Football Food For Thought / Dan Fitch / 21 October 2008 / Leave a comment

Dan "The Betting Man" Fitch on why if instability and constant change is bad news in the corporate world, things should be any different in the footballing world.

I have a CV that makes Frank Spencer's career history look positively stable. In my time my job titles have included copywriter, greengrocer shop manager, barman, joke writer, chocolate factory operative, sports shop sales person, verifications administrator, pottery factory operative, paperboy, script analyst, market stall barrow boy and call centre monkey for four different companies.

These days I work as a freelance writer and hope to squeeze a living out of this pursuit until the day that I'm finally put out of my misery and buried at sea.

Still, I do wonder what would have become of me had I just taken a job and stuck with it, working my way up the ladder. On any occasion when I've had a proper job, the first thing I've done is to hatch a plan to escape from it. During this period I've seen friends of mine stick with their jobs and climb the greasy pole to success. Some of them now even own motor cars and earn that illusive five figure salary we all dream of.

An employee benefits from stability and it is equally beneficial for the employer. This applies in football as much as in any other industry. Clubs that are constantly changing their squads every transfer window will always struggle, as it takes time for new players to gel together (hello there Spurs). So will clubs that sack their managers every time they have a poor run of results (take another bow Spurs).

If a big company were to change their chief executive once a year, you wouldn't expect them to be successful. Yet in football, club chairmen are prone to hitting the button marked 'panic' when going through a rough patch and opting for a new manager. This often provides a brief upturn in results, as the players strive to impress their new boss, but ultimately the underlying problems at a club will eventually rise to the surface.

It seems strange that chairmen opt for change over stability, when there is so little evidence to support change bringing long term success. As I write this on Monday, the two bottom sides in the Premier League are Tottenham and Newcastle. Both clubs are guilty of being too impatient for success and in constantly changing their managers, have put themselves in real danger of relegation. Spurs are currently [4.5] for the drop, with Newcastle [4.9].

The most successful club manager of modern times has been Alex Ferguson. He joined United in 1986 and didn't win a trophy until the FA Cup win of 1990. In 1986-87 and 1988-89, United finished in eleventh place in the league and in 1989-1990 they finished thirteenth, despite spending millions on transfers in this period. It was in 1993, seven years after Ferguson took charge, that they won their first league title.

Would any manager at a top club be given this time today? They should be, because it was during these lean years that Ferguson was able to lay down the infrastructure that saw them produce a stream of international players through United's youth structure. The most successful managers in English football such as Busby, Shankly, Nicholson, Paisley and Clough, were given considerable time to create their dynasties.

It's perhaps even more important for lower league clubs to have managerial stability. Lacking the money to buy star players, small clubs need to set up effective scouting networks and youth development systems. This is impossible if the man in charge of it all changes every season. Managers like Dario Gradi at Crewe and John Rudge at Port Vale, were given the time for their methods to take effect and brought great success to their small clubs.

I'm pleased to see that David Moyes has just signed a new contract at Everton. Moyes has been in charge of Everton for six years now and outside of the Champions League binging quartet, they are as good a team as anyone else in the division. He will hope that Everton are bought by someone with the sort of money that would allow him to take the club to the next level. If this doesn't materialise, there's always Ferguson's job at some point, with Moyes available at [24.0] in the next United manager market.

So I urge all club chairmen. Give the manager a chance during the rough times and they could turn out to be another Ferguson, Moyes, or Gradi. Having said that, I would like to make it clear that I'm all for Directors of Football being sacked when things go bad. Especially ones that look like Harry Harris.