Only real managers are sacked

Harry Redknapp will have had many a comforting whisper directed toward him over the past few days - not least from Southampton if the rumours are correct - and, in football's unforgiving culture of sustained banter, he will no doubt have been reminded of the words of Malcolm Allison: "You're not a real manager until you've been sacked."

Despite the outward signs that Redknapp was pushed from the club he has spent most of his adult life with, Redknapp is fortunate in a way that many other managers are not. For a start Redknapp should be entitled to a whack of compensation, given his large salary at Upton Park. Then there is his reputation as a coach. Then there is his popularity as a man.

Open and accessible, Redknapp has more friends in the London media than Lady Diana had. A greater percentage of football reporters in England than one could possibly foresee are West Ham United fans. They will ensure that Redknapp's name is linked with any and every vacancy that arises over the coming months. If not Southampton, then Redknapp will get a job somewhere else.

And there are some big ones coming up. At the end of next season both Manchester United and Newcastle United will be looking for a new manager. While Steve McLaren and Alan Shearer are favourites for those posts now, the situation is likely to have changed by next June. Then there is Arsenal. The possibility of Arsene Wenger staying at Highbury seems remote. Three big jobs, and though Redknapp might not be of the status required for those, the positions left by those who do take the jobs will be of interest. Should Alan Curbishley walk out of The Valley, for example. After that, in the Premiership there are long-term doubts about the solidity of Walter Smith at Everton, Jim Smith at Derby County, while not even the chairman of Middlesbrough appears to know what is going on in his managers' (sic) office.

Underneath the Premiership, despite what some might think, the Crystal Palace job is a good one if the finance is there. So there should be room for movement and the likes of George Graham and Redknapp can expect to be in work again soon. Kenny Dalglish is another who would relish "a new challenge".

When it all begins to unfold the old managerial merry-go-round cliche will be trotted out. There is some truth in it, yet beneath the headline clubs and famous names lies a rather different reality.

The League Managers' Association has produced figures which show the notion that sacked managers quickly find reemployment in the same job elsewhere is false. Of the 92 managers in England and Wales five years ago, only 30 are still doing the job. That's a drop-out rate of 67 per cent. From 1996 only Curbishley, Ferguson, Jim Smith, Peter Reid, Dario Gradi at Crewe and Brian Flynn at Wrexham are still managing the same clubs. Redknapp was part of that group until last week.

The LMA's statistics show that the average stay at a club by a manager is less than two years, even though Ferguson and United are the classic example that stability and strength are at least in part derived from longevity. It is worth noting that a prestigious club like Sheffield Wednesday has had eight managers in that time plus two, Ron Atkinson and Peter Shreeves, who have been at Hillsborough twice. Ten appointments. Wednesday are now debt-laden in the first division.

Of the eight men only Trevor Francis, Danny Wilson and Shreeves are working in their chosen role. Of those, Shreeves is still on a temporary contract while Francis will leave Birmingham City almost definitely this summer. Francis might get the manager's seat at another club, but would Shreeves, now 60, receive such an offer. Not that ageism is obvious when it comes to sackings. Paul Jewell, the man before Shreeves, was 36 when Wednesday "parted company" with his services a few months ago. Despite managing Bradford City to promotion and keeping them in the Premiership for a season, Jewell is proof even young up and coming managers can get the bullet.

It's recovering from it that's the hard bit. Jewell has been on the golf course and the radio since his dismissal, but not in many a chairman's office. The merry-go-round hasn't stopped for him to get back on. Similarly, speaking to Kevin Sheedy last week, it was clear that his ambition to be a manager in his own right, rather than be seen as the man who was John Aldridge's assistant, has taken a pounding in his short time in charge at Tranmere Rovers. A former Everton team-mate, Dave Watson, has been appointed above Sheedy.

Now Sheedy, like so many others, faces the long summer of the unwanted manager. It's not that merry.