Flashback: Venables on Managerial Axing

Just a little apropros - Venables speaking a couple years ago
Was not speaking specifically about any club. But what he said. Well certain things struck a QPR cord

Terry Venables The Sun - Sacking a manager is easy. The hard bit is sticking with him

WE’RE at that time of the season when quite a few managers get the sack.

Chairmen have to be strong and make the right decision.
Fans often like a change but the right decision is normally to stick with the manager.
Sacking someone is a too-easy solution. When it’s easy, it’s often the wrong one.

Sometimes, a manager doesn’t always lose the players — the players can lose the manager as we saw with Roy Keane.
Looking at the Premier League right now, Blackburn’s Paul Ince seems to have a bit of a problem along with Mark Hughes at Manchester City.
Ince did well at Macclesfield and MK Dons and is still adjusting while Hughes impressed with Wales and Blackburn. I think he could turn City into a Champions League club but he needs time. And he needs to be in complete control.

It’s not tough to sack someone, it’s tough to make the right decision. Getting it right is the hard part. That’s where you need to be single-minded.
The chairmen at these clubs have to be big and, if that means resisting pressure from fans, then so be it.
In the past, I’ve known chairmen go round the back to the players to try to justify their actions.
There are always some players who will oblige and say ‘It’s not my fault’ to get a new manager and a clean slate.

When the chairman does that, once he gets inside the dressing room, it’s all over.

Above everything else, the key to how long a manager survives in a job comes down to the relationship he has with his chairman.
After a few months in charge of Barcelona, I needed to come home for a couple of days.
But when I returned to Spain, the club president Josep Nunez told me he’d bought me ‘a present’.
The gift didn’t exactly come in wrapping paper.

It was a Paraguayan centre-forward from Real Zaragoza by the name of Raul Amarilla.
This was nothing to do with me and, I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t happy. Nunez said we needed a tall centre-forward and while I knew of the player, he wasn’t my choice.
A chairman and a manager have to respect each other’s jobs.
They have to talk to each other regularly, share thoughts, anxieties and dreams and build a solid relationship.
And if a chairman knows little about football, then he has to trust in his manager — and not listen to all the hangers-on desperate to stick an oar in.
In the end, I enjoyed an absolutely wonderful relationship with Nunez. He was a top man — among my best three bosses.
The bloke was an absolute pleasure to work with.

Jim Gregory at QPR — who paid Crystal Palace £100,000 to take me to Loftus Road — was equally as easy to work alongside.
Steve Gibson at Middlesbrough is another chairman who I cannot speak highly enough of — a man who loves football but who also knows a hell of a lot about it.

Gareth Southgate is incredibly fortunate to work for someone like that — someone who has stood by him during the leaner spells.
In fact, they are fortunate to have each other.
The worrying thing for me is that not enough managers these days enjoy a close, healthy relationship with their chairmen like that. If you don’t have a close bond then you’ll always struggle.
It’s always a lot easier when you are dealing with just the one man, like Gibson.

It becomes tricky when you are dealing with a board of, say, nine or 10 people with no one in charge.
At no stage in management have I ever had anyone tell me how to pick the team.
People have tried to persuade me and sometimes I have thought ‘You have a point’.
There are occasions you don’t see the wood for the trees and you need a different voice.

People think stubborn is strong and it’s not. Equally, though, you have to be in charge of the team.
The one club where I struggled with the board was Leeds.
That wasn’t only their fault but mine as well.
It was a reminder how important it is to gel with the people you work with each and every day.

Only then can managers like Hughes and Ince pull through the tough times and build towards the success their abilities richly deserve.

TERRY VENABLES was talking to CHARLIE WYETT The Sun