How do they manage?

WANTED: Football manager (full-time).

An up-and-coming football team requires a new manager to gain promotion and bring in new employees. Must have experience, ex-players preferable. Media handling essential. Good results required immediately. Job security questionable.

Managers, head coaches, call them what you will, are essential cogs in the machinery of a football club. Yet these cogs end up redundant far too often.

Of course the people at the head of the club have to be seen to be doing something to stop the rot, and ejecting the manager from his seat in the dugout seems the easiest and most high-profile way to do such a thing.

Supporters are also fickle creatures. One minute a manager can do no wrong and then they are being hounded by the lynch mob because their side drew away at Chesterfield.

Phil Brown took Hull City from the verge of League One into the promised land of the Premier League. He then led them to victories over Arsenal and Tottenham and looked UEFA Cup-bound by Christmas.

Hull’s recent form has been shocking but the club are still hovering above the relegation zone - the very zone we all expected them to inhabit for the vast majority of the season.

But now the natives are getting restless and turning their attention to the very man who masterminded the success which allows such supporters to visit places like Old Trafford, Anfield and the Emirates.

It is all rather pitiful.

Jim Magilton is under pressure at Ipswich Town despite lurking just outside the play-offs, and Oldham’s own John Sheridan can expect his P45 in May if the Latics don’t make it to the Championship.

Struggling Norwich City sacked Glenn Roeder, fair enough, they were sliding down the table at an alarming rate. But to replace him with an untried local hero in Bryn Gunn is surely suicide for both parties.

The list could go on for pages.

Yes, managers are well paid, but they earn it in the most unpredictable of all football positions.

Look at Joe Kinnear - whom I wish a speedy recovery - he had to leave football many moons ago because it was no good for his health, and now it has done for him again.

Sam Allardyce can often be seen snarling from the touchline, and he has been monitored during a game, his blood pressure reaching staggering heights.

They say the England manager has the hardest job in football. Maybe even sport. Maybe even ever! Now I’m sure Dave the dustbin man will disagree, but there is a good case.

Whoever the manager is finds his personal life dragged from his past, his house constantly hounded and his decisions criticised. You don’t get that on the dustcart, Dave.

At the end of the day it is a results-driven job where only the greatest successes see you become a hero, and the smallest errors see you burned at the stake.

And the same job is advertised yet again for the next mug to try to make it in the world of football management.