Management is now a young man’s game

John Lyons

FLP EXECUTIVE EDITOR

There are various tell-tale signs that you are getting older – your hair falls out and/or goes grey, your eyesight starts to go and you can’t hear what people are saying.

And you can also apply it to football. The first signal that you are ageing is when the players suddenly start looking younger than you. Then it’s the referees. After that it’s the managers.

And with the new fashion for hip, trendy managers, it’s becoming more and more common for bosses to be younger than a lot of us.

Those with long memories will remember when a gnarled veteran walked through the door and said he had a three-year plan to turn a club around. Three years?

You’re lucky to get three months these days.

Gradually the old-school managers are starting to disappear. Neil Warnock called it time (again) last year and it looks like he really means it.

The likes of Roy Hodgson, Mick McCarthy, Sam Allardyce, Tony Pulis, Chris Hughton and Tony Mowbray weren’t in an EFL dugout yesterday, though Steve Bruce, at 61, is still going strong at West Brom.

Whereas the belief before was that you had to have experience, and partly explained why the same old managers seemed to get on and off the merry-go-round at regular intervals, that has gone now.

Time has moved on in the ever more brutal world of football and chairmen up and down the land now fancy a slick, young boss who can get his side playing like Brazil.

Well, that’s the idea anyway.

Whether that young gaffer is from home or abroad doesn’t seem to matter, as the appointments of Belgian Vincent Kompany, 36, at Burnley or Dane Jon Dahl Tomasson, 45, at Blackburn seem to prove.

Refreshing

In many ways, it is a refreshing change. For many ways we complained that it was the same old managers turning up time and time again, playing a pragmatic style to get a team out of danger.

Supporters, it is now believed, want to see their team play expansive football rather than grind out boring 1-0 wins. And it’s also good to see young British managers being given a chance higher up the pyramid.

Former Scotland international Russell Martin, 36, is building a decent reputation for his possession football at Swansea, while his successor at MK Dons, Liam Manning, also 36, did an excellent job last season.

Rob Edwards was another rookie boss who shone in the EFL spotlight last year.

Stepping into the Forest Green Rovers dugout, he produced a side that played some superb football, with wing-backs Kane Wilson (now Bristol City) and Nicky Cadden (now Barnsley) getting forward to devastating effect to create chances.

Whenever I spoke to him last season, the former Wolves and Blackpool defender came across really well. At 39, he looks to have a bright future ahead of him and it going to be fascinating to see how he gets on at Watford this term.

Opportunity

He clearly felt it was too good an opportunity to turn down and will hope to be a Premier League manager in a year’s time. If that doesn’t happen, then, with the Hornets’ notoriously itchy trigger finger, he’ll know the likely consequences.

Likewise, let’s see how Michael Beale, 41, Steven Gerrard’s former trusted assistant, does at QPR.

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK:  QPR’s Michael Beale, Fleetwood‘s Scott Brown, Watford’s Rob Edwards

PICTURES: Alamy

In League One, there will be plenty of eyeballs on how ex-Celtic and Scotland captain Scott Brown, 37, fares in his first managerial post at Fleetwood Town, while Kevin Betsy, 44, ushers in a new era at Crawley Town in League Two.

Of course, managers do need time, so let’s hope their chairmen remain patient at the first sign of unrest. The new breed have a golden chance to lay down a marker, but a few of the ‘old boys’ may yet hope to return from the shadows and show what they can do.