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Coyle’s Bolton move is another footballing mystery – or is it?
One day perhaps we’ll understand how Wes Brown has amassed 21 England caps and maybe someone will eventually explain how Robinho is worth 35 million pounds but I don’t think I’ll ever comprehend the reason for Owen Coyle planning to ditch Burnley and go to Bolton Wanderers.
Coyle turned down the Celtic job last year because he wanted to go with Burnley into the Premier League and said only last week that he was “privileged to be building something special” at the club.
Yet within a heartbeat of Bolton sacking Gary Megson, wheels began turning to get Coyle in as his replacement.
As a former striker with Bolton in the early 1990s he said the club has a “special place in my heart” but it seems a bizarre move.
Both clubs are likely to spend the rest of the season fighting against relegation and while Bolton have probably got the deeper resources on and off the pitch, they are hardly Manchester United.
Coyle has built a reputation as an intelligent manager who develops passing teams who play the game “in the right way” and it was always unlikely to be too long before one of the league’s “bigger clubs” came calling.
Welcome back to the big time, Burnley
It’s been a while since Burnley last enjoyed top flight success but fans of the Lancashire club can dream once more after winning promotion to the Premier League on Monday, beating Sheffield United 1-0 at Wembley.
Founding members of the Football League in 1888, Burnley, join Wolverhampton Wanderers and Birmingham City as next season’s new boys, replacing relegated West Bromwich Albion, Middlesbrough and Newcastle United.
Burnley’s success will please more than a few neutrals.
Manager Owen Coyle’s team have received praise all season for their good football and have regularly caught the headlines in the domestic cups, beating no fewer than four Premier League sides including Chelsea and Arsenal and reaching the League Cup semi-finals.
A long time has passed since Burnley’s glory days, the second league championship in 1960 and a place in the European Cup quarter-finals the following year, and it’s probably no surprise that bookmakers hardly gave the players time to enjoy a post-match glass of champagne before slapping them odds-on for relegation next season.
But Coyle need only look at Hull City, who received similar treatment a year ago from the bookies. Not many would have imagined that Middlesbrough and Newcastle’s long stay in the top flight would end thanks to Hull’s outstanding early-season form.
Hearty welcome back. The Lancashire Bees grow in numbers in the premier league.
Okay, why is the article premise flawed? It implies that true success is measured simply with respect to overt size of club. But this is not just something that should be calibrated with respect to the relative success/achievement of the clubs in question. So yes, Bolton’s achievements may be deemed as significant as greater achievements at bigger club. However…
… the real issue is durability in this management game and surely steady, rather than meteoric, progress. Nobody has accomplished that feat quite like Martin O’Neill. Sam Allardyce took the poisoned chalice at Newcastle and Mark Hughes recently exited stage left from Manchester City (money has not so far changed much at that club in terms of overt achievement and viability of ‘under achieving’ managers).
Has David Moyes stayed too long at Everton? So maybe staying too long at a relatively small club is managerial suicide just as much as getting the time to leave right but then making the premature choice of a huge club with huge expectations.
As well as O’Neill consider Redknapp, another who has done the dance but built his stock by doing what he does best – rescuing a number of smaller club situations, time and again. He built solid foundations and has emerged as the one who IS taking football at Spurs forward, finally!
What do O’Neill and Redknapp (and might we begin to ask, Coyle) evidence in common? A shrewd knack in conjunction with discerning ambition, perhaps? A clever manager is truly clever because he sees that his path in this modern footballing jungle is a graveyard for the starstruck. Wending your way to the pinnacle, maybe in a convoluted, ‘unfathomable’ manner, is the mark of true genius?
Respectfully,
Alexander