“However much you liked it,” a former Manchester City director once said, “you wouldn’t put the man who runs your corner shop in charge of a multinational.” He was explaining his belief that City should have replaced Joe Royle as soon as he had led City to promotion, but his argument has more general application.
It is an awkward truth because it does not fit with the comfortably meritocratic notion that you can work your way up from the bottom. Nor does it fit with the manager-as-messiah image that still dominates the English conception of the role. There is a sense we are still looking for the next Herbert Chapman, Sir Matt Busby, Bill Shankly, Don Revie or Brian Clough who can pick up a struggling club and almost by force of personality transform them into champions.
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