Does a ‘manager’s transfer window’ make sense?
In a week where current Blackpool boss Paul Ince has stated a transfer window for managers is needed in the modern game this article will consider the pro’s and con’s for such a window.
Firstly I can only agree with Ince that rampant short-termism in football, especially as far as the man in the dugouts is concerned is spiralling out of all control and could prevent talented young coaches breaching the gap and becoming a first team manager. Such an attitude in the modern game certainly contradicts the work done at sites such as St George’s Park in developing young coaches.
However a manager’s transfer window is not the answer.
Why? There are three key reasons why. Firstly it could arguably be seen as embracing the short-termism attitude that has arisen in the modern game. Any side could lose any given manager in any upcoming transfer window. This arguably does not logically solve a problem that needs a much greater solution and doesn’t look too dissimilar to the current situation.
Secondly: when could such a window take place? If it was to take place at the same time as a player’s transfer window there could be no consistency or long term-plan when the man currently buying the players to build ‘his’ team could leave tomorrow. Transfer windows take place at different times across the world. It is almost common knowledge to British football fans that foreign leagues such as Russia conduct their transfer window differently to the Premier League’s. If a club was to lose its manager to such a foreign league outside of its own transfer window what kind of precedent would that set? How could consistency be achieved that way?
Thirdly: what would the going rate be for a Paul Ince? Or, respectively, for a bigger managerial name such as wandering Jose Mourinho or Vicente del Bosque? What price would a club have to pay in order to secure a big name signing and how could that be encouraging a Financial Fair Play attitude that has been introduced for the first time during the current 2012-13 Premier League campaign? Roman Abramovich secured the services of Andre Villas-Boas for a figure in the region of £13 million back in June 2011. What’s to say that the price of managers wouldn’t rise over the next few decades in the manner player’s values have skyrocketed beyond unrecognisable figures during modern times?
So then what is the solution? Luckily enough that is not for some football writer like me to decide but the Premier League, Football League Association and the League Manager’s Association if indeed they wish to eradicate this problem. Arguably the solution must begin with the managers themselves. They must be not only offered suitable time to run a club and offered more long term-contracts in the mould that has been offered to Newcastle boss Alan Pardew but they must also be less willing to jump ship and into the graves of their colleagues. Paul Ince himself has replaced Michael Appleton who lasted a meagre 65 days at Blackpool not through boardroom pressure but through choice.
Players and managers are two very different types of staff within a football club. A lazy one size fits all solution following the impact of the player’s transfer window is clearly not the answer if the problem is to be addressed in the right attitude, with the right results in the end.
Tomos Llewellyn @tomllew
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