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THE BACK OFFICE
the
manager
WINTER 2011
Howard Wilkinson
The LMA chairman considers the ingredients that go
together to create a successful club manager and reveals
the single attribute required of all applicants...
the ability to make time
2. Organisation (the daily, weekly and
monthly attention to all detail)
3. Leadership
With regard to ‘leadership’, the
former Hanna Barbera and Lucasfilm
CFO Alan Keith summed it up
perfectly when he said “Leadership
is ultimately about creating a way
for people to contribute to making
something extraordinary happen” (as
quoted in
The Leadership Challenge
,
leadership, no amount of technical
ability or organisational skills will
make a great manager. In today’s
world of specialisation and delegation,
it is excellent leadership that makes
the difference.
Successful managers – and great
leaders – have to start somewhere, but
in club football management, getting
started is the hardest thing of all. In
1992, the average tenure of a manager
in English football was three and a
half years. By 2009 it had dropped to
roughly 16 months (and continues to
fall). Despite these depressing figures,
the best still succeed and survive.
Some achieve success quickly, but
for most it takes time. Research shows
that, on average, it takes roughly
300 games (or, in other words, six
years) for most managers to achieve
major success. When you add up
the time spent in preparing for and
managing those 300 games, the total
time is well in excess of the ‘10,000
hours’ suggested as the practice time
required to acquire expertise by the
Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson
in his paper Expert Performance
and Deliberate Practice (and later
popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in
his book
Outliers
).
Most of those we would consider
to be ‘the best’ agree that success in
management demands the following:
“Leaders
have strong
values and
beliefs which
underpin
everything
they do”
by Kouzes and Posner).
There is a growing awareness within
the LMA and among Europe’s senior
coach educators that the education
of would-be managers needs to
focus much greater attention on this
critical element of leadership. There
are great technicians and there are
great organisers, but without great
In all walks of life,
people
talk about ‘having a mountain to
climb’ – and nowhere can this be
more appropriate than in football
club management. Given the ever-
decreasing tenure of managers (see
‘The Sack Race 2010/11’, opposite)
many would argue that Everest poses
fewer threats to the man in the dug-
out than the pressures of his job.
In the five seasons up to the end of
2010/11, England’s 92 league clubs
had employed a total of 214 different
managers. Of these, only five have
remained in continuous employment
with the same club throughout. For
many of the 214, their introduction to
football management turned out to be
their only experience of the job.
Only the very best players can make
time on the ball; in management,
the skill to make and earn time is
a requirement for everyone, which
makes the achievements of managerial
‘Galacticos’ such as Ferguson, Wenger,
and Mourinho even more remarkable.
So what are the key ingredients
that separate the best from the rest?
UEFA’s Technical Director Andy
Roxburgh identifies three major skills
required of all successful coaches:
1. Technical knowledge (and the
ability to communicate that
knowledge clearly)
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