Time To Give the EPL Managers…More Time!

February 14, 2009

by Shyam Parthasarathi…

This past week we had one of the sadder days in the English Premier League this season. Two managers who were brought in to change their teams fortunes were quite brutally sacked by their chairmen and there are quite a few similarities between the cases of Luiz Philipe Scolari and Tony Adams.

They weren’t given enough time and the more interesting fact is that their former clubs’ chairmen were both Russian.

Tony Adams was perhaps the unluckier of the two, if there was a choice that one could make. Why he was given the entire January transfer window to bring in players of his choice only to get sacked after his team lost to Liverpool in one of their better performances is inexplicable.

The former Arsenal captain was always going to have a difficult time after succeeding Harry Redknapp. The one thing he wanted when he took over was that no one should leave his team.

That changed in a matter of days when both Lassana Diarra and Jermaine Defoe were sold, albeit for substantial sums of money. Oddly enough, that money wasn’t pumped back in to improve a now depleted squad and Adams has had to bring in the likes of Angelos Basinas.

He is no Lassana Diarra, is he?

As far as Scolari is concerned, he was always going to swim against the tide at Chelsea. His ex-team is in fourth position and only remain in contention in two competitions. He was always running the risk of getting compared to Jose Mourinho.