Lack of imagination leaves Premier League strugglers on the brink
>> LONDON: West Bromwich Albion are on the brink of relegation this weekend, with Stoke City and Southampton also in grave danger, as the Premier League’s basement dwellers pay the price for a lack of managerial imagination.
Albion head to Newcastle United tonight knowing anything less than a victory will condemn them to the second tier.
Even three points at St James’s Park is likely to mean only a stay of execution for West Brom, who are eight points from safety with three games remaining.
It is a bleak predicament for a club that has spent the past eight years among the English elite — but many believe Albion have only themselves to blame for joining the ultra-conservative trend of Premier League teams asking the usual suspects to get them out of trouble.
When Albion parted company with Tony Pulis in November after fans grew tired of his dour tactics, the club’s Chinese owner Lai Guochuan turned to Alan Pardew, a former teammate of West Brom technical director Nick Hammond.
Pardew’s track record of mediocrity at West Ham United, Southampton, Crystal Palace and other clubs failed to excite supporters and proved a disastrous choice as he lasted just 18 league games, winning only once.
By the time Pardew was dismissed in April — following a run of eight successive defeats — Albion were destined for relegation and he had the worst Premier League win percentage, at 5.5 percent, of any West Brom manager.
Since Pardew’s departure, Albion have looked far more dynamic under the guidance of interim boss Darren Moore, the kind of up-and-coming young coach who the Premier League’s lesser lights would do well to embrace.
Despite constant complaints about a perceived foreign invasion, David Moyes became the eighth British manager between the ages of 50 and 70 to be appointed out of 14 slots filled when he took the helm at West Ham in November.
However, hiring these supposed survival specialists has often backfired, with Stoke and Southampton’s faith in experience looking misguided
Moyes, Everton’s Sam Allardyce, Palace’s Roy Hodgson, Pulis and Southampton’s Mark Hughes have now had 25 Premier League jobs between them as they move from one attempted rescue mission to another.
Joey Barton believes fresh faces would prove a wiser investment.
Bournemouth’s Eddie Howe and Burnley’s Sean Dyche have shown what young English managers can accomplish given t he opportunity, while in Germany, Bundesliga clubs regularly promote their own coaches, leading to the emergence of Juergen Klopp, Thomas Tuchel and Julian Nagelsmann.
Barton, who will take charge of third-tier Fleetwood Town next season, told TalkSport: “It shows how poor the managerial pool is when you look at some of the appointments recently. It’s people who’ve failed.
“Football management is one of the few jobs where you can be absolutely crap and get paid a lot of money for being crap because you get sacked.
“But then you walk back into another job because clubs think it’s going to work for them.”