Time waits for no manager

Three out of 10 Premier Division bosses have been sacked this season. Daniel McDonnell assesses why patience of clubs is wearing thin

With popularity comes volatility. The spike in attendance and accompanying media attention have made it an interesting time to be a League of Ireland manager, but it hasn’t increased the levels of job security.

Jon Daly’s departure from St Patrick’s Athletic on Tuesday morning means that three of the ten top-flight managers have lost their jobs before the halfway point of this campaign. You have to go back to 2014, when six of the 12 Premier clubs changed bosses during the season, to find a comparable rate of attrition, and even then, it was later in the campaign when the P45 count stacked up.

Why is it happening? The difficulty for the men in the dugout was anticipated before the campaign. Promotion for strong Galway United and Waterford sides meant there would be no easy games in the top flight. UCD weren’t strong enough to avoid that situation last year and a chaotic year for Cork City meant they rolled over on several occasions, too.

It’s tough to do any League of Ireland piece now without some kind of Damien Duff angle and it’s not a stretch to suggest that his successful start to the season with Shelbourne has contributed to the stress for his counterparts.

Shelbourne secured fourth place on the final day of the 2023 season, winning a three-way tussle with Dundalk and Bohemians that swung in three different directions during a dramatic 90 minutes. Duff’s team were only guaranteed Europe when third-placed St Patrick’s Athletic defeated Bohemians in the cup final in November.

An inconsistent start to the new season for the top two, Shamrock Rovers and Derry City, opened the door to the chasing pack. Shelbourne have walked through it. The other three bosses involved in that European race have all lost their jobs.

Dundalk, the dominant side of the 2010s, are now facing a relegation battle after their dreadful start to the campaign under Stephen O’Donnell. Declan Devine was on a sticky wicket after the Aviva loss, and in hindsight, it might have been better if Bohs had changed things then, given the murmurs over the winter months.

But that highlights the fickle nature of the business. Bohs went a goal up in that final and had chances to take a position of control. The margins between success and failure are relatively thin.

What Duff has succeeded in doing, though, is strengthening the cult of the manager. Success at LOI level is often linked with budget sizes, rightly or wrongly. Shels didn’t get every player they wanted over the winter, but Duff has made the most of the resources at his disposal and also improved individuals who didn’t cost much to bring in.

There’s a view within the game that Daly was very harshly treated. He left almost a year to the day after Clancy’s departure and knew what he was getting himself into because he’d served as his predecessor’s assistant. But neither manager could complain about the resources offered to them by owner Garrett Kelleher, who has backed his bosses in the transfer market. Key decisions just haven’t worked out and fuelled the impatience behind the scenes.

Divorce

It’s impossible to divorce the speed of the sack race with the financial pressures within the league. Domestic prize money remains paltry, but wages are creeping up again, and so are collective losses, with benefactors such as Kelleher playing a vital role. European qualification is essential for attempts to balance the books; €250,000 is the minimum return, even if costs can chip away at that figure.

Bohemians operate a different model, being a fan-owned club which makes a seven-figure sum from merchandise through their various innovative campaigns, but the completion of their transition to full-time football with an associated bump in their playing budget would have envisaged a return to the European sphere after their enjoyable 2021 adventure. Missing out for three years on the trot wasn’t part of the plan.

The ability to throw a blanket over so many teams in a congested top flight means a rolling of the dice is alluring because it could prove to be the difference. Daly’s instant success with St Patrick’s Athletic last term may have influenced his downfall; it showed that a switch in the hot seat does not mean the rest of the campaign is a write-off. Chelsea have enjoyed some of their greatest days with quick-hit bosses.

Perhaps the most prolific league in Europe for managerial turnover is the English Championship, where the competitiveness leads to the temptation to switch things up to gain momentum in a crowded table. There were 19 managerial departures in the season that just ended. But managers who get the bullet at that level can expect a comfortable six-figure settlement that doesn’t put pressure on them to return to work immediately.

Pay-offs do happen here, too, but the norm would be low five-figure sums unless a club has signed themselves into an unusually inflexible long-term deal. In simple terms, there’s limited scope for the newly unemployed to relax before getting back at it. There was surprise when O’Donnell returned as Bohemians assistant this week; he’s a 38-year-old with three young children committed to an industry where there’s a severely limited number of full-time positions. It was a no-brainer.

Daly was living away from his family in Scotland, while Devine made a similar commitment to relocate to Dublin – he quickly got back on the carousel by landing a post with Glentoran.

Seasoned football men go into every position with their eyes open. And for all they know, it’s a precarious existence; the applications flood in from far and wide for every job that becomes available. Succeeding in the LOI is hard, but managers have used it as a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

Stephen Kenny had been sacked three times before he landed at Dundalk, and within a decade, he was managing Ireland and earning over €500,000 per year. Duff ’s exploits have made several of his former teammates curious about the platform the LOI could provide for their ambitions.

While the growth of social media has been crucial to the league’s mini-boom, it has also exposed managers to a new level of scrutiny. Honeymoon periods have shortened. But a new generation of bosses who spent the majority of their playing careers as full-time pros – thus meaning they have nothing else to fall back on – will keep persevering in the hope of finding the life-changing match.

‘Succeeding in the LOI is hard, but some have used it as a stepping stone’