Why Cook’s recipe is off the menu now

ANOTHER sacking, another Championship vacancy, another snub for Paul Cook. Or is there more to it than simple rejection? Since Cook left Wigan on the first day of August, 13 second-tier clubs have either sacked, lost or otherwise dispensed with a first-team manager.

None of them saw fit to employ the 54-year-old, despite his broad popularity with supporters, a cast-iron CV and, in several cases, prohibitively short odds at Ladbrokes.

Admittedly, some of them were inside jobs; Wayne Rooney at Derby, Jason Tindall at Bournemouth. But most weren’t.

In the past month alone, Cardiff and Bristol City have appointed external candidates without even inviting Cook to interview.

Fizzled

In the case of the latter, that is understandable. Cook was interviewed for the post when Lee Johnson was sacked in the summer, his sudden availability following Wigan’s shock relegation convincing the Robins to extend a recruitment process that had already taken four weeks.

Like an icy blind date, though, any chemistry quickly fizzled. Cook, City briefed reporters, did not fit the club’s culture.

Was this a euphemistic way of saying the former Chesterfield and Portsmouth boss wanted to pull more strings at Ashton Gate than the hierarchy were willing to cede?

It certainly seemed that way, and subsequent soundbites have done nothing to dispel the idea that Cook has no truck with the title of head coach.

Asked by talkSPORT why he had not accepted a (disputed) offer from Sheffield Wednesday in January, Cook said: “If you want to manage one of these good clubs you have to be allowed to manage. If you’re not going to be allowed to manage, you’re an employee and not a manager.”

Could it be the case that Cook, rather than being spurned, is in fact holding out for a job that - in the current environment

- does not exist?

When he left Wigan after three seasons of gradual improvement,

Cook was entitled to feel he merited a long contract at a big club.

But for a 12-point deduction incurred for entering administration, the Latics would have finished the 2020-21 campaign in 13th position, their highest placing in six turbulent years. “I’m actually hoping to get a club that has the ability to go from the Championship into the Premier League,” he said in November, and that was fair enough.

Yet it was also a contradiction in terms. In 2021, clubs who can go from the Championship into the Premier League don’t tend to give their managers carte blanche. In fact, they don’t tend to employ managers at all.

Daniel Farke is head coach of Norwich. Thomas Frank is head coach of Brentford. Steve Cooper is head coach at Swansea. I could go on, but you get the picture.

The division’s most successful sides have all migrated to a continental structure where a technical director calls the shots. Soon, the rest will follow and the traditional manager will go the way of the wing-half, the backpass and the pre-match pint. Sad, but inevitable. Economically, too, many clubs are hobbled. With no income likely until August and considerable uncertainty thereafter, they cannot afford to offer the sort of multi-year deals that Cook desires.

Consider recent appointments. Without wishing to slight their coaching abilities, Mick McCarthy at Cardiff, Jonathan Woodgate at Bournemouth and Nigel Pearson at Bristol City were all appointed because they were willing to accept six-month deals.

Power

Like players, the impact of Covid has deprived managers of bargaining power. It is the wrong time to wait for the right job.

Cook is wholly aware of that, of course. He knows as well as anyone that, in football, absence does not so much make the heart grow fonder as the mind more forgetful. The moaning ghost of Alan Curbishley’s managerial career haunts every lengthy hiatus.

Equally, no responsible owner or chief executive can ignore a record of three promotions and a career win rate of 43 per cent over 671 matches.

Cook will get work, and should not be blamed for attempting to leverage his stock. But when summer arrives and openings emerge, he will need to be more accommodating if he is to land the sort of job he craves.