Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why sacking the football manager is a fool’s game

At last, an English football manager who actually deserves to be sacked (or ‘left by mutual agreement’ if you prefer the official line). An England manager on £3 million a year shouldn’t be dreaming up ways of helping himself to an extra few hundred thousand through dodgy deals.

But that makes Sam Allardyce something of a rarity. It is hard to think of another England football manager of recent times who really deserved the heave-ho. Roy Hodgson led a team to an embarrassing defeat against Iceland, but was it really him who deserved to go or the useless players who couldn’t even pick up a pass? It is no use coming up with strategy if the players start letting it through their feet. Most of them, though, will play for England again, and go through the usual ritual of being praised as heroes before letting us down at the crucial moment in a knockout competition.

Sven Goran Eriksson? Can anyone explain why it was him who had to fall on his sword after 10 man England went out to Portugal in the quarter finals of the 2006 World Cup? England lost because Wayne Rooney stamped on another man’s balls and got sent off.

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