THE superstar manager is becoming an increasingly endangered species. Times aren't exactly tough for these guys - at worst they usually walk off with a multi-million pound pay-off - but spare a thought at this time of year for some of the biggest egos in football.
Fearfully bruised, they are reduced to scavenging off each other's misfortunes. Just when Jose Mourinho was licking his wounds after his fall from grace at Chelsea, what should come along but the increasing catastrophe which is Louis van Gaal's tenure as Manchester United manager.
There has been a levelling up in the English game, due to the obscene money filtering down even to the traditionally smaller teams. Manchester United have lost five matches already this season, but then so have Manchester City and Liverpool. Arsenal have been beaten four times and Chelsea no fewer than nine.
But Manchester United's supporters don't want to worry about structural details like that. They want to dominate teams the way they used to, and replacing Van Gaal is a common sense solution. Relations between the Dutchman and the news media reached an all-time low when he hinted after their latest defeat to Stoke that he could be prepared to resign and there is unlikely to be a clamour in the Old Trafford boardroom to talk him out of it.
Seven matches without a win, four straight league defeats, Manchester United fans aren't used to this kind of thing and Van Gaal is hardly helping himself. So inflexibly does he enforce his positional and tactical discipline that his players often appear rigid, joyless and afraid to express themselves. They have scored 22 goals in 18 league matches, the same amount as Bournemouth and one less than Watford, and the fans have already turned, regardless of the fact that ending up with the title in the most open Premier League title race for years is still not entirely out of the question. With the Champions League already gone, each Europa League outing will be a minor embarrassment.
You can hardly argue that the Dutchman hasn't received the backing of his board - they have supported him to the tune of a cool £250 million. But you can certainly argue that the board, in particular the form of chief executive Ed Woodward, have been cack-handed in the way they have gone about it. This crystallised during their latest humiliation against the formerly one-dimensional and lowly Stoke City, who boasted a compliment of players - Xherdan Shaqiri, Bojan, Marko Arnautovic and Ibrahim Afellay - with every bit as much quality, star power as opposite numbers such as Memphis Depay.
That the Manchester United malaise is deep and wide there is no doubt. But the sudden downturn in Van Gaal's fortunes suggests something else is at work here, namely that old charge about losing the dressing room. As Wayne Rooney climbed off the bench to half-heartedly attempt to salvage a point, it was all eerily reminiscent of events at Stamford Bridge, where the work rate and application of Diego Costa, Eden Hazard, Cesc Fabregas and Branislav Ivanovic diminished visibly in the space of 12 months. If they wanted to keep him in a job, they certainly didn't do enough to show it.
Indeed, perhaps this is the main reason that the superstar manager has fallen upon hard times - that their role no longer exists in quite the same way in the modern game. Like a (usually) benign dictator, Sir Alex Ferguson was a holistic football manager who used to control every aspect of his clubs. For him, executives were merely there to exercise his will, whether it was sanctioning the departures of the likes of Paul Ince, Jaap Stam or David Beckham. Mourinho is also at his most successful when he works in this manner, even if the case of Dr Eva Caneiro illustrates at least one flagrant abuse of this power.
Big clubs these days, though, have a vast apparatus which coaches must deal within, and occasionally an owner who doesn't mind sticking his oar in. While this should actually assist the team in being successful, it doesn't alway work that way. Players are multi million pound assets who have the owner's ear too and when push comes to shove there is only one winner. While Ferguson moderated his behaviour to deal with the modern day footballer he may reflect that he got out at the right time.
With Pep Guardiola and Diego Simeone - perhaps the only two unblemished examples of the superstar manager still around - potentially available in the summer, when the eject button is finally pushed Manchester United and their beleaguered executive structure must ponder what happens next.
Do they go back into the frying pan with Mourinho - a man they previously overlooked at the end of the Ferguson era - or bide their time with an interim appointment such as Ryan Giggs until the summer? Whoever it is they appoint, superstar or not, they must be brave enough to let him make his own decisions.
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