it turned out horrendously, it was telling that they did not opt for a Premier League-proven manager.
As for the managers themselves, they, too, have become picky in the jobs they choose.
Dyche is the manager who most feels like he would fit into that merry-go-round but he has been out of work now since February.
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Pulis, McCarthy, Warnock and many more have all dropped down to the Championship but Dyche has reportedly rejected this path and there are a few possible reasons why he did not much fancy that.
There is the money element. Premier League managers have mostly been decently paid but the stupid money usually reserved for players has started to trickle down to those on the touchline.
Dyche was given a £3.9million, two-year deal when he joined Forest so when he was sacked after a few months, he was given a tidy pay-off.
These pay-offs tend to come with the stipulation that you receive the money up until you get a new job so, depending on the finances, Dyche may actually be putting himself out of pocket if he takes a job before his Forest pay-out is complete.
The changed media landscape is also something to consider. Twenty years ago, media opportunities were limited to punditry or newspaper columns, which is an opportunity offered to you by someone else. Now, managers like Dyche or Pulis or McCarthy can start a TikTok or a podcast and make their own stream of income. Dyche has even got his own newsletter which is presumably sponsored or will be in the future.
So if you’re Dyche and you are faced with being paid out £3.9m a year all from the comfort of your home while occasionally filming TikToks and appearing on podcasts in nice air-conditioned rooms, why would you swap that for less pay to go to Lincoln on a cold Tuesday night?
That suggests then that if clubs and managers have gone off the idea, we are unlikely to see that merry-go-round returning to football any time soon.
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