Martin Jol and hiring problems

Martin Jol's sacking by Tottenham, just months after  he had been given a huge transfer budget, raises the question: why do football directors make so many bad hiring and firing decisions?
In theory, you'd expect the opposite to be the case. Football directors are usually very successful businessmen with presumably lots of experience of hiring people. And football coaches' track record is publicly available, in a way that employees' records in other businesses are not; most us in a job interview could exaggerate our achievements without being found out, whereas Gary Megson could not claim to have done a great job at Nottingham Forest when he applied for the Bolton job.
You'd therefore expect better matches between coach and club than in most businesses. But this is not so. Last season saw 48 management changes at League clubs, implying that the average boss lasts less than two years - much less than job tenure in other businesses.
Here, then are some theories:
1. There are threshold effects. It's moderately easy to hire someone to do a basically competent job - though even here, bad hiring decisions cost economies around 1% of GDP a year. But it's vastly harder to spot someone who can do really well. Spotting real talent is hard.
2. Success in football coaching is not easily replicable. What works at one club can fail at another - the classic instance being Brian Clough at Leeds. So a coach's track record gives less clue to his chances of success than one might think.
3. Football directors' success in business amplifies their over-confidence and egomania. And just as overconfident share traders take too many decisions, so overconfident bosses are too quick to hire and fire, believing that they can get it right this time.
4. Criteria for success are too high, as directors are not just overconfident, but over-optimistic. Worse still for coaches, success raises expectations which increases the likelihood they'll fall short. This contributed to Jol's problems. His record at Tottenham (45.3% of games won, 28.3% lost) was in fact better than Tottenham's long-term average. But his bosses demanded even better than better-than-average.

Comments

[Morten]

I would add a point which I think is at least equally important, namely chance. Football results are to a large degree (I believe at least larger than many people think) random. Hence, a mediocre coach with a lucky streak will be 'over-promoted' and an excellent coach with an unlucky streak will be sacked.

[Morten]

I would add a point which I think is at least equally important, namely chance. Football results are to a large degree (I believe at least larger than many people think) random. Hence, a mediocre coach with a lucky streak will be 'over-promoted' and an excellent coach with an unlucky streak will be sacked.

[Paulie]

I'm not sure that our Brian is any good for illustrating any text-book cases. He failed at Leeds out of spite.

There is another issue here; Football supporters are not like any other customer. They want a say in the club - and football managers know that bad decisions need not be too disastrous as fans will never allow a largish club to go bust. The business decisions are part of the commodity that people are buying. Would it be opportunistic of me to draw inferences on what it indicates about Direct Democracy here? ;-)

I can't think of another industry where a rational businessman would behave like Nigel Doughty has done at Forest either. He's the worst combination - a VC who won't cut his losses.

A VC is the wrong kind of owner for most clubs anyway - they're too risky for most fans (hire David Platt, give him £millions to spend on one-legged Eyeties).

Other owners are little better - they're often buying into a club to achieve something else (celebrity, influence, etc). Alan Sugar bought into Spurs largely because he wanted to be involved in negotiations with BSkyB (he made the dishes). Abramovic probably wants someone to stick up for him if an arrest warrant is ever delivered by a bloke with snow on his boots.

[reason]

I live in Germany and still remember with great amusement the history of Otto Rehhagel and Bayern Munich. Otto was reasonably successful at Bayern and was sacked during a relatively short late season slump, basically by Beckenbauer (accusing him oddly of neglecting junior development). Beckenbauer failed to win anything (Bayern may just have been a victim or their own success like Leverkusen were a few years later - having too many irons in fire with too thin a squad). The next year Otto won the second division with relegated Kaiserslautern in runaway fashion. And the year after he won the first division (first time ever by a promoted team) beating Bayern twice in the process.

This hillarious run of events, shows that excessive analysis here is redundant, just a lot of big egos pushing each other around. A certain amount of success is random and as the manager is not in charge he is a ready scapegoat for everybody concerned. There is plenty of evidence if you want to look for it that stability at the top pays off in the long term. (ManU and Arsenal come to mind).

[Savonarola]

Directors often take leave of their senses once 'in charge' of a football club. Appointing the wrong manager/firing a manager too soon are minor sins compared with the destruction of the whole edifice. Risdale/Leeds Johnson/Man City and so on. Quite often a player or group of players decide a manager must go and somehow this gets through to the directors. I think its called losing the dressing room. Jol seems to have lost Berbatov.

[dearieme]

Oh balls to football. How's your guitar playing coming on?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6BB6Ne5HFM

[DMP]

You ask: why do football directors make so many bad hiring and firing decisions? The trend in more rapid job turnover has affected football managers just as it has CEOs and other workers (males at least). Why has it increased is an interesting question. Here's a link to a short paper that documents how tenure of football managers has changed from 1874-2006 - but no explanations are offered as to why.
http://trex.econ.uoguelph.ca/dprescot/dmp/foot/tenure.htm

[dearieme]

You've just had a generous write-up in the Retirement pages of the Sunday Telegraph, Mr D. Stand by for a flood of wrinkly/crumbly comment.

[Preved]

I totally agree with your points. http://111111111tv0m0vttqay-7vt-vt0-mqva.com victorious 222222 [url=http://33333333333333333sfgwet.com]333333[/url]I'll surely check it out!

[stop smoking]

Oh the sacking of Martin Jol proved like a very bad idea...cause after him they got Juande Ramos...and here comes in the stuff you talked about..the Spurs got Ramos which had a great record with Seville and one that knows not a lot about football but looks at his record would say he must have been succesful...and yet Tottenham made the worst record under his leadership...and then they got Harry Rednknap...a man that has a good record..but not as good one as Juande..and in the Harry era...well he got them from the dropout zone and into the uefa cup zone fight...and this year they're fighting for a champions leage place..that's why we love football..you can't predict with certainty anything about it

[used wheel loader]

Hello guys, Your page is so cool! You sure do know how to keep your audience entertained. Im so glad that I took the time to look at this blog, because let me tell you. Not a lot of people know how to balance knowledge of a subject and content.

[oil paintings]

The herbs are then boiled in water by the patient at home. The boiling process takes from 30-60 minutes and the resulting decoction will be consumed several times during the day.

[r4dsi]

You’ve compiled a great list here, and I continue to learn from you. Thanks

[Christian louboutin Heels]

You’ve compiled a great list here, and I continue to learn from you. Thanks

[Bill Jones]

A very nice post. Indeed the coaches are one of the best ways for short tours across the country. In UK the coach car industry is quite big and people opt for the same because of its inexpensive nature. I love to reach a lot of UK tourism and the coaches when I came across your post. I just subscribed the same and hope you will keep up the good posts over the coming days. Thanks