Neil McNicholas: Why players rather than the manager should get the boot

LET’S say you are working for a company and little by little it becomes obvious that you are really not very good at your job. Despite giving you chance after chance to improve, you get no better. In all honesty you are clearly not making the grade, but, to your amazement, they fire your boss instead and you get to continue being a waste of the company’s time and money. Welcome to the world of the professional footballer.

How is it that managers keep getting sacked when it is the players who are the ones out on the field playing the game? Every week the manager picks the best team he has at his disposal and sends them out to do what they are supposedly qualified for and paid vast amounts of money to do – play football. But as good as they supposed to be – and there are 11 of them on the pitch – the team keeps losing. And so what happens? They fire the manager.

Yes, he and his backroom staff are responsible for the training and coaching of the players, but on the day it is the players who cross the white line and play the game, not the manager. All he can do is sit on the bench or stand in his technical area and watch his side win or lose.

He can call out instructions, make adjustments to the game plan and the formation of the team to meet the changing tactics and performance of the opponents, but to some extent those things are cosmetic because the bulk of what goes on out on the field is the physical game of football and it’s the players who are playing, not the manager.

Even if he has gets his tactics wrong, those supposed highly skilled professionals are surely capable of adjusting their play to match, and hopefully out-play, their opponents They surely don’t need to be told from the touchline at every turn what they should be doing or how to play the game.

If they do, then perhaps it does become the manager’s fault, or at least the fault of the way the professional game is played, for not allowing players to “express themselves”, as they say, by doing what they are out there to do. But if they don’t, and they keep losing games because they are simply not playing well enough as individuals or as a team, how is that the manager’s fault?

If a player knows that both his salary and his place at a club are under no threat at all, where is the incentive? Whether he plays well or not, whether he scores goals or not, indeed whether he is doing his job or not, doesn’t seem to matter. He might end up warming the bench for a match or two, or even playing in the reserves, but he is still a club player and he is still being paid his full (even exorbitant) salary regardless.

If it is clear to a manager or coach that a player simply isn’t pulling his weight, and isn’t doing the job for which he was signed by the club, why isn’t he fired – transfer window or not? In fact if a whole team isn’t achieving, why don’t they all find themselves down at the Job Centre like anyone else would? Imagine what a story that would make! Most club sides have at least a reserve team available 
who could surely do no worse and may even in fact do better given the chance. It’s the team that keeps losing, so why is it the manager who pays the price for failure?

Realistically, of course, the terms of players’ contracts probably ensure that they can’t be fired and so there’s no real threat to not playing well – especially as a team. They can carry on losing with impunity as they watch one manager go and another arrive, yet it is they, the players, who are not doing their job, a job that appears to be sacrosanct.

Does anyone else out there in the real world have a job like that? Does anyone else’s manager risk getting fired if you don’t do your job properly? And do you still get paid for “not showing up”, as football teams are figuratively wont to do?

They say players don’t necessarily make good managers – which is a shame because if they did they might then experience how precarious life can be on the other side of the white line, depending on people like themselves for a living.

Neil McNicholas is a parish priest from Yarm.