Foreign Managers

[joggerjayne]

Why are there so few top football English managers?

So many of the top English teams ...

(Arsenal, Chelsea, Man Utd, Brighton)

... have got foreign managers.

[VHG]

Brighton ?????

Yes I know Poyet is foreign, but they are hardly a "top English team"

From the Premier league you could have added Aston Villa, Liverpool, Everton, Norwich (all Scottish managers), Man City (Italian), Fulham (Dutch), Swansea (Irish) and Wigan (Spanish).

I THINK the rest in the Premier are English managers.

[SeaJayPea]

Might have something to do with the fact that many of them are owned by foreign interests these days.

[rowanwitch]

And an idea that only a foreign manager has the skills to succeed against the other foreign managers... Brighton may well be a top flight club very soon...and very welcome they will be....

[joggerjayne]

Of COURSE Brighton are a top English team.

VHG ... surely you're not suggesting that Brighton aren't an English team ???

[rowanwitch]

VHG seems to forget there are some very good sides in the championship as well

[joggerjayne]

Two seasons ago, we were almost relegated from League One.

Now we are giving teams like West Ham a real scare (they were hanging on to their one goal lead by the skin of their teeth when they played us recently).

I think that's pretty good.

[redbez]

None of these so called top foreign managers have actualy built a team, they have all taken over ready made teams, or have millions to spend unlike English, and most Scottish managers for that matter. Avram Grant; two teams relegated, sacked at Chelsea but took over a ready made team, even the special one took over a team built by another manager who couldn't do it any where else when he didn't have the money

[ichkeria]

If you look at the actual figures for the English Premier League, the idea of the dominant foreign manager starts to look like a bit of a myth.
It breaks down by country as follows:

England - 7 Scotland - 7 Ireland - 1 France - 1 Portugal - 1 Italy - 1 Netherlands - 1 Spain - 1
In other words, most of the managers are British, with a scattering of foreigners from a variety of countries. Given the high stakes in the Premier League, and given that: number of countries in the British Isles = 5 (if you count it by FA's) and number of all other countries = nearly 200, then if anything it's odd there aren't more foreign managers if they really are better.
What is interesting is the high number of Scots - all if not most Glaswegians!

[joggerjayne]

Those are interesting points.

[Philtaz]

It's simple. With the influx of players from across the globe into British football it's not really de rigeur to have an Englishman/Brit in charge of a cosmopolitan team.

It's one of the reasons the national teams perform so poorly. It's fashionable to bring in someone from an obscure African country as opposed to trying out the young, hungry homegrown talent.

When I look at how some of them perform I'm amazed that the manager believes there isn't a talented young British player of similar skills within a club's structure.

David Luiz immediately springs to mind for one. His performance against QPR was nothing short of woeful, yet he's keeping someone else out of the team?
Obviously Villas-Boas sees something special in him though.....

[Arksided]

JJ, I don't think that managerial skills boil down to nationality, but as Philtaz as just stated there is not a great deal of home grown talent to do the job.

As for the structure of clubs with fresh talent coming through the ranks is better for National teams 'home grown' if you like, and most clubs in the EPL are doing that.

I do wish I could understand Capello or SAF, but happily know that the players don't understand Dalglish

[ichkeria]

I'd just repeat what I said earlier: the stats don't bear out the assertion that most of the top clubs in England employ foreign managers.
One or two clubs seem to prefer foreign managers, but you can't generalise: look at Spurs: went for an English manager after a series of foreign flops, and have improved. On the other hand Arsenal replaced a succession of British managers with a foreigner and had almost immediate success also.