During the recent stretch of Nations League games and friendlies, sackings were anticipated. There were many rumors that Steve Cooper would lose his job at Nottingham Forest even on the morning of the Queen’s burial. The rumor mill claimed that the reason the announcement was postponed was solely out of respect for Her Majesty.
Cooper will continue to serve as Forest’s manager and take his team back into the Premier League. He will shake the hand of Brendan Rodgers, another manager whom WhatsApp and social media In-The-Knows were claiming had been granted his cards, on Monday against Leicester.
Watford held up their end of the bargain by getting rid of Rob Edwards, but the top division’s bloody sack race has slowed down. After the conflict between the owner and manager, Scott Parker of Bournemouth and Thomas Tuchel of Chelsea both left their positions. More than performance, owner whims are now the main driver of managerial changes.
In this day of all-powerful billionaires and their egos, managers are expendable, as evidenced by Cooper feeling the strain after ending Forest’s 23-year exile from the Premier League. The widely rumored firing-that-wasn’t was attributed to Forest’s difficulties integrating the 23 players that owner Evangelos Marinakis and his agents brought in.
The time when a manager was the key figure at a club is long gone. Super-agents, who oversee the lives of famous athletes, are frequently in closer contact with owners than even the sporting directors, to whom managers frequently report. Managing upwards may require standing in a long line. Only the truly modern greats, Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool and Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, along with possibly Antonio Conte at Spurs, might be compared to the top decision-makers at their respective teams.
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Delivering important objectives may not offer much protection to the remainder. Parker was dropped by the fugitive owner, Maxim Demin, who has financed Bournemouth’s development from a perennial lower-division team to a Premier League team, despite promotion last season.
Parker’s nonchalant statements that his team was too light for the division—clear criticism of Demin’s spending—hastened his ouster, despite the fact that losing 9-0 against Liverpool was damaging. In the confusion that followed Roman Abramovich receiving fines from the UK government, Tuchel, the Champions League-winning coach, managed to get Chelsea back into that competition.
