So if you were the Chairman, knowing that there would be five teams with better squads what answer would you expect from your prospective coaches in interviews when asked where they expected to finish in the League? Would you appoint the ones that reply 'I am bang average, sir, so I expect I could lead the sixth best team to sixth position'? If, as I expect, most of them claim to have skills that would get a higher finish, you would then grill them on what exactly those skills were and how long it will take them to have effect. I doubt anyone says 4-5 years to the second part. When 18 months later they have had no effect and no such skills are evident....why would you keep them?
And for accuracy wasn't it obvious that Paratici both hired and sacked Nuno?
Firstly, there aren't necessarily five teams with better squads. There are five with more money. The latter doesn't inevitably lead to the former. United have much more money than us but for the majority of the past decade have had a poorer squad.
There are far too many variables in football for the interview to count for as much as you think it should. A manager could paint a picture of success based on how he will build the team around his best player, who could then pick up a season ending injury in the first game of the season, or move to another club after the season had started.
I highly doubt Ange factored losing 5-6 key players every November into his interview, for example.
It is also certainly not unreasonable for manager to promise progress X on the proviso that they buy players of the quality of y, which is within budget but for whatever reason the transfers don't end up going through.
So much can change in the world of sport. It can't be approached like any other business.
In conclusion, the line between a meh interview and an enticing one is extremely fine. A bloke who turns up and claims he'll get us challenging for the title without needing any additions to his squad is obviously talking out of the wrong orifice and Levy is an idiot if he believes it. But on the other hand as you've said, a bloke who turns up and says the best he can do even with additions is 6th, Levy would again be an idiot to appoint such an unambitious candidate.
Which therefore narrows the job spec to someone who claims they'll be able to get us finishing 3rd-5th i.e. a window of just three positions, which at PL level are often separated by a few points or even GD, which in turn are almost always logically blameable on mitigating circumstances such as injuries, suspensions, packed fixture list due to stupid TV times etc. These are ridiculously fine lines which cannot be held up as reliable evidence one way or another.
So a manager who claims to target 4th but finishes 6th should not imo be sacked, even after your arbitrary measure of 18 months. They have shown themselves to be significantly better than useless and are likely to be just a few small tweaks away from securing 4th at next attempt.
Better to make those small tweaks, such as deepening the squad to cope with extra fixtures and adding a bit of quality to the first team, than to make the biggest tweak of all and sack the manager pressing reset on the whole project in the process.
Yet Levy will invariably choose the latter over the former every single time.
