Which brings me to one of my bugbears about football. Why, if a manager gets promotion from a lower league, is he automatically 'given a chance' at the higher level? By the time that chance has run out it's Christmas, the club have one foot back in the lower division and the hunt for a new manager begins anew (like Warnock at QPR etc.)
Just because a bloke is good at being Area Manager doesn't mean he'll cut it as MD - it's horses for courses. And if it seems harsh to sack a bloke who has achieved success, it wouldn't if it was handled properly.
Warnock at QPR (and Leeds, and SUFC) is a good example. The guy has a good record at getting promotion. Therefore, he should be employed on that basis. When he was set on, that should have been the parameters of the job. 'Neil, you've been brought in to achieve promotion in X-number of years. Do that, and there's £Xm in your bank account and we both move on.'
To continue the analogy, if that had been the terms of DWs contract, it would make for a sound business model. Whatever a manager does, he'll get the sack anyway. But by laying out end-result specific terms at the outset, both parties could part on equal terms. In Summer - IF we go up - it could be 'Thanks Danny. You knew why you were brought in, but now we're going for a manager with more recent experience at the higher level. Here's Mark Hughes.'
If the desired outcome isn't achieved, there's no massive pay-off for failure - the terms would have been laid out in black and white.
The lowest salesman knows he's in a results-dependent business. And I don't accept that a manager wouldn't agree to this - there's plenty out there who would. And for those who didn't want the risks, they've proved they're not confident in their abilities and lack ambition.
