Powerless Managers and Unculpable Directors

The Premier League has seen its first two managerial casualties of the season in the past two days, with Alan Curbishley walking out on West Ham United and Kevin Keegan finally resigning from Newcastle United. Both dismissals have been clouded with controversy, and both for the same, becoming all too familiar reason... a lack of power over transfers.

Alan Curbishley had wanted to keep Anton Ferdinand at Upton Park this season, but the board had decided that £8m offer was too much to refuse. Curbishley made it known he was not happy about this, and the final straw for him came when the board also decided to sell George McCartney, further weakening West Ham's limited defensive options. Thus, Curbishley resigned.

Kevin Keegan has been sceptical of the set up at Newcastle since the day Dennis Wise was appointed above him. Firstly the appointment was a smack in the face for Keegan, that somebody was brought in without his knowledge to assist in team affairs, and secondly that Wise would be responsible for the direction that the club went in, particularly over transfers. In the end it was a proposed transfer of Joey Barton that unsettled Keegan, and as soon as the transfer window closed Keegan demanded talks with the board, allegedly offering an ultimatum that Wise goes, or he does.

We've been led to believe that this is the way that most of Europe operates, with a Director responsible for the transfer policy of the club, and a coach to deal with the day to day activity such as training and selecting the match team. Real Madrid for example operate in this fashion, with Pedrag Mijatovic responsible for the transfer policy at the club, and Bernd Schuster responsible for naming the team. However Real Madrid are a caricature of football sides, and certainly not a team to benchmark.

If indeed this policy does work on the continent, the liklihood is that the trend of foreign investment will follow suit with the trend of foreign set ups. Instantly at Man City we have seen that it is not the Manager that's buying the players. Robinho has been an obvious example of this,

"Irrespective of how we play him he'll have an impact" Mark Hughes

But even before the Sheik's investment, we witnessed that Jo was brought in before Hughes had even been appointed.

The system has its flaws, not just that the Manager feels powerless with the board, but also that it can be very difficult to implement players into a team that you just don't believe in. Martin Jol suffered terribly from this set up whilst at Tottenham Hotspur. Damien Comolli is responsible for the transfer policy at White Hart Lane, and whilst Jol was in charge they fell out over a number of players brought into the club. After Michael Carrick was sold to Manchester United, Comolli decided to bring in Didier Zokora, something Jol was never happy with. Jol made a point of highlighting the difficulties with Comolli when he left the club, naming the purchase of Zokora as well as Kevin Prince Boateng, and Darren Bent. The latter transfer was, and still is, questioned by most at White Hart Lane.

The Darren Bent transfer leads to question why the man in charge of the transfer policy is never culpable for his actions. Martin Jol was sacked after only a handful of games last season, yet when the side so desperately seeked a left midfielder, the man in charge of transfers decided to bring in a 4th centre-forward, less talented than the present three.

It seems that Curbishley and Keegan were not too naive in their assessment of their own situations. It was only a matter of time before their sides' early success diminished, and suddenly the fingers would be pointed at them rather than the hierarchy.