FOOTBALL managers have a delicate way of discussing their colleagues who have been sacked.

''It did not work out the way Tommy would have liked at XXXXXX Athletic,'' they say.

This is the art of understatement taken to almost absurd levels. It is akin to saying that it did not work out the way the health and safety team would have liked at Chernobyl.

The sentence should read: "If Tommy had been eating a pound of Danish blue and experimenting with psychotropic drugs before donning his pyjamas, he could not have had a bigger nightmare than at XXXXXX Athletic. To take a team from the middle of the league into the second division was an achievement thought beyond anyone who accepts that a ball is round. He fell out spectacularly with his players and fell in amorously with a cleaning lady. It was no surprise he got his jotters. And a subsequent paternity case. He lost that too, of course.''

Sometimes it just does not work out at clubs for managers. Good men can have bad times. One of the strangest aspects of football – apart from the reality that anyone can declare himself an expert, including me – is that someone who is a very competent manager at one club can resemble an eager auditioner for a part in One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest at another.

As part of my Old Dodderer Living on the Edge Tour, I watch both Match of the Day and the Football League show on a Saturday night. Frankly, the last time I was out on a Saturday night I had platform shoes and hair.

The highlights of the English fitba' tell a variety of stories. One of the most intriguing is that a manager who has been deemed to have failed at one club can re-establish himself as a competent, successful leader at another.

The first exhibit in defence of this state of affairs is Mr Roy Hodgson. The poor man failed at Liverpool because he was not Kenny Dalglish. Oh, and his teams played at Anfield with all the ambition of a snail entering the Olympic 100m final with the Taj Mahal on his back. (Breaking news: snail was disqualified in heats for two false starts).

But back to Hodgson. The bold Roy has survived. He quietly saved West Bromwich Albion from any relegation bother last season and is guiding them to safety this term.

A more interesting case is that of Anthony Mark Mowbray. He seemed the perfect fit for the Celtic job. He was a revered former player. He was a proponent of playing attractive football and had a history of producing enterprising sides at Hibernian and West Brom. He surely had an idea of the media demands at the club.

Yet he was as successful at Celtic as a Greek bond issue on Black Monday. He handled the press with the same comfort as Frank Haffey handled a bar of soap. He seemed unable to appreciate just what constituted a disaster in football terms. In the immediate aftermath of the 4-0 gubbing by St Mirren, Mowbray could not accept that he may have to find alternative employment. And soon.

The next morning Mowbray was packing his bags and saying goodbye to the circus, or Scottish football as some insist on calling it.

After a period of recuperation, he took over from Gordon Strachan at Middlesbrough and has slowly but steadily proved that there is some sort of alchemy that can be formed between club and manager.

Mowbray has had to offload big earners and trim his staff, but has succeeded in taking his team to the verge of the Barclays Premier League and has just lifted a manager of the month award.

The most sensational story concerns the Wally with the Brolly. As a manager, Steve McClaren's reputation is so low, researchers have to employ divers to look for it. He has been seen to fail at England, Wolfsburg and Nottingham Forest. His defining moment was when he stood with an umbrella to view the last pathetic act of England's failure to qualify for Euro 2008.

Yet he was the coach when FC Twente when their only Dutch championship. And he has gone back to that club in search of former glory. Let us hope it works out for him. If not, he will need a tin hat as well as his brolly.