Should Norwich sack Alex Neil?

No.

I suppose I could leave it there – and this will have been the most straightforward, stress-free thing I've ever written.  But I imagine most people are expecting me to go on and explain why we should keep faith with Alex Neil, despite a recent run of poor form which has seen us sink into the bottom three of the Premier League table…

Let's start with something that should be obvious, but oddly never seems to be: sacking the manager is not a 'silver bullet' that fixes everything instantly.  Of course, I have written about this before, but that doesn't make any difference; as soon as you lose a couple of games, people start murmuring about sacking the manager, as if that always cures everything – if that were the case, clubs would have twenty different managers every season.  They don't, because that would be absurd.  Knee-jerk sackings are not the answer – and if you're the sort of person who would see their team lose and immediately reach for the P45 at the final whistle, without a moment's thought, you maybe need to reevaluate how you make decisions.

This view is a bizarre extension of the 'Something must be done!' attitude which sadly pervades many areas of life at the moment.  Anything that happens is met with a chorus of demands to ban something, remove something, change something, legislate for something…  Because something must be done!  Regardless of what that 'something' is.  It is the response of a feeble mind – and it won't help our club.

But let's move on from there.  Let's assume that we've got past reflexive demands for action-for-action's-sake, and decided that a change of manager actually might be no bad thing, on its own merits.  Before we do anything, we need to have a replacement lined up who is better.  Not 'just as good' – and certainly not worse! – but a guaranteed step up in quality from the manager we currently have.  And we need to be sure that this person is not only a better calibre of manager than the incumbent, but is available to start immediately, and would be willing to take a job at Norwich (a relegation-threatened club with, in Premier League terms, a relatively small budget).

So who is there who fits that bill?  If no names spring alacritously to mind, I'm not too surprised.  I can think of top-level managers who are out-of-work – but would they want to come to Norwich?  I can think of managers whose services we probably could secure – but would they really be better than Alex Neil?  I'm not convinced.  And unless both of those stipulations are met, we're better off doing nothing at all.

Oh, how short are the memories of some football supporters…

But what of Alex Neil himself?  Even if a good manager is available, and happy to start work tomorrow…  Does Alex really deserve the sack?!  This is a manager who came into the club midway through the season last year, when our promotion challenge looked to be fading, and turned things around.  We all remember the euphoria of our Play-Off Final day out at Wembley, don't we?  He did that.

This is the manager who got us promoted to the Premier League.  This is the manager who got a point away to Liverpool; the manager who got a point at home to top four Arsenal; the manager who beat Manchester United on their own turf.  That deserves recognition.

Yes, he has made mistakes – he is only thirty-four years old, and he is still learning his craft while having to adapt to a level higher than any previous challenge he has encountered in his fledgling managerial career – but he has potential and ambition aplenty, and has never been under any illusions about how tough a league the Premier League is.  Comments like 'out of his depth' or 'lost the plot' are harsh, to say the least.

It is unreasonable not to permit a young manager still finding his feet to make errors.  How else does one learn?  Not only is it unreasonable, though, it is stupid.  It is illogical.  Those mistakes, more often than not, stem from inexperience.  How does one gain experience?  Not by being sacked.

At this rate, the 'sacking culture' in modern football will cut off far too much promising young coaching talent at the knees.  Where will the next generation of football managers come from?

In ten years' time, people will look at the Premier League and ask: "Why are there so few talented British coaches managing at the top level?  Why is there no new blood in management in this country?"  Because they were sacked after four games in charge by ruthless CEOs acceding to the demands of unforgiving fans who cared more about exacting their pounds of flesh than looking to the future of either their own club, or the sport of football as a whole.

Alex Neil is a young manager who deserves his chance.  Norwich City need to give it to him.  And – who knows? – there is opportunity yet for that faith to be repaid.  Time has not run out; panicking now solves nothing.

Addendum (added Monday, 8th February, following various discussions on the topic):

Those who would favour Alex Neil's immediate removal have cautioned me more than once about the dangers of the club "leaving it too late" to sack him.  It is an argument – and an expression – which I abhor.  Even leaving aside the arrogance of thinking you are the person who can tell with absolute certainty when the optimum time would be for the club to act, what baffles me about this line of argument is that that it seems to skip over the question of whether or not Alex Neil should be sacked; it assumes that it is self-evident that he should be, and that the only matter left to settle is when.  It is an assumption which speaks to the central conceit of this outlook – that sacking the manager is always the answer.

The mindset seems to be that a manager's sacking is inevitable; that the only question around the issue is not "if" he should be sacked, but "when" to do it; and that sooner is always better.  This cannot be good for the club, or for the sport.  That is not a healthy attitude to have, and the worry here is that we will creep inexorably towards a farcical scenario where it is standard procedure to sack the manager after every loss, most managers last only a few weeks in a job, and the pool of managerial talent dries up completely.

Off with his head!

Off with his head! they are screaming on the Norwich City football forums, like the Queen Of Hearts in Alice In Wonderland, following an embarrassing 4-0 defeat to Middlesborough last night.  As the blistering start to the season fades and gives way to the grit and slog of a 46-match campaign in the SkyBet Championship, more and more people are starting to espouse the view that manager Neil Adams should be let go.  The fools!

I have said before that Adams was not my first choice as a permanent manager, following relegation from the Premier League at the end of last season.  I stand by that.  But he's there now – and, at this stage, sacking him will almost certainly do more harm than good.

Far too many football fans see sacking the manager as a 'silver bullet' – an instant solution which will wipe away all the problems of a struggling club, as if they were never there.  It isn't.  It never has been, and it never will be.

(It is worth pointing out, at this stage, that Norwich are not a 'struggling club'.  We are seventh in the Championship, as things stand, and only four points off the top two clubs.  It is easy to throw around 'soundbite statistics' like only two wins in the last ten games; it's just as easy to express the same statistic as only three losses in the last ten games – either way, it's relatively meaningless.  It cannot be said firmly enough: this is not a crisis.)

Sacking the manager is, in many respects, the easy bit.  You tell him you don't want him any more, and he's gone – and, in doing so, you slake the disgruntled fans' baying for blood.  The tricky part is what happens next.  You have to appoint a new manager.  Who?

Who is there who's available, and not already at a club?  Who is there who's going to want to come and manage a Championship side like Norwich?  Who is there who's going to be a guaranteed step up from Adams (if the guy you get in next isn't going to be a guaranteed step up, what was the point of sacking the last guy, if the new one's not going to be any better?!)?

Nobody has any answers to these questions.  People don't consider the 'afterwards' – just as those who call for revolution don't have any coherent plan for what will replace the ancien régime.  All wrongs will be righted, 'come the revolution'.  How?  Nobody knows.  Managerial changes are messy, tumultuous upheavals, which have huge affects on a club; if you're going to put the club through that turmoil again, there had better be a bloody good plan for 'afterwards'!

As I have written before, the way to become an established Premier League club (which is, after all, the aim) is to have a long-term plan.  It is also worth stating, at this juncture, that stability is more important than timescale; that is to say, if promotion this season meant relegation again next season, whilst waiting for promotion until the season after next would more likely yield a prolonged stay in the Premier League, I would choose the latter every time – I want long-term success, not to become a 'yo-yo club'.  A managerial 'merry-go-round' is the opposite of all of this – it is a quick fix; it is short-term thinking; and it is very, very stupid.

Managing expectations

As you may know, I love watching football - and I support my team with the ferocity of a mother lioness defending her cubs from a double-pronged attack by blood-sucking martian aliens and wildlife photographers.  But I find the world of football management very intriguing indeed.

In the world of football, good managers are hot property.  In a highly competitive, results-driven industry, managers don't often get much time to prove themselves - they either deliver results straight away, or they're out of a job.  Of course, the high levels of expectation on top football managers come with big rewards - but the punishment for failures (or, perceived failures) can be even greater.

The growing trend of impatience - despite the evidence that knee-jerk sackings generally don't improve football clubs' fortunes - with under performing managers, on the part of both club owners and ordinary fans, is a concern.  But to what extent are a manager's true talents masked by the players he has available to him?

In the wake of José Mourinho's return to Chelsea this season, and Chelsea's subsequent success in both the Premier League (of which they are currently top) and the Champions' League (in which they are through to the Quarter-Finals), people are quick to point to Mourinho's management as reason for this.  There is no doubt that he is a fine manager, who is indeed very good at his job - but Chelsea weren't exactly a bad team before Mourinho returned to Stamford Bridge either!

Pep Guardiola spent four years managing Barcelona, during which time he won fourteen major trophies - a truly remarkable record.  After a year's sabbatical, he then took over at reigning German Champions Bayern Munich, and has retained their Bundesliga title in his first season with them.  He is still on course to make this Bayern's second treble-winning season in a row.

No one can argue with the facts.  When you look at the careers of managers like Mourinho and Guardiola - the clubs they have managed, and the competitions they have won - it is impossible to escape the conclusion that they are some of the top men in their field.  But there is an argument to say that, when you get to choose who you work with, and you go from elite club to elite club, walking into a dressing room already packed with world-class players and backed by an ambitious club owner with a vision and a bank balance to match it, you'll always have at least some success.

I don't want to say "anyone could do it" (that is an especially crass argument when it works the other way, and is just as much so in this context) - but when you walk into a job managing a confident, dominant team who are the current Champions of Europe (as Guardiola did at Bayern Munich), how much worse can you do?

I don't especially have a point to make here - I'm just musing.  But I do think this is a very interesting topic.  And I do think it would be enthralling to see just how much difference a Guardiola or a Mourinho could make at a lower-mid-table Premier League team; a West Brom, or a Crystal Palace, or (please, God!) a Norwich City.  Would those teams' results improve?  Undoubtedly.  Would the same squad suddenly by vying for a Champions' League place?  I'm not so sure.

Similarly, if (for example) Tony Pulis or Sam Allardyce were to take over at Bayern Munich, or Real Madrid, or Paris St. Germain next season, what effect would that have?  The star players at those most illustrious of European football clubs would still be highly-gifted, world-class footballers.  Would those teams lose some of their flare and dominance?  Quite possibly.  Would they suddenly be fighting relegation battles and being knocked out in the early stages of domestic cup competitions?  Probably not.

Frankly, although that would be a brilliant experiment to watch, it's never going to happen - for obvious reasons!

What we can say for certain, though, is that quality attracts quality.  That the best managers and the best players so often end up working together at the best and most famous clubs in Europe may seem serendipitous for them, but that doesn't happen by accident.