How & Why English Managers Have Struggled Within The Premier League Era

In the modern era of high-pressure and responsibility that comes with football, managers are finding it increasingly difficult to deliver the demand for success that comes at both club and international level. Since the inception of the Premier League in 1992 there have been 205 different managers of the 20 sides in the division as well as 13 different part-time or full-time England international managers, and of all of those who were English (104), none have won a league, European or global title.

With wealth at an all-time high in the game, the cost of failure is all the more detrimental to those with less and in such cases the manager of a football club is usually seen as responsible for not ensuring better results. The need for such success has seen many clubs adopt coaches and owners from abroad in their search for glory and as a result of this, English-based managers are a dwindling statistic in football. Now, in 2017, there are just four in the Premier League, that compared with 16 during the league’s inception in the 1992/93 season. The other six were all British as well. During that period, however there have been 10 permanent international managers of the English national team, eight of those being English with the exceptions of Swedish Sven-Goran Eriksson (2001-06) and Italian Fabio Capello (2008-12). Given the percentage of English managers over this period it really begs the question as to whether they are at such a disadvantage as opposed to their foreign counterparts. It is becoming increasingly rare that the clubs even above mid-table have an English manager at the helm. Even British coaches as a concept are becoming rarer in the Football League, let alone the Premier League and for the future of British coaches hoping to be blooded through that is a worrying predicament.

It would be difficult to nail down just one factor in particular which hinders the growth of homegrown coaches with so many different aspects to consider in just how difficult it can be for such individuals to make it through the system in English or even foreign football, let alone get to the top of the game and develop any kind of longevity at that level. Several factors including cost, modern day growth of technology, football as a business, foreign influence and owners and current culture can be attributed, amongst other variants as to why there’s such a plight for homegrown coaches since the inception of the division some 27 years ago.

The probing question currently is where and why it has gone so wrong for English coaches and why we don’t have our own Pep Guardiola’s and Antonio Conte’s in management. With icons such as these in the game it is no surprise these managers gain all the plaudits whilst the homegrown answer to these two are the likes of Sam Allardyce and Eddie Howe. There are clearly underlying reasons here as to why foreign managers can come into the country, like Jose Mourinho who don’t understand the culture, league and to another extent even a great understanding of the language but still command success at every turn which is something that English managers simply have been unable to grasp over the past couple of decades. Furthermore, at no point have the FA and other bodies intervened to prevent the sorry death of native managers. The downturn is so much so that for the first time ever last season not a single English manager finished in the top 10 since the league’s formation in 1992.

Such a trend has suggested that English, or even British managers are fighting lower and lower in the division each season whilst facing up to the unrivalled resources at clubs such as Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea. Former Hull City manager Mike Phelan was the 104th Englishman to take the reins at a Premier League club and ultimately left in January 2017 with his side bottom of the Premier League after just 85 days as manager of the club. Unsurprisingly after the well-documented departure of Phelan as well as the controversy surrounding the departure of his predecessor, Steve Bruce, the club’s owners sought to go in a non-English direction and hired Portuguese manager Marco Silva. At this stage, just four managers remain in the Premier League, namely Sean Dyche (Burnley), Eddie Howe (Bournemouth), Sam Allardyce (Crystal Palace) and Paul Clement (Swansea) with the quartet’s sides all in the bottom eight of the league table at the time. This became a real talking point amongst pundits with many questioning the appointment of the former Olympiacos manager rather than Englishmen who knew the division such as Alan Pardew, Roy Hodgson or Harry Redknapp. The trio have some 60 years of management under their belts between them, and most importantly, they all know the Premier League extremely well.

Whilst the Premier League doesn’t boast the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, almost undisputedly the world’s two greatest footballers, it has no trouble in attracting the most elite managers with the likes of Pep Guardiola (Manchester City) and Antonio Conte (Chelsea) as well as the returning Jose Mourinho (Manchester United) all joining the Premier League for the 2016/17 campaign. The trio have all enjoyed domestic silverware in the past two years, picking up league titles in Germany, Italy and England respectively. Unsurprisingly such successful coaches some at a high cost and will earn an estimated £36.5 million per year between them. Germany’s ’50+1′ law protects the Bundesliga, the country’s top flight from such a monopolising effect with all clubs predominantly owned by fans. This protects club from being taken over by tycoons such as Sheikh Mansour and the Glazer family who own the two Manchester clubs, City and United. Countries like Germany have been forced to place much more emphasis on promoting from within and nurturing local talent with the likes of Jurgen Klopp, now at Liverpool and Thomas Tuchel of Borussia Dortmund perfect examples of how this benefits the country. The Premier League’s record breaking £5.14bn deal with Sky to broadcast live Premier League games for the season has done little to encourage any change.

It is well documented just how much of a ‘hire and fire’ policy there is in modern day football with coaches up and down the country losing their jobs at a very frequent rate. It is rare that managers reach any kind of respectable milestone in terms of tenure at their clubs, so much so that managers such as former Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson and current Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger are seen as anomalies in today’s game. The turnover is now so frequent that the League Manager’s Association end of season report revealed that there were 70 managerial changes within the Premier League and Football League during the 2015-16 campaign. The total of 56 dismissals also surpassed the previous high of 53 in the 2001/02 season. The average tenure for a current Premier League manager is now just 2.13 years which further goes to document just how little time for impact there is in the game, even more so that statistic is exaggerated due to Wenger’s 20 years in charge of the Gunners.

Whilst English coaches rarely land the most attractive jobs in the game there is definitely still a place in the sport for the modern English manager in the Premier League, but eventually as the game progresses they will need to adapt. There is a reason that managers like Sam Allardyce and Roy Hodgson get jobs in the division. Neither play the sort of attacking, free-flowing football that you might associate with Manchester City or Arsenal, but they have a reputation for getting teams out of trouble. Both like to keep their brand of football simple and organised. The duo both struggled at bigger clubs such as Newcastle in the case of Allardyce and Liverpool for Hodgson. As far as ‘exciting’ or ‘promising’ English managers go in the current day you have to look down to England’s second tier, the Championship at Leeds United’s Garry Monk and Derby County’s Gary Rowett with the pair both aiming to fire their sides to the Premier League after lengthy absences.

Monk, still only 38-years-old has had to rebuild his reputation following his dismissal from Premier League side Swansea in December 2015. Despite leading the Welsh side to the Round of 32 in the Europa League the previous season, a run of one win in 11 games saw him replaced eventually by Francesco Guidolin. Ever since Monk’s departure the Swans have struggled to survive in the Premier League with many crediting his dismissal as a key reason behind this. Monk took a six-month sabbatical from management; “I did a lot of studying in those six months. I analysed what I did in my time at Swansea. There were many positives but there were negatives, too. I tried to be honest about those and I tried to get my mind clear about certain situations – why they happened, what you would do differently, what I maybe did wrong.” Upon arrival at Elland Road in June 2016 he exercised his newfound tactics by giving each of his playing staff an individualized programme, citing that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do thing. He wants his players to be accountable, excuses won’t be tolerated.

Other coaches have not quite had the same drive as Monk, with Alan Shearer a perfect example of a former English Premier League footballer who looked set to go into management. but However, an ill-fated eight game spell at Newcastle United back in 2009 saw his beloved club relegated to the Championship. For those like Shearer, and Gary Neville who suffered a similarly poor spell with Spanish giants Valencia, it is much easier to take up the role of the ‘pundit’, a role which is easier and less pressured to analyse a side rather than run it themselves. Gary Lineker, a former England international echoed this as a key reason as to why the sport is losing so many of its potential next wave of coaches who are opting for the sofa over the dugout. “I suppose in many ways we’re suffering with our coaches and managers. We have such a thriving TV football business, and so the real brains, the real intelligent footballers, are going into that side of it rather than being a coach, because they can have a more enjoyable experience.”

Chances are far and few in the Premier League with Harry Redknapp, formerly of West Ham United between 1994-2001 being the example of the sole longest period in which an English manager has been in charge of a Premier League club. Despite having the likes of Frank Lampard, Rio Ferdinand, Michael Carrick and Joe Cole, all future England internationals amongst the likes of the infamous Paulo Di Canio he managed just a sole Intertoto Cup in the club’s trophy cabinet in the 1999-2000 season. The now Birmingham manager is also the last English coach to manage a club in a full Champions League campaign, taking Tottenham Hotspur to the quarter-finals of the competition before losing out 5-0 on aggregate to Spanish side Real Madrid in the 2010/11 season. It would be difficult to argue that Redknapp doesn’t hold the accolade for the best English manager within the Premier League since inception having added an F.A. Cup with Portsmouth in 2008 to his Intertoto Cup and Champions League appearances. In fact, the only other English managers to boast a trophy in this timeframe are Ron Atkinson, Roy Evans, Brian Little, Steve MacClaren and George Graham (All League Cup) as well as Joe Royle (F.A. Cup). Sir Bobby Robson had better success abroad however with a haul of UEFA Cup Winner’s Cup, Copa Del Rey and Supercopa De Espana with Barcelona as well as two Portuguese titles and a Taca De Portugal with Porto. Considering the number of English coaches that have been in charge over this period this appears to be a considerably low haul, especially given that not a single one has won a Premier League title.

Over the past couple of decades, it has become overwhelmingly apparent that foreign managers possess more of a tactical nous when it comes to winning trophies with the likes of Rafa Benitez and Sir Alex Ferguson claiming three Champions League titles between them and the latter dominating the Premier League with 13 titles between the 1992/93 and 2012/13 season. Even Italian Claudio Ranieri won the league with Leicester City, a side most pundits tipped for relegation in the 2015/16 season in what has been regarded as the biggest shock in Premier League history. With Ranieri’s ‘water into wine’ act it seems baffling that many managers can’t achieve similar things with much greater wealth and resources at their disposal. Though he may have since departed the King Power stadium, the former Roma manager’s legacy has lived on in the Foxes Champions League campaign despite the Italian being sacked after a 2-1 loss to Spanish side Sevilla in the first leg. Birmingham-born Craig Shakespeare inspired his side to a 2-0 win in the reverse fixture, sending his side to the quarter-finals and in doing so making them the last English club in the competition after Arsenal’s 10-2 capitulation at the hands of Bayern Munich and Manchester City’s 6-6 tie with Monaco seeing Guardiola’s men exit via the away goals rule.

As far back as 1960, at a time where the English were considered successful in the game they were already gaining criticism from foreign coaches for how unadaptable they were with then Barcelona manager Helenio Herrera slating the English game after his side humbled Wolverhampton Wanderers 9-2 in the Champions League. “You in England are playing in the style we continents used to so many years ago, with much physical strength, but no method, no technique”. The same message was echoed by former England international Robbie Fowler, some 57 years later in 2017; “As for that golden ­generation, well, it should have won something. It would have, too, if England had a manager who wasn’t a 4-4-2 slave. It seems ridiculous now to say we had Lampard, Gerrard and Scholes – and yet never had a manager who could fit them together and make it work. Brazil would have made it work. Maybe that’s why they won the World Cup in 2002 and we didn’t”. The two quotes clearly demonstrate the problem of English and Premier League ineptness and an inability for them to change beyond what they know. In a game with forever changing rules and concepts this is surely a massive hindrance to the likes of these coaches who are unable to deal with the modern day ‘tiki-taka’ and ‘gegenpressing’ that we are seeing from the likes of Pep Guardiola in his Barcelona days or Jurgen Klopp at both Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool.

Many of these current ‘great’ managers have a big advantage of understanding different cultures and tend to have the better ability in order to change tactics depending on where they are in the world, something of which many English managers do not have as they have only studied and learned their trade in England. This initially stems from managers’ playing careers and living in the very much sheltered British islands. Pep Guardiola had enjoyed spells in Spain, Italy, Mexico and UAE before calling time on his playing career and going on to add Germany to his CV with Bayern Munich. Ashley Cole, Ravel Morrison, Joey Barton, Joe Cole, Micah Richards and Jermaine Pennant make up the recent gathering of English players to venture abroad to Italy, France, America and Singapore respectively. They will benefit so much more in the long run with Barton in particular looking like he may go into coaching.  In an interview conducted by journalist Bill Croft to a Spanish reporter in 1958 he was greeted by the response of “You have some grand craftsmen, but the Spanish prefer artistes, of which you have only a dozen or so. It’s also exceptional for British professionals to be happy abroad.”

In recent decades, the growth of the media, as well as social media have both proven to be a curse on managers and players in the game. For those winning silverware, they are able to bask in media singing their praises far and wide, but for those in peril it can be a lonely and frustrating spotlight to be under. Social media and modern day journalism in sport have the ability to bring together groups of people as well as divide with networking sites such as Twitter creating the perfect platform for fans to create campaigns and a general consensus of how a fanbase feels or should feel about a club. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, who himself is a target of social media criticism by people who call themselves ‘WOB’s’ (Wenger Out Brigade) has described such platforms as a ‘growing problem’ whilst adding that it’s for ‘people who think the same way and they become a force’. For a manager who has guaranteed his side Champions League football for over 15 years consecutively this simply highlights how cutthroat modern day sport can be. Former England manager Steve McClaren is a perfect example of this as his England side failed to reach the 2008 European Championships following an embarrassing 3-2 defeat to Croatia in November 2007. If this was not enough for the former Manchester United assistant manager, many newspaper outlets opted to label him as the ‘Wally with a brolly’ and he was subsequently relieved of his duties.

Former England manager Roy Hodgson was often criticised heavily by both media and England fans, especially after their dismal exit in the group stages in the Brazil 2014 World Cup and then again after exiting to a plucky Iceland side in the France 2016 European Championships. A lot of people forgot that England were a team in transition. No longer did they have the likes of Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand and Michael Owen at their disposal. The spine of England’s so-called ‘Golden Generation’ had all retired. Players such as Gary Cahill and even captain Wayne Rooney were no longer at the peak of their careers and a new wave of youth was coming through with the likes of Ross Barkley, Luke Shaw, Dele Alli, Harry Kane, Eric Dier, Jack Wilshere and Raheem Sterling all coming via the youth system. Hodgson was lamented for being a ‘Yes man’. Henry Winter, a writer for The Times echoed these thoughts in his book ‘Fifty Years of Hurt’; “I’ve never seen that before, I hope people recognize there was an 18-year-old on the pitch against Costa Rica in Luke Shaw, there was Ross Barkley (20), Phil Jones (22), all youngish lads apart from Frank Lampard (36) …he’s doing the right things and making the right decisions, not for himself, but for the long-term”. Without question football is a results business and after two consecutive poor tournaments, Hodgson had to go but it has been somewhat surprising that he has not been back in management since, Liverpool aside, he has been a good manager in the Premier League. He had modest records at both West Brom and Fulham, the latter of whom he took to a Europa League final in which his side lost out to Spanish giants Atletico Madrid in 2010. It has only been since the sacking of Claudio Ranieri at Leicester City that the 69-year-old has so much as been linked with a vacant managerial position back in the Premier League.

Former players are finding it increasingly difficult to get their coaching badges yet alone gain jobs in management with many finding themselves discouraged by the system in place that requires a further four years to gain an ‘A Licence’ after achieving a ‘B Licence’ which has put many individuals and ex-professionals off remaining in football in such a capacity. Many former footballers now are more than capable of living off what they have earned from a career in football quite comfortably and those that do stay within the game tend to pick the much more relaxed role of being a pundit which we have seen from the likes of Jamie Carragher and Paul Scholes with Sky Sports and BT Sport respectively. To put this into perspective Chris Sutton became the first £10,000-a-week player after signing for Blackburn in 1994 but yet, less than two decades later Carlos Tevez became the first £1 million a month player with wages believed to be £284,000-a-week just how much more money is in the modern-day game and what little motivation there is to stay in work beyond the end of a career in the game at playing standard. Reverting back to the role of the ‘golden generation’ it’s somewhat disappointing at the sheer lack of these players or even the those before them that have not opted to coach and instruct the next generation with the knowledge that they have acquired in successful careers which boast numerous Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League medals amongst others.

Sports radio network TalkSport recently revealed that Andy Cole, the Premier League third all-time top scorer with 186 goals walked out of his coaching badges following a drill in which he instructed how to get his forwards around a defensive line, but was stopped by the coach in charge saying that he was simply wrong. Whether you want to question the former Manchester United forward’s mentality is a different issue but for someone of his calibre as well as over 20 years of experience at the top level doing what he was trying to pass on in his sessions to be told it was incorrect speaks volumes as to how stuck in their ways many of these coaching courses are. If there is only one way in which the FA are allowing individuals to qualify as coaches then how do they expect to get the next Pep Guardiola or Jose Mourinho with this ‘one size fits all’ approach.

The Level 1 UEFA qualification courses currently cost £150 in England, while achieving Level 2 course qualification will cost up to more than £300. Furthermore, a British coach will then go on to pay £720 to attend a UEFA B course – the level at which most coaches in Iceland operate. Cost is also a general concern, so from the bottom up, without a serious level of commitment as well as a fair amount of spare money, many are alienated before they have even begun. The A Course itself will set you back an extra £3000-£4000 in comparison to Germany’s rather more modest £700.  The effect of this is detrimental to just how few people will carry out their badges and paying these hefty sums as opposed to other European countries. England has just 1,178 coaches at UEFA “A” level, compared with 12,720 in Spain and 5,500 in Germany. At “Pro” License level. These figures clearly demonstrate the clear disadvantage that English coaches are at and that perhaps with the right incentive, such as reduced cost for the courses that perhaps more might consider taking their badges. Nations such as the aforementioned Spain and Germany might be slightly larger in population but it is no secret that the wealth of coaches they possess allow a higher standard of manager and therefore the increased level of coaching to develop players.

By the end of the current 2016/17 season the Football Association are aiming to reach 25,000 Level 1 and 5,000 Level 2 coaches. However, the majority of these look to be made up from the voluntary sector as despite the £318 million profit that the FA made in 2016, Head of Education Chris Earle refuses to lower cost. He has cited that in Scotland the total cost is 25% more at over £5,000. Despite this claim it would be difficult to argue that other home nations such as Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are in any more stable a position than England are or ever have been.

With the continual expansion of football as a global brand and financial resources stronger than any other it seems as though the pool of English coaches will only become weaker unless necessary steps are taken in order to give more local talent a chance at the highest level. Other European countries, like Germany and Spain keep themselves in touch with fans and promote from within rather than spending copious amounts on quick fix solutions. In order for upcoming coaches to come through the system and be of a good enough quality the Football Association must ensure that club management is an attractive job, and the first step of doing this should be lowering the cost of coaching badges which will ultimately alienate the vast majority of potential candidates who are not ex-professionals. Such steps would perhaps make the appointment of lesser known manager’s a less daunting prospect for a club and its owners.