Santa's Sack

Back in 2002 their was an uprising in Belgrade. Thousands of Serbians stormed the city's Parliament building, only to be held back by assorted members of the country's police and armed forces. As this stand-off went on those holding back the uprisers realised that they too were Serbian people and that they too had issues with the country's Parliament. The result was the armed forces and police not just relinquishing their guard but turning and joining the masses in their siege of the building. I was reminded of this scene on Boxing Day afternoon, in the less picturesque setting of Nottingham Forest's City Ground.

Ten minutes before half-time Forest trailed 2-0 to Doncaster Rovers who up til that point had propped up the Championship table and failed to score more than a single goal a game in almost eight months. The Rovers fans aimed a chorus of "Sacked in the morning" to the tune of Guantanamera, at Forest boss Colin Calderwood and the nearby Forest fans counter-acted the Rovers' fans' song. Ten minutes on, Richie Wellens' deflected free-kick made it 3-0 and as the Rovers fans piped up again the Forest supporters chose to join them and round on their own, "Sacked in the morning" sang the ground, and the club's board did not even wait that long.

By around 9pm on Boxing Day Colin Calderwood was unemployed, and he wasn't the only former footballer to find himself out of work in the heart of the festive period. Just four days the other side of Christmas Gary McAllister had been sacked by Leeds United, a sacking even more galling for McAllister in that Christmas Day is also his birthday. Football chairman it seems do not embody the true spirit of Christmas, not even in the case of Leeds where Ken Bates actually does have the body of Santa Claus.

"We're in a results business," was the reasoning of Forest chief executive Mark Arthur, whilst statements from both clubs claimed that they had made the dismissal at this time to allow respective successors as much time as possible to achieve their aims for the season. There is however a serious flaw in this logic, in that whoever does replace Calderwood and McAllister will have had significantly less time in the job than their predecessors. If time is so much of the essence, then why the panicked rush to change things instead of giving the current incumbent more of this supposedly precious time.

Of the football league's ninety-two clubs it cannot be of coincidence that those who have retained the services of their manager the longest are generally the more successful. Alex Ferguson's twenty-two years and Arsene Wenger's twelve years at the helm sandwiching the 13 year stint of Graham Turner at Hereford, who, whilst they may not be knocking at the Champions League door, are as high as they have been in the last twenty years.

Had Ferguson begun his management in the modern era its unlikely that he would have lasted beyond those first three trophy-less seasons. Instead he remains with a managerial term of office that will never again be reached again in this country. Sean O'Driscoll, the manager of the Doncaster side who sounded the death knell for Colin Calderwood, is now in the top twenty-five of the league's longest serving bosses. O'Driscoll was appointed just over two years ago... when Ferguson first sat at his Old Trafford desk, O'Driscoll would have struggled to make the the top 90 with a stint so short.