It took a while to get going, but once the annual managerial sack race began in the English Premier League this year, and with Paul Hart’s unfortunate dismissal from the impossible job at doomed Portsmouth in November, subsequent departures have been characterised by clandestine cowardice, panicky surrender and surprising resignation.

After a victory against Sunderland that had seemed to many to reassert Manchester City’s intentions to break into at least the top six this season, and with a massive League Cup semi-final against their bitter city rivals looming, Mark Hughes was unceremoniously sacked, and replaced with the Italian Roberto Mancini.

The question most people asked was what was the point; Hughes’ team, despite seven successive league draws, were on course to meet their pre-season targets, on the verge of a first domestic final for nearly 30 years, and with the January transfer window imminent, were bound to only get stronger. Yet Garry Cook and Khaldoon Al-Mubarak decided to get rid of him to great cost.

The only real criticisms to be levelled against Hughes in his time at Eastlands was the fairly porous state of the defence, with Joleon Lescott, Kolo Touré and especially Wayne Bridge playing at far less than the £50M spent on them (and around £200,000 a week in wages) would suggest. Yet Hughes had been rebuilding the squad from the patchy and flaky side he inherited from Sven-Goran Eriksson in 2008, and it only needed a bit of tweaking to stiffen up the back line and make City as formidable on the pitch as they were in the transfer market.

Next season is when it will be clear to see whether Mancini can be counted as an improvement, but it would have made more economic and footballing sense to persevere until at least the end of the season before getting rid of the Welshman’s highly-valued services, and it could prove to be as hasty as the removal of the ex-captain Richard Dunne, now excelling as a key player in direct rivals Aston Villa’s own European qualification and cup challenges.
 
If Man City’s change of manager seemed a bit rushed and symptomatic of their recent impatience and traditional penchant for self-destruction, then Bolton Wanderers sacking of Gary Megson smacked of chairman Phil Gartside succumbing to fan power, perhaps setting a disastrous precedent.

Megson had been a qualified success since picking up the pieces from Sammy Lee’s short and disastrous reign, he kept up and improved what was an abysmal side, and made some astute signings such as Matthew Taylor, Tamir Cohen, Chung-Yong Lee, Ivan Klasnic and particularly Gary Cahill, whose sale could earn up £15M to touch up the weak points still remaining. Johann Elmander, the £11M Swedish flop, may be a stick to beat Megson with, but on balance his performance in the transfer market with relatively limited funds has been admirable.

Though Bolton currently lie in the relegation zone, they are two points from safety with two games in hand at the time of writing, they can beat half the league with a decent performance, it’s that tight at the bottom, and the decent performance against Liverpool earlier in the season is testament to an ability to trouble the big boys. The main, possibly the only, reason Megson has gone is that bone-headed bile from the fans got to the chairman, who broke under pressure and blamed the manager. Still dreaming about the heady top six finishes under Sam Allardyce now seasons ago, a percentage of Bolton fans still have their heads in the clouds, and their delusions of grandeur in demanding top half finishes from a club historically switching between the top two divisions is unrealistic.

There are a number of worse sides in the Premier League than Bolton, such as Hull, Burnley and maybe Wolves, with sides such as Wigan and Blackburn in similarly fraught circumstances near the drop zone, and if Bolton do indeed drop down this year, it would be less Megson than Gartside and the fans who should shoulder the blame.

Of course, though, Bolton have found a man to replace Megson, and in what could be seen as the biggest shock move of the season (Man City may have something to say about that this month), they have poached the highly respected Owen Coyle from local relegation rivals Burnley. Coyle, despite a promising start and an almost non-existent budget, has taken a sizeable gamble in moving from the Clarets, endangering the warmth of Burnley fans and general goodwill from neutrals by leaving them even more prone to the drop than before. The motives for his move are fairly clear – he has an affinity with the fans as a popular ex-player, he will get the money to spend he has lacked at Burnley, and he has a greater chance of managing in the Premier League than if he stayed – but there does not seem to be anything palpable to gain from his departure.

If Coyle had stayed at Burnley and kept them up, his already brilliant achievements would be even greater and a better job at a bigger club would be likely to come his way, but even if they were relegated he would hardly lose face or value, as Burnley are so small and so poor in Premier League terms that giving them a fighting chance and beating the likes of Manchester United and Everton on the way would have counted to his credit. Now he has moved to the Reebok, where it will take time to implement his passing football throughout the defensively-minded side, only survival will be count, and it will be a lesser achievement than had he done it at Burnley.

Some may cynically suggest a greater salary played a part in his decision, pointing to the 43-year-old’s refusal to join his boyhood club Celtic in the summer, but there was nothing to be gained in joining the two-horse race that is the Scottish Premier League (especially when the horses are so financially lame that they could do with being taken round the back and shot), and by all accounts he is an upstanding and honest man and manager. It just seems to be an unnecessary chance to take with his rising reputation, a sideways move with little to gain, and a miscalculation from such a canny managerial prodigy.

If Mancini brings the League Cup back to a Man City side heading for the Champions League next season and Coyle keeps up Bolton with ease, perhaps sneaking a mid-table finish as Burnley’s season collapses in relegation and a succession of thrashings, then many will retrospectively view the changes of manager at a key moment in mid-season as astute and well-taken gambles that paid off handsomely. However, in reality these victories would have been quite likely had the status quo been maintained, and such hasty transformations have merely opened up the respective club hierarchies for wider criticism, meaning even more heads could roll for no particular reason. The sack race never used to be this crazy.

 

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