“It’s a disappointment and, from my point of view, it saddens me,” says Howard Wilkinson, now 82 and officially retired from the sport that has shaped his life. “All we can do is keep our fingers crossed and hope at some point we turn a corner in the right direction.”
Wilkinson is talking to The Athletic as the last English manager to win the league championship. That was 1991-92 as manager of Leeds United and, 34 years on, it isn’t easy to see a time when that position changes.
In the next week or two, it will be Mikel Arteta winning the league with Arsenal or, for the seventh occasion, Pep Guardiola at Manchester City. Last season, it was a Dutchman, Arne Slot, with Liverpool.
Other winners in the Premier League era, from 1992-93 onwards, have come from France (Arsene Wenger), Portugal (Jose Mourinho), Germany (Jurgen Klopp), Chile (Manuel Pellegrini), Italy (Roberto Mancini, Carlo Ancelotti, Antonio Conte and Claudio Ranieri) and, of course, two Glaswegians by the name of Alex Ferguson and Kenny Dalglish.
Leeds United with the Football League Division One trophy in the 1991-92 season, with (left front row) manager Howard Wilkinson (Getty Images/Getty Images)
Yet no English manager has won it in that time and only one — Kevin Keegan with Newcastle United in 1995-96 — has managed a second-place finish. England’s national team has a German, Thomas Tuchel, as the head coach. The women’s team is coached by Sarina Wiegman, from the Netherlands, and this season’s Premier League is reaching its conclusion with only two English managers in full-time roles: Eddie Howe at 13th-placed Newcastle United and Rob Edwards with bottom club Wolverhampton Wanderers.
“I’ve been in football all my life and, having learned to expect the unexpected, it’s not a surprise,” says Wilkinson, who had two stints as England caretaker manager and 33 years as chairman of the League Managers’ Association. “However, it is a disappointment. Although it is called the (English) Football League, it has changed in terms of its profile, especially in the last 10 years.”
Does it matter? And, if so, who’s to blame? Or is there another question here that strikes at the heart of the matter: are English managers really that bad?
OK, we can be sure that the last question is going to be provocative, insulting even, for a lot of people in the profession.
Frank Lampard, for one, talks about the issue being more a lack of opportunity than a lack of talent at a time when the Premier League’s boardrooms, just like the changing rooms, have never been more multinational.
But why do English managers keep being overlooked?
“I wouldn’t say they’re overlooked,” says Lampard. “It’s just a bigger pool of managers, and there are different (nationality) types of owners and sporting directors. In terms of opportunity, it’s a big pool. Good jobs that come up, you know there’s a queue of managers now who are bringing in CVs from all over the world.”
Lampard has just led Coventry City to the Premier League while also repairing some of the damage that had been caused to his own reputation after being sacked by Everton and having a particularly difficult spell as caretaker manager at Chelsea, when he won only one out of 11 games.
His take is that there are “lots of very, very good British coaches out there who are doing great work”. Yet he also makes the point that the nature of the industry means “they have to fight even harder sometimes to be appreciated as good coaches”. And the numbers back up that argument, especially when one of the people he mentions, Scott Parker, has just lost his job at Burnley.
Scott Parker lost his job as manager of Burnley (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
“You can name them – the Eddie Howes of the world,” says Lampard. “Scott Parker, I think, is very current. Now everyone will go, ‘Oh they’ve got relegated’. But it is not easy staying in the Premier League.”
The landscape of English football has changed so dramatically that it can feel almost like a trick of the mind that the only non-British manager in the first-ever Premier League season was Joe Kinnear at Wimbledon. And even he spoke with an English accent. Kinnear was born in Dublin, meaning he played international football for the Republic of Ireland, but he had moved to England at the age of eight.
In the first four seasons of the Premier League, Ossie Ardiles of Tottenham Hotspur was the only manager from further afield than Dublin. Ardiles, an Argentinian, lost his job after a 15th-place finish, and Tottenham went back to an Englishman, Gerry Francis.
And now? This season, only five of the 28 managers to work in the Premier League (interim appointments excluded) have been English. Last season, it was four out of 26, an all-time low. Or to put it another way, nine out of 54 full-time managers in England’s top division over the last two years have been English (16.7 per cent). Never before has the dynamic been so lopsided.
“These days, it’s very competitive, and grows increasingly so as each season passes,” says Wilkinson, whose 29-year managerial career included spells at Sunderland and Sheffield Wednesday. “Football at the top level in this country, more than Germany, France, Italy or anywhere else, seems to appeal to a wider range of nationalities.
“I’m sure there are (English) managers who are capable of performing well at the top level and, looking at it from a patriotic point of view, it would be nice if more were involved. But you can’t pick and choose. That’s the race you’re in now.
“You can potentially be the best manager in the world, but if you’re applying for jobs and nobody thinks you are the best manager in the world there’s nothing you can do about it.”
A lot has changed, in other words, since Sven-Goran Eriksson’s appointment as England manager in 2000 was described by Gordon Taylor, then chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, as “a betrayal of our heritage and coaching structure”.
“I’m very upset,” added Jack Charlton, one of England’s 1966 World Cup winners. “The French are managed by a Frenchman, Germany by a German, and the Italians have one of their own.”
In Serie A, 15 of the 20 managers are Italian. La Liga has 12 Spaniards among its 20 clubs. In France’s Ligue 1 and the German Bundesliga, it is 13.
In the Premier League, meanwhile, what does it say that there are more Spaniards (four) and Portuguese (three) than full-time English managers?
True, the numbers will shift slightly if Michael Carrick gets the Manchester United job. But the trend extends to international level, too, bearing in mind Tuchel is England’s third foreign appointment after Eriksson and Fabio Capello — more than any other World Cup-winning nation. Germany have never had one. Argentina’s last one was in 1934, Brazil hadn’t done it since 1965 until they turned to Ancelotti last year, Italy since 1966 and France in 1975.
Michael Carrick could be the new permanent Manchester United manager (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
As fewer English managers are appointed in the Premier League, what we are also seeing is how it is changing the dynamic in the lower divisions, too.
“There are 92 teams in the football pyramid and that’s not a lot of jobs up for grabs when there are so many individuals looking for that opportunity,” says Dave Challinor, manager of Stockport County. “Football (in England) has changed. It is a multicultural industry and I’m not saying at any point that English managers should get jobs because they are English. It’s got to be the best person for the job.”
Challinor, born in Chester, is one of 40 full-time English managers among the 72 EFL clubs and has an exceptional record throughout the lower divisions, as well as non-League football. In his 15 full seasons with Stockport, Hartlepool, AFC Fylde and Colwyn Bay, he has never finished outside a promotion or play-off spot. This season, Stockport are in the League One play-off final, eyeing a place in the Championship and their third promotion in five years.
He is happy to be at such an upwardly mobile club – “cherish what you’ve got” – but it is another sign of the changing times that even a manager with his record does not appear to be on the radar of bigger clubs higher up the pyramid.
“I’ve never been offered a Football League job based on the success I’ve had,” he says. “I’ve always been of the mindset that the best chance for me to manage in the Football League was to get a team promoted. I still think the easiest way for me to manage a team in the Championship is to get a team promoted. And I still think the easiest way for an English manager, including myself, to manage in the Premier League is to get a team promoted.”
Ashley Cole, widely recognised as one of the greatest English left-backs in history, said recently that he had felt “discouraged” by the lack of job opportunities in England before accepting an offer from Cesena, in Italy’s Serie B. Jermain Defoe has started at Woking in the fifth-tier National League and, though the debate has gone on for many years, there is hard statistical evidence to show Black managers are still being overlooked for jobs in England.
This is also a different era, it seems, from the time when a lot of high-profile England internationals would almost automatically walk into managerial jobs at the end of their playing careers.
Too often, it has been shown that great footballers do not always make great managers. It is a long list — Bryan Robson, Stuart Pearce, Terry Butcher, Paul Ince, Tony Adams, Peter Shilton, Steven Gerrard and many more — and football clubs tend to want much more evidence these days of coaching and tactical knowledge.
“Frank (Lampard) has done brilliantly,” says Challinor. “I think he should be manager of the year after what he’s done at Coventry and successes like that can only be good for English managers. He has also played at the highest level and is still a name that, in my opinion, should get an opportunity.
“Another one that jumps out is Michael Carrick. He wouldn’t be one, perhaps, who was linked with a Premier League job until he got the Manchester United job and now he’s done brilliantly. It shows, more than anything, that you need the opportunity.”
Overall, though, recruitment processes for new managers have never been more thorough. “What you will also find is that a lot of English footballers just aren’t as interested in management as years gone by,” says one Premier League executive, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They have made so much money from their careers, why bother with the hassles of management?”
As for whether it matters, that will always bring a wide range of opinions. Times change. A lot of people used to complain about the diminishing numbers of English footballers in the top division. Now, it is just accepted and, for the most part, football fans appreciate that the influx of overseas stars has made the sport in England more attractive.
Sam Allardyce famously once complained that he would be offered much bigger jobs if his name was Sam Allardici. English managers have overseen 75 games in the Champions League. Italians, to put it into context, have overseen well over 1,000. Even so, Allardyce glosses over the fact that there are plenty of other reasons why the elite clubs might not see him as a good fit.
As for the successes, Eddie Howe ended Newcastle’s 70-year wait for a domestic trophy by winning the Carabao Cup last season. Steve McClaren won the Dutch title with Twente in 2010 and, in the same year, Roy Hodgson led Fulham to the Europa League final (no Englishman has done it since).
The reality, however, is that there are only slim pickings. The last English manager to win the FA Cup? Harry Redknapp, with Portsmouth in 2008.
And there is another question here that feels justified in light of the dwindling number and evolving landscape. How long before the Premier League has no English managers at all?
