AOB: Football Chairmen are stupid

I don’t mean our own Lee Power of course. He’s great, in a kind of shouty mockney wide-boy way.

I’m talking about the one’s who, when faced with a managerial vacancy, think: “I know, the best solution is to appoint the previous managers assistant/coach/tea lady, they’ll just pick up where their old boss left off.”

Seriously, what is up with these people? When has that ever worked? I mean, obviously there are some coaches have made the transition successfully (Nigel Adkins at Scunthorpe is a good example) but more often than not it all ends in tears. When Wigan promoted Chris Hutchings in the summer, how many football fans didn’t think that he’d be sacked before Christmas? Ditto Sammy Lee (pictured) at Bolton?

The people who appointed them have, predictably, wasted half a season of their clubs time and money, and left their new managers with a mountain to climb, when they could have just appointed a proper manager in the first place. You can’t expect someone with no managerial experience to go in at the highest level and be an instant success, it’s not realistic.

The idiot Phil Gartside has now compounded one terrible decision with another by replacing Lee with Gary Megson. That consistent failures like Megson (who as far as I can make out is living off one promotion he won ages ago with West Brom) and Bryan Robson (who is living off, er, I’ll get back to you on that one) continue to get jobs at big clubs is another mystery to me, and must be very frustrating for young managers trying to climb the ladder.

It was good to see Mark Stimpson and Lee Sinnott, both Conference managers until recently, get football league jobs last week, but one wonders whether their careers will progress any further while the big clubs continue to appoint the same old faces. Meanwhile, the favourites for the Wigan job are, naturally, Graeme Souness and Stuart Pearce. Quelle Surprise.