Home-grown pride

14 April 2012

For the English managers at the so-called pinnacle of English football, the statistics are rather depressing.

No England-born manager has lifted a major domestic trophy since Brian Little's Aston Villa won the League Cup in 1996. The last one to land the League title was Howard Wilkinson, whose Leeds team were champions of the old First Division in 1992.

However, either Steve McClaren or Sam Allardyce will restore a little pride to their brethren of underachievers at the Millennium Stadium on February 29.

One of their teams will lift the Carling Cup, and so spark what the Football Association and their own League Managers' Association hope will be something of a revival.

Whether McClaren and Allardyce feature on the shortlist that is drawn up when England coach Sven Goran Eriksson eventually vacates his office at Soho Square remains to be seen. But the chances of an Englishman succeeding the Swede will certainly suffer no harm now that Middlesbrough and Bolton have made it to Cardiff.

It will be an interesting encounter, not least because two managers with hugely contrasting backgrounds have employed similar methods in achieving the success they have so far enjoyed.

A rich variety of foreign accents can be found in the dressing rooms at the Riverside and the Reebok, thanks to the two managers who have an extraordinary ability for luring fashionable names to two distinctly unfashionable clubs.

While Allardyce has recruited a World Cup winner in Youri Djorkaeff, a European Cup winner in Ivan Campo and the remarkable talent that is Jay- Jay Okocha, McClaren has followed suit with the likes of Gaizka Mendieta, Bolo Zenden and Massimo Maccarone.

Gareth Southgate is English, but he remains quite a catch.

Allardyce certainly has much to be proud of. McClaren might have been identified as a coach of vast potential before being recruited as Sir Alex Ferguson's assistant by Manchester United, but the journey has been far more perilous for Allardyce.

Most memorable was the day he was sacked as Blackpool manager from the despicable Owen Oyston's prison cell.

A 10-year contract with Bolton provides Allardyce with more security, and while McClaren earned the plaudits of Eriksson when he worked alongside the England coach at the last World Cup, Bolton's manager deserved the praise he received when his side held Arsenal to a 1-1 draw earlier this season.

Bolton were magnificent, prompting Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger to say: 'If Bolton play like that every week, the point we got today will look very good at the end of the season.'

Frank Clark, the vice-chairman of the LMA, believes a new generation of English managers will one day emulate the feats of men such as Bob Paisley and Brian Clough.

Clark said: 'If you ask yourself why we have a Swede in charge of the England team and Frenchmen running Arsenal and Liverpool, the answer is fairly simple. I think we got left behind in terms of education and getting the qualifications you needed to work in places like Holland, Spain, Italy and France.

'The reason why Premiership chairmen go for foreign coaches is because the standard of English managers isn't high enough. But that is starting to change.

'In Steve and Sam, and Alan Curbishley at Charlton, we have three guys I believe could one day coach the national team. The system that is now in place is as good as anywhere in the world.'

On February 29 Allardyce and McClaren will be thinking only of the joy they can bring to their football clubs. Middlesbrough have never won a major trophy, while it was 1958 when Bolton last achieved such success.

For those so keen to see English managers rise once more to prominence, however, the occasion has a far wider significance.

Little's career proves that winning a trophy does not guarantee future success. Having guided Villa to the Coca-Cola Cup in 1996 - as well as the FA Cup semi-finals and third place in the Premiership - he spent brief spells at Stoke, West Bromwich and Hull City before taking over at Tranmere last October.

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Alan Curbishley

Home-grown pride

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