Pressure My Arse.

The Premier League management brigade are the greatest bunch of spoofers of all time. I guess they have to be to keep themselves in the job seen as they don't do anything tangible like kick the football on the pitch.

Steve Bruce is perhaps the exception. The man just oozes chill and relaxation. Steve realises that his team have nothing to play for and are in no danger of anything either. He is in a comfortable position and is very well compensated for his troubles. He does try at least to look like he's bothered. He comes out in press conferences afterwards giving out about the referee and cursing his luck but he is really just spluttering out the same tired lines. He's almost gone beyond cliche if that's possible for a Premier League Manager.

Essentially you see it doesn't matter to Steve because he has nothing to gain. Any pressure experienced by managers in the Premier League is entirely fake and based on outcomes and results which are in fact utterly meaningless. David Moyes was making all the right shapes recently when Villa came back and stole the points at Goodison but when you think about it, the only bearing that result can possibly have on Everton's season is where they might finish between 5th and 16th. Even if they do qualify for the UEFA Cup, a competition which nobody watches or cares about, they'll only be complaining about having too many games next season.

There is no pressure in the Premier League because the managers have nothing to lose. They can lose their jobs of course but their contracts will be paid out, which in every case amounts to several millions of pounds. So even if they are absolutely useless, win hardly any games and have no qualifications, you will still need to pay them millions of pounds to get rid of them.

Yes I am thinking about Paul Ince here. Incey was crying about there being a vendetta against ex-Manchester United players, young managers, him in particular and so on. He was emotional in press conferences and "came out fighting in the press every week"but when the inevitable finally occurred he walked away a substantially richer man than when he started the job only a few short months before.

There was a statistic floating around a couple of years ago that managers in the lower league are actually paid less than the minimum wage. This was calculated because they work about 90 hours a week and are paid a yearly salary which if you divide by the number of hours you work actually comes to less than the minimum wage.


The particular example I remember was Ronnie Moore who was Oldham manager. He'd previously had some success with Rotherham bringing them from the League 2 to the Championship or whatever it called at the time. He was separated from his wife, lived alone and spent every evening driving up and down the country watching reserves, youths, non-league and any other kind of a game trying to find players to improve the team. Oldham had zero cash at the time and Ronnie was left to do all the scouting, training and recruitment himself. He said he'd be back in the training ground for 6.30 every morning to prepare for the days training. I'm not sure if I'd call this pressure or madness. I'm leaning towards madness I have to say. He is currently in charge of Tranmare Rovers in 8th place in League 1.

The hardest part about being a Premier League Manager is getting the cushy job in the first place. Upon being appointed, you are immediately financially secure for life, you have a full scouting network at your disposal and because at least two of the promoted clubs will be relegated and are expected to be relegated (taking any perceived pressure off them too), only one established Premier League team will go down (the promoted one that stayed up the previous year perhaps). They are good odds.

In Ronnie's job he doesn't have any of the support mechanisms in place, he doesn't have job security because his wages are relatively low to begin with. I'm sure there is quite a lot of pressure involved in deciding whether to give a contract to a player who is not trained to do anything else but might have a mortgage to pay.

Brucey knows he has it good. Incey knew he had it good and this possibly even led to his downfall such was his smugness on joining the millionaires club. Martin O'Neill, Moyes & Co. put on a show and they are still passionate about trying to win a given game (as long as it's not in a meaningless cup competition) but please don't be fooled into thinking it actually means anything.