At the end of the 2024 European Championship Gareth Southgate stepped down as the men's England manager. The big question that football fans had up and down our country was, "who is going to take his place?" Most of us are looking at candidates such as Eddie Howe of Newcastle, the crazy outside chance that Pep Guardiola leaves Manchester City to take his first international role or would Lee Carsley continue and go from an interim manager to full time manager. How many people saw us going for Thomas Tuchel, another non-English manager for the third time. We've done it before with the late Sven-Goran Eriksson and the Italian Fabio Capello. Both are excellent football men yet for whatever reason it just didn't work for either of them in that role.
Here we're going to get into why I think we have gone international again at this moment in time and why I think it's not really a bad idea. Firstly, there will be people all over the country complaining that this role should always be filled with an Englishman. Real proud of their country people. England this, England that, three lions tattooed on their body and all that. Bollocks! Forgetting their sat on a Swedish sofa from IKEA, probably watching a Japanese TV, eating American cuisine and drinking German or Belgium beer. I don't understand this mindset and there will be a lot out there that have it. Probably too much ego. I'm proud to be English. Not too much and not too little. At the end of the day my proudness of my nationality doesn't really make me make a choice on who I thought should have been next. And at the end of the day if we win a trophy; whether it's the World Cup or Euros; the nationality of the manager will be forgotten.
Without further ado lets get into it. There's 5 or 6 English managers that probably had a strong-medium chance of being in the conversation of replacing Gareth Southgate and these are my opinions why going with a foreign manager rather than English.
First off, lets remember who we're talking about here. These men are all Premier League managers. They're no cowboys when it comes to managing and coaching football teams. In the best league in the world. Some are more experienced than others but either way they obviously have immense knowledge on the game and how it is played.
Gary O'Neil. Yeah, I agree with what you're thinking. We're talking about the senior men's England manager. He may be quite a few down the line in the bookies odds but lets cover all bases here. Maybe you'll see where I'm going with this. O'Neil joins Bournemouth in August 2022. For the year that he is there, his team are struggling towards the bottom of the league table. Yes, they've recently been promoted and it can take a good while to become an established Premier League team, yet they were promoted with Eddie Howe in 2012. Not like they've only been there for a year or two. With O'Neil in charge they scrape by and stay in the league. If you watch Bournemouth play, what was their identity and style of play under O'Neil? He is sacked in June 2023. Andoni Iraola replaces him not long after. Now, Iraola doesn't hit the ground running with the south coast team. You see it every now and again a team take off and go on a good run when they change managers. This didn't happen for the Spaniard. Maybe the changes in style of play and philosophies were done too much too soon. We don't know but his start wouldn't have been how he wanted it to go. Irrespectively, they dodged relegation stayed in the Premier League for at least another year. Still Iraola got into a position that quite a few managers have been in where it looked like he might be a loss away from losing his job himself. Nevertheless, look at Bournemouth now. A year to 18 months later. Yes they've made a few transfers in and out but has their team changed that much. Bournemouth have an identity, they are now capable of beating most teams in the league, they can give the big 6 teams a game and sometimes nick a point or even a win, and most of all there's not chance they're getting relegated any time soon. Not this season anyway.
Next we're going to stick with Gary O'Neil. He has done it again. A very similar story at Wolverhampton Wanderers. Before his arrival, Wolves had Nuno Espirito Santo, Bruno Lage and Julen Lopetegui. They were constantly in the 11th to 16th section of the Premier League table. In my opinion, they were very rarely in a position where they looked like getting relegated. Yeah they might of had dips in for and that's why they have swapped managers a bit in the last 4 years. I don't think I have really thought Wolves are going down here. O'Neil comes in August 2023. Similarly, only spends about a year in his role. Just over a year here. When O'Neil gets settled in his role in the midlands club and you watch his team, what is their style of play? Once again, just like at Bournemouth, there's not much identity and if someone asks you how a Gary O'Neil team plays, how would you answer it? At the start of this season I think there's a point to make that Wolves have been the worst team in the league. Even the newly promoted clubs Ipswich, Southampton and Leicester City have shown me more. They can't score a goal, they concede the sloppiest of goals. Some might say, look at who they have played in the first 10 games. It's no excuse. You have to play everyone by the end of the season. Twice. My point is at least have a way of playing. When you come up against the giants in the league, be hard to beat. Give them a game. I think it is a perfect example of English coaches being a bit lazy and not having a style of play and key points throughout the game and in certain scenarios in a game. With the squad and starting XI Wolves have they are not a bottom 5 team. I know some big teams have gone down like Newcastle United, West Ham United and the mighty Leeds United. All 3 never had the worst teams in the league but this is football. Wolves have brought in Victor Pereira and I can see them now kicking on slightly and beating relegation.
The mighty Steven Gerrard did a good job a Glasgow Rangers. It was a good job and not much more than that. How many big teams are there in that league? Some might come back and say you've got teams like Dundee United and Aberdeen. When was the last time they won the league above Celtic and Rangers? It's a 50/50 up there. Gerrard did a good job in winning Rangers first title in 10 years after they were relegated and the promoted again yet can it really be hailed that much? It's nothing like Claudio Ranieri winning the league win Leicester City in 2016. The Liverpudlian goes from Rangers to Aston Villa in November 2021. A big team in the Premier League. Has he got that job on merit or because of his name and his playing career. You can decide that. In his time at Villa I don't think he did such a bad job. There's a style of play there. Encouraging playing through the inside channels so there can be a strong use of wing backs attacking on both flanks. Also, being compact and solid in a 4-3-3 and hard to beat. There's something there and it was an entertaining watch with something to analyse. The former England captain was replaced by Unai Emery in November 2022. Almost exactly a year after being appointed. Now look at them. With a couple of seasons under his belt at the midlands club they've qualified for the Champions League. Some teams when they qualify for the Champions League for the first time in a while, they end up being there to make up the numbers. And for the fans its a great experience of maybe being able to see their club playing against a Real Madird or AC Milan. wow. Not Villa. Not a Unai Emery team. Not only did they qualify for the competition for the first time since it has been called the Champions League and not the UEFA Cup. Look at the difference from when Gerrard was in charge, in the bottom half of the Premier League. He slowly brought them up the league but they were nowhere near the team that they are now. Once again, going from an English manager to an overseas manager and there's a big difference in the teams trajectory.
Scott Parker at Fulham is slightly different. He did a brilliant job at the west London club and got them promoted to the Premier League from the Championship in 2020. He joined Fulham as manager in 2019 and took over a pretty good Championship side. Unfortunately, that's what they were. A Championship side. Once they got promoted Parker struggled to grind out many results which resulted in his departure. He did make quite a few hints in his public interviews that changes need to be made by the people upstairs and basically telling them they need to put their hands in their pockets to invest in the squad. Basically trying to suggest that this current squad is not good enough to stay in the top league. He was probably right as they more or less went straight back down. With the Englishman's departure, in came Marco Silva in July 2021. The Portuguese coach is still in charge at the cottage. Probably because he has a decent style of play that has shown the owners that he can take this team forward. They haven't exactly heavily invested but a few decent signings have been made over the last few years. 4 years later; surprise, surprise; they are no where near relegation and are becoming an established Premier League team. Even though, like Steven Gerrard at Aston Villa, Scott Parker started off strongly at Fulham, for what it's worth he has shown that the team he had had potential. Another coach came in; once again a foreign manager; and took them to the next level.
Maybe you're seeing the similarities in the points I am making. English manager, average team, either does badly and struggles to gets results or can't take the team to the next level, a foreign/overseas coach is appointed and a year or two later the club is succeeding.
Another English coach that makes this point for me is Graham Potter at Brighton Hove Albion. In this list of English managers I think it's only Gary O'Neil that has more or less failed from that start. Graham Potter took over at Brighton in 2019 when they had been in the Premier League for a few seasons after gaining promotion in 2016 under the management of Chris Hughton. The Seagulls did well beating relegation for quite a few years. They were right down there but essentially did well enough each season to stay up. Never really did a bad job at Albion. They got to a stage where they didn't look like getting relegated. For most Seagull fans, this won't have been enough. In September 2022, Potter jumps ship and feels the pull of one of the big six sides and joins Chelsea. To me this was a very similar sight to David Moyse going from Everton to Manchester United. Similarly, for both of them, it looked like they were not cut out to manage a big big club. Whether they were just not respected enough by the players at their respective clubs. Maybe the pressure of having to win every week got to them. Maybe doing certain things that worked in their previous roles just didn't work at a different club. Not long after, still in September of 2022, in steps Roberto De Zerbi. Like most, I have to admit I'd never heard of him before. But from the way he got that side playing maybe I should have known who he was. Brighton shot up the table. They never looked like winning the league but started to ask questions of the big clubs. Once again, similar if not the same scenario. English manager can only take the club to a certain level and a foreign manager comes in and takes the club to the next level. This time an Italian coach. From the outside the club seems to be run exeptionally well. It might be up there with Brentford on how they do their business. Bring players in for cheap, move them on for a profit. I don't think they mind being a feeder club as long as the fans are entertained and happy. Maybe the next step for Brighton is going to be a big one, now they are flirting with the European places, can they really get into the Champions League. As De Zerbi left in May 2024, the Brighton top dogs brought in a German coach. A young one at that too. Fabian Hurzeler, 31 years of age. Got to be one of the youngest coaches to ever coach in the Premier League, right? (Someone should look that up) So to me that shows that Brighton would rather take a chance on a young; very young; coach, than an experienced English coach because they want to get to that next level, and as you can see not many English coaches take clubs to the next level.
My next one is kind of a hypothetical one. Eddie Howe at Newcastle has done a fantastic job. They were flirting with relegation for a few season. They has their problems with ownership plans with Mike Ashley and the Sports Direct connections. There didn't seem to be much investment going into the club, especially to improve the squad. With all this going on behind the scenes and the take over from the Saudi Investment Group, Howe's team has progresses. However, I also think this could be a similar pattern that I have repeatedly explained. I honestly think that if a half decent foreign manager with a philosophy and game plan came into Eddie Howe's role, they would be consistently a Champions League team. That squad when fully fit and in form is better than Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspurs, and maybe challenges Chelsea. I do wonder from time to time if this would be true. I'd never say I want to see someone lose their job yet it's just a "what if" type of thought. I just think that side is under achieving; maybe because of inconsistencies throughout the season; and should be higher in the table than it currently is year or year out.
To be honest, it baffles me that Lee Carsley never seemed to be taken seriously as a candidate for the vacant men's senior manager role. If you look at what he's done a the U20 and U21 role. He ended up taking his U21 team to the U21 Euros and winning the whole thing. The first time we had ever done that. Look at what Spain did this summer and who was in charge while they won the Euros. Luis de la Fuente went from coaching the Spanish U21 team for around 5 years to then managing the Spanish senior team and leading them to victory at his first time of asking in a major international tournament. It's the same story in Argentina. Lionel Scaloni. Argentina U20 coach, becomes the senior team's manager and wins a major tournament at his first time of asking. Yeah he had another Lionel that might of helped him do that but you get the point. It was England's first Euros win at that level since 1984. Carsley made it quite clear in his interviews that he had a strong suspicion that he wasn't going to be given the role and also made it evident in a couple of his team selections, for example in his second game in charge not starting a recognised centre forward. He must of thought "fuck it, I'm here lets make this most of this ride." I wonder if he knew Thomas Tuchel was coming in, or just that it wasn't going to be him.
I mean look at where our last manager came from. Gareth Southgate was also our U21 manager after he left the Middlesborough job. He may not of done exactly what Scaloni or de la Fuente did and gone all the way in a major tournament for their country but he did a fantastic job and made the nation proud. All these people were calling for his job years ago. I was surrounded by it. The style of play wasn't amazing. At points I was raging with frustration watching how his players were playing. Whether it was overly cautious like in the 2024 Euros or our game management was shocking in the 2018 World Cup, I still think he brought the team together fantastically and also the nation came together for the summer. Remember the golden generation, and the stories we hear now how certain players would sit on certain tables to eat their meals. You had players like Wayne Rooney, John Terry, Steven Gerrard and Gary Neville going to war all season against each other then unable to leave that behind when meeting up for England duty. You don't get that any more. A lot of the England boys all seem to be best mates with someone in the England squad that doesn't even play for the same club. I feel that's partly down to Southgate and his coaching staff. Also partly down to social media bring the players closer together I'll admit. But there seems to be a lot less hostility between the England group now. (And we don't like hostility now, do we John. No we don't Harold.) The point is in 2016 when Southgate takes over, if you'd have been told in the next 4 major tournaments we're going to go 'semi final - final - quarter final - final' you would never have believed it. Before Southgate we hadn't been to a semi final since 1990, and that was only the second time we'd done it since winning it in '66. He's just gone and done it 3 out of 4 major tournaments. Golden generation my arse.
So out of this list of English managers, who can't either struggle to coach the biggest teams in the Premier League, or cant that their team to the next level who would you choose? Or would you go foreign and when we win something forget all about your own pride felt, English only morals?
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