Who, asks Tony Cascarino, would be a manager? Chairmen and fans are after your blood, it seems. But not if you’re Swedish with a feisty Italian bird and in charge of the England team. Then you can get away with anything…
The day I realised that I could never be a football manager came when I was playing for Nancy in the French league. We’d been hammered playing away at Toulouse on a Saturday night. We flew back to Nancy after the match and arrived back to collect our cars at our training ground at 2am.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t stop thinking about our poor performance. So I got up at about 6am and headed for an early-morning bakery near our training ground. As I approached, I saw the manager’s car at the ground, and his office light was on and went to investigate. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. I said I was about to ask him the same thing. Since getting back at two in the morning, Laszlo Boloni had watched two videos of our next opponents, prepared exercises for the warm-down training session scheduled for 10am that morning, and had started planning some tactics.
Nancy sacked Boloni because we were relegated with 42 points from 34 games. We were so unlucky – the previous season, we had 39 points and finished 11th! Boloni was a brilliant coach and I told the chairman he wouldn’t find anybody better. Indeed, after he left, Nancy have been languishing in the second division ever since, while Boloni went on to lead Sporting Lisbon to their first-ever Double in Portugal, and is currently coaching Rennes in the French first division.
That’s the life of a manager. One minute you’re up, the next you’re down. It has very little to do with how good you actually are at the job. Look at David Moyes – he’s a great manager, but everybody walloped Everton at the end of last season. He was backed during the summer but the moment the season starts he is under pressure again.
That’s what makes betting on the sack race such a lottery. Who will be next to go? Who knows! Look at Paul Sturrock at Southampton – there were rumours about his future but nobody could have predicted how quickly he would get the sack.
In the opening months of the season, the factor that unites all managers under pressure is that they struggled last season. They’ve managed to ride out the summer, but know they have to make a dramatic improvement to stay in the job.
This happened with Peter Reid at Sunderland two years ago. He was given funds to buy Tore Andre Flo and Marcus Stewart at a cost of £10 million, but results barely improved and he was quickly shifted out as Howard Wilkinson came in.
It is tougher being a manager today – fans turn against them more quickly. They see everything on television and are more demanding. It’s not just results that matter – it’s the style. Tottenham fans wanted George Graham out because of the style of football his teams played, not because of the results.
Players can be ruthless as well. I’ve heard all sorts of things in dressing rooms – ‘if we lose again, at least we’ll get rid of the boss’ – and so on. You can imagine that scenario at Newcastle United, with some of the characters in their dressing room: ‘Another couple of defeats and at least we’ll get rid of that old git.’ But I maintain that the grass isn’t always greener. Sometimes you are better off with a manager you know than risk a new man coming in who may not rate you highly. It’s all very well to hope your boss gets booted out, but that can frequently lead to even more problems. You often see players looking for a change at the top to boost their chances of playing – yet when the change comes, they are hardly any better off.
There are two managers I would bet on seeing out the season: Rafael Benitez at Liverpool and Jacques Santini at Spurs. Having taken up their posts in the summer, they are in a strong position. The chairmen want to see their appointments work, so the managers have time to succeed. Only a disaster or a massive back-room bust-up at the club for either manager could get see
them out before the season ends.
Another great survivor is Sven Goran Eriksson – yet I have no idea why. I simply don’t see how he could inspire anyone. I couldn’t give two hoots about his private life; if England had won the European Championship, he could have been knocking off the Queen and he would have been okay. But on the football side, I think he’s the wrong man for the job. I’ve spoken to a few players who have played for him and they say yes, he really is as quiet as he looks.
Players need lifting at times, but Sven is hardly the man to do that. Look what happened against Brazil two years ago, and against Portugal last summer.
I reckon England will qualify for the World Cup, we will do all right and then be beaten, like we were against Brazil and Portugal. And then he’ll be off, probably. Some guys have all the luck.
