Filed under: Championship, Football
So with Chris Hughton taking over at Birmingham City, Sean Dyche replacing Malky Mackay at Watford and Steve McClaren installed at Nottingham Forest, the 24 Championship clubs all have managers in place for the beginning of pre-season training.Perhaps more importantly for some fans, the filling of managerial vacancies means an end to fears that their clubs' managers might be head-hunted. Steve Cotterill of Portsmouth was reported to be a target for Birmingham before they appointed Hughton, even though the word from Fratton Park was that there had been no contact from St Andrews.
Supporters of Brighton & Hove Albion were concerned that Gus Poyet had been linked with Aston Villa, even if the stories were mainly written by one lone broadsheet journalist - who, coincidentally, had also put Poyet in the frame for the Portsmouth job before Cotterill took it.
Now all 24 sets of supporters and managers can rest easy, secure in the knowledge that there will be no interruption to the task of plotting the path to glory, or survival at least. Or can they?
Hardly. More than half of the clubs in the division changed managers last season, and it is hard to imagine things will be very different this time round, with the prize of a place in the Premier League so great, and the consequences of failure - relegation to the outer darkness that is League One - so dire.
Mackay became the 13th Championship manager to leave his post in 2010-11 on June 18, the first being Steve Coppell of Bristol City, who, on August 12, walked out two games into the season, citing a lack of passion on his own part. It was the second time in his career that he had quit a club at this level unexpectedly - the first being Manchester City, after 33 days and six games, in November 1996, when he blamed the pressure of the job.
Two others resigned, but, more predictably, ten were sacked. That will certainly happen to some of this season's incumbents in the coming ten months, with the fans who hoped against hope that they would stay in summer now wishing them good riddance. Failure to deliver anticipated success (Dave Jones at Cardiff City) or leading a nosedive towards relegation (Darren Ferguson, Preston North End) usually have identical consequences.
The numbers say that nobody should be surprised. In the four top divisions, the average tenure of one of last season's dismissed managers was 1.58 years according to figures from the League Managers' Association. Yet in the Championship, they had been in their job, on average, only 0.89 years.
So Good Luck to Gus and Cotts, and the rest - on the evidence of last season, there's a better-than-evens chance you won't last the distance.
But you'll probably be back. Look at Ferguson, for instance. He has returned with Peterborough United, whom he led up through the play-offs to bury the bad memories of what went wrong at Preston. Before he turned up at Deepdale he had been at ... where was it? Oh yes, Peterborough, who parted company with a boss who had delivered back-to-back promotions because they were at the foot of the second tier.
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Source: http://www.fanhouse.co.uk/2011/06/28/championship-manager-chris-hughton-football/
Daniel Alves Daniele De Rossi David Albelda David Beckham David Ferrer
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