MARK WARBURTON, with 20 years of experience in the cut-throat world of trading behind him, is unequivocal when asked whether football is a harsher environment than the City.
"Football is," he said. "Absolutely."
The Rangers manager has had good cause to reflect on that over the space of the last two weeks. In his new workplace of Scottish football, Jackie McNamara and Ian Baraclough have both been removed from their positions at Dundee United and Motherwell.
It is at his former club, Brentford, however, that the beautiful game's more brutal side has shown itself so forcefully. Warburton left in the summer as a result of owner Matthew Benham's controversial decision to push further down the road of using analytics to shape key policies at the club.
His replacement, Marinus Dijkhuizen, was brought in based on specific statistical information from his time with Excelsior in the Dutch Eredivisie, a campaign that ended with the side only just avoiding relegation.
Eight league games in, he is history. Dijkhuizen bit the dust last week and you can be sure Warburton looked on with interest.
"I won't name names, but look at managers being sacked this week," he said. "Three months ago or six months ago, they were being touted for the very, very highest level.
"You can have periods where you have a slight dip, but eight games and people are gone? It would not happen in other industries.
"The lack of patience shown by certain individuals is quite staggering.
"You learn by your mistakes and managers need time. It is the same as moving banks.
"I remember going to one bank and they said that you should bed yourself in for the first six months to a year. In six months to a year in football, you are gone.
"It is six weeks sometimes."
Warburton has given his players a few days off during the international break while preparing to head to the Football Association's HQ at St George's Park in Staffordshire to complete the latest section of his UEFA Pro Licence course.
It has certainly been instructive in looking at how outsiders view the working methods of professional football.
"People from the SAS came in," revealed Warburton. "People will ask what the relevance is to football, but it was magnificent in terms of man-management.
"The Mercedes/McLaren Formula One team came in and that was fantastic.
"It is non-football people giving you a different perspective on man-management. Do you have to bean ex-player to manage in football? I don't think you do.
"It's a busman's holiday for me, much to my wife's disgust.
"There's Brad Friedel, Scott Parker, Phil Neville, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, David Flitcroft, Neil Adams and Craig Shakespeare from Leicester City all on the course.
"The best time is in the bar of an evening when you're sitting there and Phil Neville will tell you about Manchester United and Brad Friedel will talk about the US soccer scene and his time with Spurs and Blackburn.
"They all want to talk about Rangers, though."
Certainly, one recent talking point around Scottish football has been the need for Nathan Oduwa to produce such outrageous tricks and flicks during the course of matches. His team-mate Dominic Ball, however, does not want to hear any accusations that the England Under-20 winger is not taking opposition north of the border serious.
"With Nath, he gets results from it," said Ball. "Look at the penalties he's picked up, the assists he's provided.
"A lot of the top players are like that such as Neymar, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho. He's got that similar flair and skill and, if you try to take that away, he becomes a different player."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel