By Jon Wolfe

A few weeks ago a fellow City fan wrote something in the comments section on this site, after yet another dismal performance sparked some discussion on the future of Mark Hughes. He claimed that to the best of his knowledge, in recent years not a single club had achieved promotion out of League Two after sacking its manager mid season. Really? I have to admit that I found that fact hard to believe. It was time to do some research.

The following table, which I have compiled, goes back 19 seasons, and it lists all the clubs who have been promoted during that period. It also shows who the manager was at the end of that season, plus the date that he was appointed and the date of his departure. Some other interesting points of discussion do arise and I will bring some of these to your attention later on in this article.

During the 19-season period covered in the table, 76 clubs got promoted out of League Two.

Out of the 76 clubs, 70 achieved their aim with the same man who started the season in charge remaining at the helm. In contrast just six clubs managed to get promotion after parting company with their manager mid season. These six occasions are highlighted in the table in bold.

The six clubs are:

• Burton Albion in 2014/15 who started with Gary Rowett in charge (Rowett quit Burton to become Birmingham manager).
• Scunthorpe Utd in 2013/14 who started with Brian Laws in charge (Laws was sacked).
• Crewe Alexandra in 2011/12 who started with Dario Gradi in charge (Gradi, 70 at the time, stood down).
• Bury in 2010/11 who started with Alan Knill in charge (Knill quit Bury to become Scunthorpe manager).
• Nott’s County in 2009/10 who started with Ian McParland in charge (McParland was sacked).
• And finally Swindon Town in 2006/07 who started with Dennis Wise in charge (Wise quit Swindon to take up a post at Leeds United).

Only two of these six mid-season changes were because the club sacked the manager (or three of these six, if we include Gradi standing down). Anyway here’s the table:

To me that make’s pretty damming reading regarding a blueprint for success, not a single club has got promoted after changing its manager mid season since the 2014/15 season. And that fact is even more eye catching when you consider just how many managerial casualties there are, every year.

Over this 19-season period there were 352 mid season managerial changes, this averages out at 18.5 per season, and over 21 per season since Burton Albion’s promotion in 2014/15. This figure appears to be very high, as it suggests that most clubs change their managers mid season on a regular basis, but it does include temporary or interim appointments, which clouds the water somewhat.  

Not every club has someone lined up when they decide to sack their manager; in fact I would guess that most clubs don’t have anyone in mind, hence the interim appointment while applicants are being interviewed. In some cases the temporary manager ends up being the permanent manager, but in other cases the discarded interim just adds to the tally of mid season appointments. To be truthful, most managers nowadays are of the interim type; such is the desire to hire and fire.

There is no doubt that sacking the manager is becoming almost the norm for lots of clubs. Last season (2022/23) there were 26 mid season managerial appointments in League Two, with over 20 changes in seven out of the last eight years. Compare that with the earlier seasons in our table when it was rare to get anywhere near 20, with 10, 11 and 13 being the lowest recorded.

So if you were a CEO of a League Two club, and you were aware of the relatively low success rate of clubs getting promoted after sacking their manager mid season, would it make you think about giving the man you appointed more time? Surely the template for success is to have the right man in place before the season starts, and then leave him in place.

This season, five clubs already have ignored the evidence and pulled the trigger, us obviously being one of them. Tranmere and Colchester, I suspect, were maybe not thinking of gate crashing the top seven, they were probably thinking more about preserving their League status. Gillingham on the other hand were comfortably placed near the top when they decided to sack Neil Harris. Only time will tell if they did the right thing.

As for us, we were somewhere in between Tranmere/Colchester and Gillingham: we were most definitely underperforming, with a play off place being the very lowest we should have been aiming at. But we were also far too close to the wrong end of the table, and that in itself gave cause for concern.

Indecently, although this is my first contribution to Width of a Post, I have via the comments section already stated that I was not in favour of sacking Hughes, even though I didn’t think that he would be the man to get us out of League Two. And I know that doesn’t make sense.

I think that I didn’t want my club to be just another club that hired and then fired when things didn’t go to plan; because of that Mark Hughes got my backing, but he didn’t deserve it. The late equaliser against Harrogate just prolonged the agony. The Walsall game was abysmal. He had to go. So where am I now?

Although I have tried to make a case for not sacking your manager by providing some cold hard facts, sometimes in football you have to ignore the cold hard facts, you have to trust your gut instinct, and you have to pull the bloody trigger.

Ten minutes into Kevin McDonald’s first game was all it took to convince me that Ryan Sparks had done the right thing, and the results and more importantly the performances since then have more than justified the pulling of the trigger. I will conveniently forget MK Dons away!

I would not like to be the man who makes the next appointment, it is a lottery, and I don’t do lotteries. I would be more than happy if Kevin changed his mind about wanting to play on, as we may have uncovered a gem. But some good names have been mentioned that I would also be happy with, providing they carry on with the style of play that we have enjoyed since McDonald took charge.

Whoever it is will get my backing. Onwards and upwards.

Categories: Opinion

Tags: BCAFC