Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Too good for the flaky Foxes, too English for the Big Six.. so how does a talented homegrown boss progress in the Prem?
THE chances of one of the Big Six employing a British manager in the near future are slim and none.
If any of those posts became available tomorrow, there would not be a home candidate on the shortlist.
Not even Sean Dyche, whose work at Burnley has been excellent.
There is a glass ceiling for British managers and the Big Six sit above it.
Which is why Dyche’s reported interest in the Leicester City job is understandable.
It would carry greater remuneration, offer a fresh challenge and Leicester were Premier League champions the season before last.
Dyche has been at Burnley for five years, doing a great job on limited resources and would get more financial backing at the King Power.
But he should not touch the Leicester job with a bargepole and not just because, currently, Burnley sit 11 places higher.
Sympathy for Craig Shakespeare is limited.
He stepped into Claudio Ranieri’s shoes, earned a lengthy contract and will be very decently compensated for his dismissal.
An awful lot of people have done exceptionally well out of Ranieri’s incredible success and Shakespeare (below) is one of them.
He has a lot of friends and contacts in the game and offers will soon arrive, if not for No.1 jobs.
Yet, his sacking remains an insult.
As caretaker and permanent manager, he has been in charge for
21 Premier League games, won eight, lost eight and drawn five.
The eight losses were inflicted by Manchester City (twice), Arsenal (twice), Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Everton.
“The Board feels that, regrettably, a change is necessary to keep the club moving forward – consistent with the long-term expectations of our supporters, board and owners,” said vice-chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha.
Moving forward? The club took the giant step back and returned to being just another Premier League struggler, when it canned Ranieri.
Shakespeare has been sacked, just as Ranieri was, because there is a pathological fear of relegation.
For so many scrambling around in the lower half of the table and getting pummelled by the elite, trying to scrape points with defensive football is the limit of their ambitions. Leicester gloriously showed it doesn’t have to be that way, but what if they went down? Just do it again in another tier, as they have done previously, enjoy the crack of winning again and come back up.
It’s simple.
Burnley did it. They were relegated at the end of 2014/15, won the Championship the next term and finished 16th in the Premier League last season.
In the two Premier League campaigns, sandwiching their one back in the Football League, they won 18 matches.
In their Championship season, they won 26.
They scored 67 goals in those two Premier League campaigns and 72 in that Championship one. Fans love the glamour of the Premier League, but relegation is not the cataclysmic disaster it is made out to be.
You might get to see your team have possession, score goals, win matches. The point of football.
But financial considerations conquer all and so Shakespeare goes, just eight matches into the season, because Leicester are in the bottom three.
What if Dyche – second favourite in most bookmakers’ lists – took over and, come New Year, Leicester were still in the bottom three? He would be sacked. Dyche was not sacked when he took Burnley down. They recognised they had a good manager, trusted him to have a good go at the Championship, they had fun there and have been rewarded.
Good luck to Dyche if he eventually feels, for the sake of his career, he needs to move on… it just shouldn’t be to Leicester City. DAVID WARNER, he of the Walkabout punch, looking ahead to the Ashes: “I try and look into the opposition’s eyes and try and work out: ‘How can I dislike this player’?”
For any England player looking into Warner’s eyes, it should not take much working out. PHINEAS TAYLOR BARNUM, of circus fame, was supposed to have said: “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Privately, the promoters of Anthony
Joshua’s next fight might be thinking that. On Saturday week, Joshua will now fight Carlos Takam after Kubrat
Pulev pulled out with a shoulder injury. Conveniently, Takam had been on standby.
With a couple of bookmakers, Joshua (above) is 1-100 favourite. That means you have to stake £100 to make a £1 profit.
Yet still, the Principality Stadium will be rammed. Not with suckers, though, but with people recognising that Joshua is destined to be one of the country’s biggest sporting stars. Ever.