Managing a Premier League club is certainly one of football’s most coveted jobs. Perhaps that’s why job security is at a premium. If statistics are to be believed, at least one of the Premier League managers will be looking for a new job by Christmas.
According to statistics from the League Managers’ Association, a record 56 managers were sacked in 2015-16. Eleven Premier League managers were axed and there were 18 dismissals in the Championship — two short of the record high of 20 in 2014-15.
The average tenure for the 56 dismissed managers last season was a little over 15 months. It was the second lowest since 1992. The 11 Premier League bosses sacked had an average of two years and seven days in the job. In League One, where 14 managers lost their jobs, the average tenure was 354 days.
However, every rule has an exception and in this case it is Arsene Wenger.
When the Frenchman took charge of Arsenal in 1996, he was a little-known figure in England and most critics thought the foreigner would be a failed experiment.
Wenger completes 20 years at Arsenal on Saturday and is now the longest-serving active manager in European football. Ronnie McFall had resigned from the Irish Premiership side Portadown FC after 29 years at helm in March.
{{/usCountry}}Wenger completes 20 years at Arsenal on Saturday and is now the longest-serving active manager in European football. Ronnie McFall had resigned from the Irish Premiership side Portadown FC after 29 years at helm in March.
{{/usCountry}}The biggest reasons behind Wenger’s long tenure with Arsenal have been his team’s success over the years and the way he changed English football. Wenger was the first manager to introduce a diet chart for the players and the results were almost instant. Arsenal won the league and the FA Cup in his second season and again in 2002. Wenger’s crowning achievement came in 2004 when his ‘Invincibles’ won the Premier League without losing a game.
However, it was far from perfect and during the well-chronicled trophy drought from 2005 to 2014, fans were not always in favour of retaining him. In that period though, Wenger successfully oversaw the club’s transition from Highbury (their former home ground) to the Emirates Stadium in 2006 and continued to produce good performances with a balanced budget. In his 19 seasons in London, Arsenal never finished outside the top four in the Premiership.
The times have changed drastically since Wenger took charge in 1996 and at present, most football clubs are operated as big profit-making enterprises by their billionaire owners. The owners are spending huge amounts of money in buying players from all around the world and the managers are expected to deliver results at the earliest. As a result, even the most high-profile names only last two to three seasons at a club.
Over the course of Wenger’s reign, Everton, Liverpool and arch-rivals Tottenham have gone through a total of 24 managers and the current situation can aptly be described by Wenger himself.
“Longevity doesn’t depend only on the coach. We live in a time now where the trend in our society is to always want something new. I still believe that longevity and cohesion and the history and the values of a club have to be carried by someone. I still believe the best situation for a club is to have someone who knows what he wants and has the authority to do it,” he said.
Thus, it can truly be said that Arsene Wenger is the last of his kind and, in the age of trigger-happy owners, a welcome anomaly for football romantics around the world.
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Arsene Wenger: A truly revolutionary manager, the last of his kind