Control. It is the theme as managerial sacking season commences – and with it a new set of managerial appointments bloom. A new breed of owners wants a new breed of manager, in fact in many cases they do not want a manager at all, in the old sense of the word, but a head coach or some other approximation.
At Manchester United, Ineos seeks a replacement for Erik ten Hag – a successor who will be assimilated into the plan that the new controlling stakeholders have for the club. It is the same at Chelsea where Behdad Eghbali, the key power at the club representing the dominant consortium partner Clearlake Capital, prepares to make his third managerial hire in two years. Liverpool have appointed a head coach, in Arne Slot, less experienced and of a lower profile than any manager since the Boot Room dynasty, bar perhaps Brendan Rodgers in 2012.
The transition of English football to the European model of a controlling sporting director, with the various sporting departments under him has been gradual. Recruitment, medical, sports science, data analysis, academy – even multi-club partners – have been added to that portfolio. Entrusting it all to the manager preparing the first team would be absurd. Yet this summer never has the manager, or head coach, felt more like one of many departmental heads. It can be seen in the profile of managers who are in demand – and in those who are not.
The new breed of owners wants a collaborative manager or head coach to work with the first-team squad, pick the players, convey it all cogently to the media – and know the limits of their power. One can see it in the kind of coaches being identified for United and Chelsea. There is also a vacancy at Brighton and Hove Albion who have long perfected the continuity model and maintained progress, in no small measure, by virtue of owner Tony Bloom’s excellent proprietary data.
Kieran McKenna, Enzo Maresca, and Thomas Frank – the latter a Premier League manager already at a club that has clear boundaries on player trading. These are young, or younger managers, who accept that the role is changing. Like Slot at Liverpool, they are being considered for jobs at United or Chelsea, or both, that would in eras past have been out of reach for coaches of their relatively limited development.
Consider also those who have been overlooked this summer: Jose Mourinho, Antonio Conte, Thomas Tuchel. Coaches, certainly, but also managers who assert their power in different ways. All of them masters, to different degrees, of media performance, and all of them liable to speak their minds in a range of languages, about ownership. That is, certainly, an approach that certain owners would like to consign to history. No wonder Mourinho said in these pages that he wishes to be simply a head coach. He has read the room.
