From the moment Alan Irvine was hired by West Bromwich Albion this summer, he was fighting an uphill battle. The Scot was the strong favourite to win the Premier League ‘sack race' from the minute he was hired, and, though he missed out on that coveted gold medal, West Brom are now searching for a replacement. The swift end to his tenure was so woefully predictable that it only serves to illustrate the bizarre contradictions of the football job market and the decision-makers that shape it.
West Bromwich Albion’s failed revolution
After a brief experiment with directors of football and head coaches, West Brom are about to revert to type.
Chris Brunskill/Getty Images
To be sure, Irvine was not sacked because he is a bad football coach. That he may be, and admittedly, he’d never had experience at any other top-flight club as a No. 1. But having held various other posts at a string of other big teams on and off for the last two decades, alongside a couple of managerial stints at smaller English clubs, no one can deny that he had the qualifying hours under his belt to capably manage a team. The question, therefore, is why was his demise so foreseeable?
The simple answer is that in the weird and wonderful world of football, management is not a meritocracy. Some managers find a way of getting themselves to the top, and building a reasonable career, despite failures that far outweigh their meager successes. How else can one explain Owen Coyle, or Alan Curbishley, or Paul Ince, or Neil Warnock being constantly linked with vacant Premier League posts? Their managerial CVs certainly don’t suggest they deserve the chance.
It is precisely because some of England’s biggest teams have gambled on them before, that they are gambled upon again. And so arises a frustrating catch-22 situation, in which proven managerial failures can stumble upon new jobs, precisely because they’ve been given them before. This is hardly a new trend, but it is a particularly interesting analytical tool when looking at West Brom’s hirings and firings. They are, quite possibly, the most inexplicable Premier League club when it comes to managerial appoints.
Over the last few years, they’ve ostensibly bucked the depressing trend of giving tried and tested failures new posts. Seemingly, this was part of a grand plan to shift towards a more continental style of management; they are one of few teams in the Premier League to operate with a director of football, and have referred to their last few appointments as ‘head coaches,’ implying a much more hands-on, sporting role than the dictatorial centrality of the traditional English manager. The theory is good: let the coaches stick to the training pitch while a director of football handles recruitment and negotiating.
Their appointments tallied with this plan. They gambled on hiring Steve Clarke after Roy Hodgson left to take charge of England; spells as assistant manager at Newcastle, Chelsea, West Ham and Liverpool were his only previous experience. As with Irvine, his background was in coaching, rather than management per se. They took an even bigger gamble on his replacement, Pepe Mel, who arrived having never before managed outside of Spain, and rarely outside of their lower leagues. Tellingly, Mel had also never before held the omnipotence of the stereotypical English manager.
It is an admirably bold step in a footballing nation in which a dominant, Herbert Chapman-esque figure in charge is still widely regarded as a prerequisite for success. This attitude is perhaps best summarised by an interview Harry Redknapp gave to the Evening Standard in November, in which he branded directors of football “a joke,” and confirmed that he was no less clichéd in his football thinking than old blokes polled in pubs around the country. Much like zonal marking (which Redknapp doesn’t tend to like either) or pretty much anything at all, the director of football system works when done well.
However, at West Brom, it hasn't quite gone as planned. Clarke had a very good first season in charge, leading the Baggies to a top-half finish, though the departure of top scorer Romelu Lukaku in the summer left them struggling. Last December, he was sacked. Under Pepe Mel they just about survived relegation, but he too was politely shown the door, never to be anything more than the answer to a pub quiz question in English football history.
Poor Alan Irvine is just the latest ‘head coach’ to arrive and swiftly depart in this manner. In his post at West Brom, Irvine did not fail, for he was not given sufficient time to fail. In actual fact, results were just about par for the Baggies’ course; at this stage of last season they were only a point better off. With the squad they have, few would’ve expected much more. But once again, when things have started to get a little nervy, West Brom have lost trust in their own system, sacking their deliberately inexperienced manager, and falling victim to football management’s catch-22.
Now, it seems the Baggies' flirt with a foreign management structure is finally being wound up. The leading candidates for their vacancy are Tony Pulis and Tim Sherwood, two managers who perfectly slot into the classic stereotype of the English manager. Pulis is a man who quit Crystal Palace two days before the start of the new Premier League season after not being given requisite control over transfers; Sherwood an embarrassing caricature of what the English Manager Should Be, with his beloved bangers-and-mash 4-4-2 and his bemoaning of a lack of "spirit" after his Spurs side were tactically and technically outclassed by Chelsea in a 4-0 rout at Stamford Bridge last season. Don't let the gilet fool you, Sherwood is Redknapp with the Redknappometer turned up to 11.
And so, the era of West Brom’s strange managerial appointments seems to be at a close. It’s unlikely we’ll see another relative unknown rock up at the Hawthorns any time soon, as West Brom revert to English footballing type -- and then some. Farewell, Alan Irvine, we hardly knew ye.
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