Why are English managers so garbage?

Many successful managers cut their teeth before success in tough leagues. In England if you're a big name player like Lampard, you get jobs at a club like Chelsea in Lampards case just because you were a big name player, not because you have put in years of work before hand. A little stint here and there and then expected to do a real job in the premier league, it doesn't work like that.

Pep is quite an exception in that he managed Barca B team for a year before the proper team.

Mourinho had 2 clubs before Porto, then Chelsea was his 4th, not to mention he worked as an assistant under successful managers before that. He had been in around management or assisting for 10 years before ever coming to England.

Klopp was managing 14 years before ever getting to the premier league

Slur Alex, I know he did well in Scotland but he was in management about 12 years before managing in England.

Wenger, 12 years experience before the Premier League

Look at other Premier league winners, Ancelotti, Ranieri, our managers, etc etc all have real experience

The list goes on. You really need experience to manage at top clubs successfully in leagues like the Premier League. Giving jobs like the Chelsea job to Lampard was way too soon. That's not to say he would be a good manager in time, he might just be crap anyway, but I think the vast majority of managers need plenty of experience in management before being at a premier league club competing for trophies.

There could potentially be some good English managers but I don't think it's that easy to get a job at a club with realistic chances of winning things if they only try to manage in England. The clubs winning/monopolising trophies (us) have a foreign manager. When Pep goes, realistically we will probably be looking at a manager from another league that's won trophies, even if its in an easier situation than an English manager that's been competing with Pep and City so won nothing. Someone else will probably get the nod, even though its possible the English manager may have won trophies in another league not competing with us.

That's why it would do more English managers better to go abroad and try to get some decent jobs. If Eddie Howe went over to Portugal and won a few trophies, then I bet he would have a better chance of getting a job at an English club that win things and probably do OK.
 
Its changing. My sons u9s league , from a goal kick the opposition have to retreat to their own half to allow the defence to play it out rather than have the biggest lad lump it forward.

But … i think available artificial pitches has an effect. I live in a small town of 20,000 people and not one plastic pitch exists. I remember reading somewhere that the number of plastic pitches per person is way higher on the continent than here.
The grass pitches kids have to play on here are a disgrace and make nice football difficult
 
That's why it would do more English managers better to go abroad and try to get some decent jobs. If Eddie Howe went over to Portugal and won a few trophies, then I bet he would have a better chance of getting a job at an English club that win things and probably do OK.
This^^ Even Steve McLaren looked good at FC Twente
 
Its changing. My sons u9s league , from a goal kick the opposition have to retreat to their own half to allow the defence to play it out rather than have the biggest lad lump it forward.

But … i think available artificial pitches has an effect. I live in a small town of 20,000 people and not one plastic pitch exists. I remember reading somewhere that the number of plastic pitches per person is way higher on the continent than here.
The grass pitches kids have to play on here are a disgrace and make nice football difficult
Yet the apparent reason Brazil were so good years ago, was because they were brought up playing on the beach? Maybe they are crap now, because they use artificial pitches instead? .....just a counter argument ;)
 
Liam Rosenior is becoming quite interesting at Hull City. He’s building a decent young team that plays good football and are pinching above their weight. Potter was doing well at Brighton and Howe had a really good start at Newcastle. The last English managers to win the major prizes though were Howard Wilkinson with the league at Leeds and Joe Royle with the cup at Everton. That’s truly shocking.

Always thought he was very insightful as a pundit.
 
In two words; Howard Wilkinson.

"Four months after leaving Leeds, in January 1997, Wilkinson was hired by the sport's governing body in England, the Football Association, to act as its Technical Director, overseeing coaching and other training programmes at all levels of the game. Whilst at Leeds, Wilkinson had developed a ten-year plan to create an "English La Masia" at Thorp Arch.[7] In his role with the FA, Wilkinson applied this blueprint on a larger scale to the national game, developing the academy system and persuading the FA to begin the National Football Centre project. Wilkinson based the plans for the National Football Centre on the French system at Clairefontaine which nurtured the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European Championship winners. In 1997 Wilkinson published the Charter for Quality which was the basis for which all English academies were to train future stars"

Not only was the football his teams played extremely dour but he was the buffoon who sold Cantona to united for £1m.

"
So dour he won the league. Buffoon.
Revisionist bollocks at its best.
 
Lack of options. Only got to look at England national team to see the managers during the premier league era.

Most of them got the job as there was no one else. Only Venables was any good in last 30 years or more and he managed Barcelona as well. Southgate done little as a club manager but is a safe option.
 
80's - 90's - early 2000's the mantra was "box to box midfielders" players who could run - no mention of visions - ability to spot a pass and execute it - that was an English managers emphasis - meanwhile Cruyff and a young Pep begged to differ
 
Loads of reasons but the English / British traditional working class and lower middle class suspicion of expertise and intellectualism has a lot to do with it. Bourgeois middle class university educated types were never part of English football so we never had much of a culture of curiosity in football. It‘s a broad generalisation but a fairly well established feature of wider British society as well as football. Combined with upper class, public school arrogance, a certainty in their own superiority and a fondness for skilled amateurs over trained professionals and you’ve got a recipe for fuckwitedness. It’s bad enough in football but it’s how the country’s been run for the last decade.

If Pep had been English the old school managers and coaches would have laughed him out of career before he ever had a chance to implement an idea more complicated than playing in the opposition half, getting runners in the channels, or putting the ball in the fucking box.

The English football establishment spent decades convinced that football is a simple game which is won by whichever XI plays better on the day and tactics just confuse players. Playing with your heart on your sleeve (Alan Ball) and giving your all for the shirt (Stuart Pearce) are the key ingredients to success according to the English brains trust.

At best a lot of English coaches and managers are conservative and afraid to try new things, at worst a significant number seem to be as thick as fuck.
 
English managers do not get a chance at the big clubs, because of the money involved there will always be someone better, they also lack European experience, we have very few managers abroad. For me it is an FA problem that they should rectify, by making it mandatory that every foreign manager, has to have an English assistant manager, then it is up to them to learn.
 
In my opinion in my lifetime the English manager the one we should have had was Cloughie - he was the Pep of his time - instead we got Ron Greenwood .......
 
It's honestly weird... Howe is the only decent one currently who is getting results AND playing nice football.

The league (PL) is being taken over by Spaniards. Spaniards, Italians and Germans all produce excellent managers. English produce nothing.
Gary O’Neil is doing ok at our place for a novice and I was a real sceptic in the early days of gis tenure
 
Eddie Howe's doing quite well.

Last season he was doing something quite clever with Joelinton and Willock rotation on the LW/LCM that I've never seen anyone pick up on. It was like we played with 1.5 left-wingers to cover for Burn's lack of offensive ability, and somehow 3.5 midfielders at the same time.

This hiding of Spurs went under the radar at the time as well. 5-0 up inside 20mins. We also battered Sheff U away mercilessly, which is on-brand for Howe (Birmingham 8-0 away when managing Bournemouth).

He's the best English manager by a long way at the moment. A trait non-NUFC fans won't see is that we'll scrap to a 1-0 lead, then actually become more attacking and try and take the game away from teams - Villa 5, Sheff U 8, Schar killing off PSG with a screamer, 5-0 in 20mins against Spurs.

 
Last edited:
One or two English managers have evolved but sadly many are still old school.

I remember a tale about Sam Ellis at Blackpool in the 1980's being lauded by his players for demonstrating how to shit into a paper cup placed on the floor whilst squatting over it on a table in the canteen. The laddish mentality is never far from the surface in ex English players who become managers.
 
When we were kids playing football on any waste bit of grass, playing until it was so dark that you couldn't see the ball anymore (you should try it nowadays kids, it's fun) we would all play the 'Pep' way. There were no centres after goals, you just restarted from behind the goal and played it through to who just happened to be up front at the time - anybody played in any position. You were called a goal hanger if you stayed up front too long and goodness forbid if you scored with a toe-bunger.
Then, when someone was deemed good enough we got a place in the school team and everything changed, the ball was treated like a ticking bomb to be got rid off at the first opportunity and lumped down the pitch. Therefore the bigger the player the more successful in this 'system'.
It didn't get better as you got older, unless you grew dramatically, same shite, skill was second to physique.
So.... it's going to take this generation of English footballers to mature into the 'Pep' style of manager before we see any difference in a system that was ingrained for over 50 years.
 
Exactly how it was in the 90s at school for me.

I remember playing for the school team and got a bollocking playing at centre half for passing across my box to my other centre half who was in space. I was told in no uncertain terms I was to launch into the channels for the wingers.

This then becomes ingrained in you that your role was to just get stuck in and stop the forwards and clear it. Not bring it out or move into space. So when you don’t have the ball you become static rather than constantly moving and creating passing angles for team mates.

Then they wonder why until now English players especially those further back were awful at passing, technique etc because you literally might have only had a few actual touches of the ball all game.
 

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top