WHENEVER a Premier League club is in deep trouble, you can bet the owners will go for a British manager.But if they’re hiring when things are going well, they will tend to opt for a foreign coach.
Bournemouth sacked Gary O’Neil in the summerCredit: Getty
The Cherries hired Andoni Iraola as his replacementCredit: Getty
A bit of success and they become fascinated by, and fixated on, the idea of a ‘project’, a ‘new philosophy’, a five-year plan and all that.
Not that five-year plans are realistic in modern football. Five defeats in a row and a manager is usually toast.
Take Bournemouth and the way they appointed Gary O’Neil, only to sack him after he’d done an excellent job in keeping them in the Premier League, and then gave the job to Andoni Iraola.
If the Cherries are beaten by Vincent Kompany’s Burnley today, and Iraola is left with three points from 10 games, they will probably get rid of him and go British again.
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It will have been a very tough week for Iraola after his side were beaten at home by O’Neil’s Wolves last Saturday.
His players will have spoken to O’Neil after that match, they will have been impressed with the job he is doing at Wolves, some of them may even be wondering if they might get a move to Molineux in January.
Those players would have been shocked at O’Neil’s sacking, so Iraola would have always been on to a hiding in trying to convince them he was the right man for the job.
It’s a funny club, Bournemouth — they do very well at playing the ‘we’re a small club’ underdog card, considering that they pay massive wages and spent more than £100million in transfer fees alone this summer.
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They usually play some nice football. But you always get the impression that their better players are passing through and looking to move on somewhere bigger and better.
O’Neil was appointed caretaker manager under their old Russian ownership, after Scott Parker had been sacked for saying the club were basically done and dusted, not good enough for the Premier League, following a 9-0 hiding at Liverpool early last season.
But then the new American owner Bill Foley appointed O’Neil full-time, saw him keep them up with something to spare, then sent him packing at the end of the season.
Iraola did a decent job at Rayo Vallecano in Spain’s LaLiga but I’d have been surprised if many — or any — Bournemouth players had heard of him before he was announced as their new boss in the summer.
You’d have to be a serious student of the game to sit in and watch Vallecano on a Sunday night.
The players would have been Googling him and if they had any mates who had played in Spain, they’d have been messaging to find out what the bloke is like. Football is a small world.
I’ve done that before and heard that an incoming manager was going to make our lives hell in pre-season, to run us all into the ground, only to find the new boss had the balls out on the first day and everything was sweetness and light — so the info you get isn’t always accurate.
At Watford, I had to Google a lot of my new managers.
Deeney had never heard of Slavisa JokanovicCredit: Getty Images – Getty
Walter Mazzarri was also unknown to Deeney when he joined WatfordCredit: PA:Press Association
I’d never heard of Slavisa Jokanovic and did an internet search to find out that he’d actually played for Chelsea.
We ended up winning promotion under him.
I must admit I’d never heard of Walter Mazzarri when he arrived at Watford and was quite impressed with his CV — that he’d managed Napoli and Inter Milan. But that one didn’t go well.
The point is that those Bournemouth players wouldn’t have had a clue what to expect from Iraola.
They won’t care too much about his past, they will just want to know what he would do for them, to make their club better.
Players don’t like change. Which may sound strange in an ever-changing world like football is.
They would have given Iraola the pre-season to prove himself.If a new manager is appointed in mid-season, he might only have a fortnight to get the players on board.
They will want a manager who makes training different and interesting — and they will want to know that those methods translate to results at the weekend.
Whatever Iraola has been working on, results have not been good enough and Bournemouth looked pretty shambolic against Wolves.
The owners will look stupid if they sack Iraola so soon but this match against Burnley looks like a must-win for the Spaniard.
And what if Bournemouth do make a managerial change?
Perhaps go for a British manager, who may want to shore things up?
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That will be another £70m in January.
And all for the idea of a ‘project’ with a ‘philosophy’. More
