Yr Ago: Manager Axe Race..Footballers/Depression

[Macmoish]

From a Year Ago....



GUARDIAN/David Lacy - The Sack Race


The only safe bet is that Chelsea's manager will lead the sack race

Under Chelsea's twitchy owner Andr� Villas-Boas will always be favourite to be the first Premier League manager to lose his job

Sack races, real sack races, are run for fun. The more fallers the funnier. Nobody would seriously contemplate placing bets on the winners.

In football it is the other way round. Here the starters for the sack race line up in August and the bookies are open for business. Betting on who will be the first manager to lose his job is a bit like going to the Grand National and staking a wager on which horse will be shot, but there is never a shortage of takers.

Round about now the ground begins to shift beneath the feet of more than a few managers and some have already gone. The Premier League clubs, however, again appear to be holding off at least until December and the season of goodwill. Nothing says "Happy Christmas" so much as a chairman's vote of confidence in the boss shortly followed by an announcement that the club has reluctantly decided to part company with him.

The odds against the next to go are often not so much a reflection on the man's managerial capabilities as the trigger-happiness of his employers. Just before the present season began there was a feeling that Neil Warnock might be an early casualty at Queens Park Rangers. Warnock, an experienced and able manager, had just brought QPR back into the Premier League but the gossip was that the owners wanted a bigger name. Then the club was sold, more money became available for new signings, Warnock bought well, the team is in the top half of the table and now the idea of his leaving Loftus Road is absurd.

Blackburn Rovers' Steve Kean remains among the favourites to be shown the door and will stay there, along with Roberto Mart�nez, the Wigan manager, unless things begin to look up in mid-Lancs. Then again Rovers' Indian owners have shown considerable faith in Kean's ability to turn things around, even if his revised contract is believed to halve the compensation he would receive after being dismissed, while the Wigan chairman Dave Whelan's continued support for Mart�nez is almost touching.

One recent betting list offered 12-1 against Harry Redknapp leaving Tottenham, compared to the 66-1 on Alan Pardew parting company with Newcastle. Something wrong here, surely, but this may have less to do with Redknapp's recent minor heart operation than his appearance in court in the new year as a co-defendant answering charges of tax evasion during his time at Portsmouth. If football were the only consideration Harry would surely be out there with Sir Alex Ferguson at 88-1.

For the cautious punters, the �2 each-way brigade, whoever happens to be managing Chelsea at any given time remains the safest bet to go soon. Describing Andr� Villas-Boas as "the under-pressure Chelsea manager" is tautologous. The moment anybody takes the job at Stamford Bridge he is under pressure and will be so long as fickle Roman Abramovich owns the club.

The reports that have accompanied Chelsea's three losses in four Premier League games, followed by Wednesday's defeat by Bayer Leverkusen, which has left their chances of reaching the knockout stage of the Champions League dependant on beating an in-form Valencia at home or at least holding them 0-0, bear a remarkable similarity to the stuff that was being put out during difficult periods under Luiz Felipe Scolari and Carlo Ancelotti: murmurs below decks about tactics and team selection, grumbles among the old guard and so on.

Naturally Villas-Boas is way up on the list of managers expected to go sooner rather than later. The Valencia game could be his calvary although Abramovich does have other, more pressing things to occupy his mind. Amid the heavy financial implications of his high court case it must be doubted he has given much thought to whether Chelsea's defence is holding too high a line.

Not that mid-season changes of manager are necessarily bad. Last December claimed Chris Hughton, who left Newcastle amid much sympathy at the injustice of it all. Unfair it may have been but under Pardew Newcastle have become the Premier League's likely lads and flogging Andy Carroll to Liverpool for �35m on 31 January would have been the sale of the new century had Chelsea not agreed to buy Fernando Torres from Liverpool for �50m on the same day.

Meanwhile, Martin O'Neill and Mark Hughes remain among those out of a job, which seems a bit of a waste. Oh and Sven-Goran Eriksson is available again in case anyone asks.

www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/nov/25/premier-league-sack-race-managers

[Macmoish]

GUARDIAN - SECRET FOOTBALLER on Depression

Series: The Secret Footballer

The Secret Footballer: Sometimes there's darkness behind the limelight

Mental illness is another of football's taboos, but attitudes are starting to change and it is not before time


The ability of football to turn life on its head with only a single blast of the referee's whistle makes it almost too easy to get carried away with the game at times. One minute everything is going well and seconds later things have never looked so bleak; sometimes that pressure is simply too much. Last week the attempt by the Bundesliga referee Babak Rafati to kill himself had pundits and commentators alike preferring to "put football into perspective" rather than ask the awkward questions that nobody wants to answer.

Many top sports people know only too well what Rafati is going through. On Friday, Stan Collymore, the former Liverpool striker, used his Twitter account to tell the world that his latest bout of depression was one of the most severe yet, prompting him to reveal that he hasn't seen daylight for four days. I certainly understand the feeling of wanting to shut yourself away from the world and when I was first diagnosed with depression in 2002 it was even more of a stigma than it is today.

Since football exploded as a global business some 20 years ago the pressure on everybody involved has become a poisoned chalice. On the one hand the rewards are vast but on the other failure, or even mediocrity, can become the barometer against which all aspects of life are measured, albeit for a minority.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying for one minute that everyone involved with the game is in a state of irreparable depression, but I do think that the majority of us feel a degree of pressure, from the thought of what the headline writers have in store for us to the fans that start work on Monday morning unsure if they'll have enough money to put fuel in their car, never mind afford another £40 ticket come Saturday.

When I started playing there was no media training or sports psychology to help you along the way; pressure was just something you had to deal with. Some players remain so anxious that they are physically sick before games, and one of my friends from the continent took to having oxygen such was his fear of underperforming.

On many occasions, I have seen players affected by what somebody has said about them on a message board or in a newspaper. Even if there are 99 positive comments, they will put all their efforts into searching for the one negative remark and, subsequently, put all their energy into worrying about it.

A player, of course, knows only too well if he has played poorly, and yet the fear of seeing a below-par performance pulled apart by a journalist remains a huge obstacle for some. I must confess that in days gone by I have refused interviews with some reporters when I've felt that the rating out of 10 given to me in their match report the previous week did not reflect my true contribution. As I wrote that sentence I could see how pathetic it might sound but imagine having your performance in the workplace publicly graded every week.

These examples of insecurity are in no way confined to the players. Whenever a manager mentions in an interview that he never reads the papers, then you know for certain that the first thing he does on a Monday morning is go through every match report with a highlighter pen.

Adding pressure to your own game is sometimes unavoidable and can manifest itself in poor performances, the culmination of which can lead to a dark and depressing cul-de-sac. Tragically, there are examples of players who have reached this tipping point. In 2009 Robert Enke, the German goalkeeper, killed himself after struggling to come to terms with the death of his daughter, his illness not helped by an inability to deal with the scrutiny of his performances and anything less than his own high standards.

Unfortunately, mental illness among the wealthy, and in particular those in sport that are perceived by the public to be doing the job they love, remains a tough concept for some to get their head around. The word "depression" is suffering from a tired image and doesn't seem to have penetrated the public divide in perhaps the same way that, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder has.

Yet, strangely for a game dominated by pent-up testosterone, the acknowledgment and treatment of depression is getting better. Managers understand, perhaps more than ever, that the talent of a modern-day footballer will tend to put them in a position of wealth and fame at a very young age, bringing vulnerability as well as huge rewards.

The media coverage of football has also changed, leading to a relentless quest for content that has driven an interest in the personal lives of many players. Because of this, I feel there is a real opportunity for our governing bodies to lay down a marker for what players can expect from the media and the terraces and what is an invasion of human rights.

Some have asked why a banker, which Rafati is, would ever want to be a part of any of this. The added pressure of refereeing top-flight football is in evidence almost every day of the week but, while banking is certainly a way to make a good living, it is, first and foremost, a job. Football is a passion and in an ideal world something to live for not to die as a result of.

The world, of course, is far from ideal and that makes it easy for all of us to point the finger at times. Sometimes I'll see fans screaming at players of their own team with such anger that for a moment I lose all identification with them; the butterfly effect is the player that hurriedly makes his way to the coach as hundreds of kids wait for autographs.

In my own way, I have learnt to cope with the side-effects of this game but only because I believe, in fact I know, that if some of those involved with football have arrived at a moment in their lives where they feel that standing in front of a train or slitting their wrists in a hotel room is the only way out, then it isn't just a game any more, is it?

Follow the Secret Footballer on Twitter @tsfguardian

[Macmoish]

Written a year ago...

Nov 26, 2011 8:18:40 GMT Macmoish said:

From a Year Ago....


GUARDIAN/David Lacy - The Sack Race

The only safe bet is that Chelsea's manager will lead the sack race

Under Chelsea's twitchy owner Andr� Villas-Boas will always be favourite to be the first Premier League manager to lose his job

....

The odds against the next to go are often not so much a reflection on the man's managerial capabilities as the trigger-happiness of his employers. Just before the present season began there was a feeling that Neil Warnock might be an early casualty at Queens Park Rangers. Warnock, an experienced and able manager, had just brought QPR back into the Premier League but the gossip was that the owners wanted a bigger name. Then the club was sold, more money became available for new signings, Warnock bought well, the team is in the top half of the table and now the idea of his leaving Loftus Road is absurd.

Blackburn Rovers' Steve Kean remains among the favourites to be shown the door and will stay there, along with Roberto Mart�nez, the Wigan manager, unless things begin to look up in mid-Lancs. Then again Rovers' Indian owners have shown considerable faith in Kean's ability to turn things around, even if his revised contract is believed to halve the compensation he would receive after being dismissed, while the Wigan chairman Dave Whelan's continued support for Mart�nez is almost touching.

One recent betting list offered 12-1 against Harry Redknapp leaving Tottenham, compared to the 66-1 on Alan Pardew parting company with Newcastle. Something wrong here, surely, but this may have less to do with Redknapp's recent minor heart operation than his appearance in court in the new year as a co-defendant answering charges of tax evasion during his time at Portsmouth. If football were the only consideration Harry would surely be out there with Sir Alex Ferguson at 88-1.
....

Meanwhile, Martin O'Neill and Mark Hughes remain among those out of a job, which seems a bit of a waste. Oh and Sven-Goran Eriksson is available again in case anyone asks.

www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/nov/25/premier-league-sack-race-managers