For me, where getting a job in football management is concerned, the issue is not so much about getting a job, but more one of keeping it. Football management must be the most results-driven profession anywhere in the world, let alone Britain (but I will restrict my comments to the situation within these shores). Every Saturday, the football manager has the result of his efforts splashed all over the television. It is there in black and white on the back page of every newspaper in the country. A league table is produced on every occasion that a match is played, showing the fluctuations of each team, up or down the league. This is the ultimate in transparency. No other profession does this. Politicians, Civil Servants, the Armed Forces, the Security Services can all claim secrecy and the need to protect National Security as a cloak for their activities. Bankers, Doctors, Lawyers et al can all claim that they must maintain client confidentiality to keep shtum about how they perform. Sure, schools have league tables, but teachers can (and do) constantly claim that they are drastically underfunded as the reason why fifteen year olds can't even spell their own name after ten years of state education.... Tellingly, the claim of drastic underfunding is made with some justification. But the football manager has nowhere to hide. Roberto Mancini delivered an FA Cup, a League Title and Champions League football to a club who hadn't won a trophy since 1976 and he was sacked a year later because he lost another FA Cup final and finished only second in the league. The reason stated by his employers: Failure to meet targets. Sheesh...!! The football manager is right out there, to be shot at by a motley collective of journalists, commentators, ex-pros (many who clearly hold grudges) and not to mention tens of thousands of supporters, who can have terribly short memories when it suits them. I don't think any sort of arbitrary rule governing quotas, or anything else, is needed to ensure the right people are given jobs in football management. Rather, they should have their sanity tested for wanting to do it in the first place.
