Your reading a pre 2010-11 archived article

This is Clarkeonenil’s regular comment column, cutting through the various passing issues of football and getting to the core principle in the shortest time.

Well haven’t we had some fun this week on the old manager’s verses player’s verses owner’s front, a real mishmash of idiocy, perverted principle and plain old fashioned thuggery seem to have broken out all over the shop. Topping a long list of places we need to visit is Loftus Road and the suspension of Jim Magilton for an alleged head-butt on Queens Park Rangers midfield player Akos Buzsaky. Before we examine this look at this extract from Paul Fletchers BBC Sport blog, bare in mind it first appeared on Tuesday morning, well before the Magilton/Buzsaky story started to grow.

“Then, there was the sight of disconsolate QPR midfielder Akos Buzsaky wandering up and down the asphalt in front of the main stand long after the final whistle like a lost soul in a foreign land. At one point he sought solace in the relative sanctity of a public toilet, which unfortunately for him was located just metres from a press room full of journalists. Despite the biting cold the Hungarian, a second-half substitute, was wearing nothing more than his Rangers kit. He must have been freezing but clearly had no intention of returning to the warmth of the dressing room. Eventually QPR assistant boss John Gorman emerged and put a consoling arm around Buzsaky’s shoulder but there seemed to be no assuaging the player’s frustration and distress. Manager Jim Magilton was busy peeling the paint from the walls of the visiting dressing room after his team’s 3-1 defeat – and afterwards the Irishman explained that his midfielder’s bizarre wandering had been the result of a “difference of opinion”.But as an illustration of how QPR’s season is becoming an increasingly stressful quest for answers as they seek an end to what is now a run of just one win in seven games, it was a wholly apt image.”

Given that extract it becomes more and more difficult to see how Magilton has a leg to stand on, even less Gorman and Ward (who seems to have invented a new form of constructive dismissal, that of expressing no faith in the employers disciplinary processes before they have even started). Let’s be clear, thuggery in any work place is unacceptable, it beggars belief that a young manager (40) like Magilton could think that head-butting is an acceptable use of communication in a de-brief (and that is all a post match managerial rant is, a debrief just with a lot more shouting), especially in this day and age. Obviously other factors might be in play here, it is one of life’s great mysteries as to why a football club owned by three of the worlds more successful businessmen seems to have little in the way of administrative control. Magilton looked a strange choice for QPR when he got the job, with a win percentage of 37% he can thank his lucky stars his replacement at Ipswich is doing much worse (and isn’t that one of the sweetest ironies, we are discussing lunatic thuggery in management and Keane is but a passing reference).

Now clearly if the principle is that thuggery should lead to dismissal where does that leave Tony Pulis after his exchange of opinion with James Beattie? Well in my book safe as houses, I’ll explain before the accusations of hypocrisy start. All the reports about the kick-off in the away dressing room at the Emirates speak of blows being landed both ways. Whilst this doesn’t show Pulis in a good light you give him more sympathy when you realise what caused Beattie to place his Stoke City career in jeopardy, a demand for extra sobering up time. Pulis told his squad he would see them on Monday for training, as normal, Beattie indicated they were all going out on the piss in London that night and therefore had expected that day off! You know I really don’t care if Pulis did renege on a deal, at £20-50K a week your xmas party should be tea and frigging cakes not a 12 hour all night bender with high class roast! Kick Beattie out Mr Coates and anyone else in that squad who thinks like the lancs nutter (who BTW apparently needs a lawyer to tell him whether or not sorry is a useful word).

Next on our list of strange goings on is the sacking of Kettering assistant manager John Deehan, by an unknown “senior member of the board” called Ladak. I always love those take a glorious defeat and turn it into a humiliation moments and this has to be one of the best. In the 20 minutes it takes to come off the pitch at Elland Road and to walk into a press conference (stopping to collect a bottle of Champagne that should rightly have gone to Neil Kilkenny), Kettering player manager Lee Harper found himself dragged through the mire. His subsequent comments tell us Ladak decided he knew more about football that Deehan and that Deehan should be fired for his substitutions, nothing Harper could say could stop this and now the manager was left to contemplate staying on humiliated or resigning on principle, as we speak the choice seems to be accepting humiliation. Still on the bright side the £200k earned by playing Leeds will come in useful with the compensation claim to come!

In the same division as Kettering Town lives our old Cambridgeshire buddies from Histon and Mr Steve Fallon, the architect of another stain on Leeds United’s history. Well one year on from that and the situation is less rosy. It appears that having managed a club for 10 years, taking them up 4 or 5 divisions and to their most famous victory counts for nothing when you have a new chairman to deal with. Said new chairman Mr Roach wants a lower playing budget, fair enough if it’s in June he asks but perhaps a touch disruptive in December, and expects Fallon to sort it. When the manager tells his players of this the next step is a disproportionate suspension of the manager (shades of QPR and Paulo Sousa). You get the feeling that someone is trying too hard to assert his authority and you also get the feeling Histon will soon be back where they came from if Fallon is sacked (which won’t help one bit explaining to our grandkids what that Leeds were doing losing to them).

Meanwhile in a smaller league than where Histon are heading lives Glasgow Rangers and the remarkable story of the demotivated manager. Apparently Walter Smith has been living under the threat of the sack for about a year and the only reason it hasn’t happened is that he promised to operate without a contract! Now given that Rangers won the SPL last season one wonders what they could have done if this issue hadn’t been milling around. None of this is to do with football, it’s to do with the Chairman, David Murray, fouling up his business career! Smith indicates he is only staying to ensure his staff keep their jobs, which whilst commendable it is hardly the basis on which you contemplate CL football. What the situation at Ibrox shows is no-one is safe from idiocy.

The examples we have skimmed through are the ones we know about, the ones where the information has got out. What we don’t know is how many other managers (other than Phil Brown) are living week to week, how many (other than Alex Ferguson) are attacking players, how many (other than Darren Ferguson) are victims of ego owners, how many (other than Simon Grayson) are expected to succeed without financial backing or a stable owner? Why anyone would do the job is beyond me, oh yes that is right, money.