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Cold, Brutal and Entirely Irresistible

Gary O’Neil’s career as a Premier League manager began, unexpectedly, late last August. His predecessor at Bournemouth, Scott Parker, had talked himself out of a job a few days earlier, using the occasion of a 9-0 defeat at Liverpool to explain, in great detail, exactly how little chance the club had of avoiding relegation.

O’Neil was supposed to be what is now, by convention, called not a caretaker or a place-holder manager but an “interim,” a coach who will be replaced by a safer pair of hands as soon as one could be identified. But he did well, avoiding defeat in his first six games and slowly helping the team acclimatize to the Premier League. Quietly, perhaps a little reluctantly, Bournemouth made his appointment permanent during the World Cup.

Gary O’Neil is now the 10th longest-serving manager in the Premier League.

There was a point, not so long ago, when it seemed English soccer had finally learned the benefits of patience. Clubs seemed to have internalized the idea that reflexively firing a coach at the first sign of trouble was not ideal from a long-term planning perspective. Just as significant, they were putting more thought into their appointments in the first place.

That particular dam broke in the last two weeks of March. Crystal Palace firing Patrick Vieira, on the back of almost three months without a win, proved the decisive fissure. Between then and now, three more managers have gone. Leicester, now at grave risk of relegation, fired Brendan Rodgers. Antonio Conte committed dismissal-by-press-conference to get himself out of Tottenham. And, of course, Graham Potter met his inevitable, if accelerated, demise at Chelsea.

None of those decisions were especially flagrant examples of the caprice of Premier League owners, of course, but the failures of both Conte and Potter probably say more about the people who appointed them than they do about the coaches themselves.

Conte was handed a squad in need of a rebuild and tasked with winning immediately. Potter was placed in charge of a squad so large that the changing room at the training ground reportedly could not accommodate it — several players had to change on chairs brought in from elsewhere — and told to fashion a cogent team in only a few months.

The ability to choose the right job, of course, is an invaluable part of the armory of any elite coach; Potter, still in the early stages of his career, will doubtless heed that lesson when he selects his next opportunity. But his failure at Chelsea, like that of Conte at Tottenham, is not solely his fault. He should not be allowed to become a scapegoat for those who made it impossible for him to succeed in the first place.

After all, they are still in place. They are in charge, in fact, of choosing a replacement, with precious little evidence so far that they should be trusted to make the right selection.

It’s Home

England got a boost of confidence in its biggest game before this year’s World Cup by beating Brazil, 4-2 on penalties after a 1-1 tie, on Thursday in a meeting of the European and South American champions at Wembley. The victory, like England’s triumph in last year’s European Championship final in the same stadium, was delivered off the foot of Chloe Kelly.

Correspondence

A lingering sense of guilt has been gnawing at me for the best part of a week. On Sunday, you see, I arrived in Naples, eagerly anticipating seeing Napoli — you will have noted my enthusiasm for Napoli over the past few months — take another step toward a first Serie A title in more than 30 years by coolly dispatching A.C. Milan on home turf.

It did not quite work out like that. Milan picked Napoli apart, strolling to a 4-0 win against a team that, for the first time this season, looked bereft of both purpose and poise. And, on some level, it felt as if it were my fault. This is a superstitious place, after all. Maybe I had tempted fate. Maybe I had invoked hubris.

At times like these, it is important to remember that correlation is not causation. Which brings us, rather neatly, to Deborah Chuk’s email. Last week’s analysis of Liverpool’s assorted problems, she felt, missed out arguably the most significant. “Why does nobody mention the sale of Sadio Mané?” she wrote. “This was the glue that held the team together. They needed him badly.”

This argument — that the star of the show was Mané, not Mohamed Salah, all along — is not an uncommon one, nor is it unreasonable. Mané was, for years, a stellar performer for Liverpool. He did not, at times, get the credit he deserved. His departure and Liverpool’s demise do, without question, overlap perfectly.

And yet I’m not convinced. Mané’s form in his last couple of years in England had been patchy: spells in which he was as devastating as ever, and stretches in which he seemed a little faded. It felt like the right time to move him on. More relevant, I suspect, is that none of the players signed to replace him have had anything like his impact.

James Spink, too, wanted to discuss something of a leitmotif. “Chelsea’s women’s side is coached by a remarkably gifted manager who knows the game, is articulate and honest and a great ‘man manager.’ Wouldn’t it be interesting if an owner had the guts to hire Emma Hayes to shatter that glass ceiling?”

This one has a short answer: yes. It would, in fact, not just be interesting but wholly warranted. It won’t happen, though. Not when there are candidates with the glowing résumés of … Frank Lampard who can be hired instead.