WILKO: ENGLISH BOSSES SHOULD COACH ABROAD

EXCLUSIVE BY JOHN RICHARDSON HOWARD WILKINSON has told young English managers to forget this country – and go abroad.

The League Managers’ Assocation chairman is still the last English-born boss (above) to have won the League title – with Leeds United in 1992.

He is dismayed at the number of young aspiring managers and coaches tossed onto the scrapheap here before they have time to prove themselves.

Wilkinson, 78, said: “We have got some very good English managers but you need chances. English managers, or the British managers, tend not to get the best jobs.”

The lower leagues are increasingly ruthless schools for young bosses too.

Wilkinson added: “The stats for firsttime managers are horrendous.

“If you get the sack before you get 75 games under your belt at that first club, five years on an enormous percentage of those people are no longer in the game. So I say to coaches, ‘If I were you, I would go and start in Scandinavia’.

“I can give them five or six good examples of people who have gone there over the years with no reputation, got a job and that has given them the opportunity to be at a club for longer than you get here.

“While that is happening they are learning, and you never know one day by doing it that way they might end up as England manager. Look at Graham Potter (left) – he has done well after managing the Swedish club Ostersund.

“I don’t think in football they understand the simple fact that to get the best possible out of the dressing room, a manager – to get his ideas across – has to work as if he is going to be there for the next 10 years.”

For first-time English managers the average stay is now less than 10 months. ■■Howard Wilkinson was speaking on the Old Spice Boys podcast. See twitter @theoldspiceboys.