Off-beat game in British soccer

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31881, 8 January 1969, Page 9

Off-beat game in British soccer

'By

R. M. CAIRNS

LONDON. 'THERE is an off-beat x game they play in British soccer; not on the fields, however, but among managers, chairmen of club boards, and newspaper reporters. It is called “Sack the Manager.” has a subsidiary named “I Quit,” and serves the very useful purpose of giving soccer writers of the national newspapers something to write about during the week. The latest round began last month when a gentleman named Alec Stock was dismissed as manager of Queen’s Park Rangers, a London club. Mr Stock had been manager of Q.P.R. when it was in the Third Division and within a couple of years had it in the First Division and winning the F-A. League Cup. But Queen’s Park Rangers, unforgivable sin, are not leading the First Division; it must be Mr Stock’s fault, so he is dismissed.

These reporters are clever fellows, however, and before anything official is even suggested, they are saying “Tommy Docherty will be Stock’s successor.” And naturally, he is. Mr Docherty, incidentally, is a fiery Scot who was dismissed as Chelsea’s manager, and resigned from Rotherham (a Third Division club) to take his new appointment.

However, Mr Docherty’s coming did not make the Q.P.R. acting-manager, one Mr Bill Dodgin, very happy, so he resigned. Then things started becoming a little complicated. Mr Bobby Robson was told he was no longer required by Fulham, recently a First Division club and now in danger of trying out things in the Third. So the former England captain, John Haynes, became Fulham’s playercoach (acting), and Mr Dodgin joined him in some capacity or other. In a much less complex move, Mr Ron Allen was simply sacked as manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers: and the players in the Wolves team showed what they thought of that by winning their next match, 5-0. A brief and different interlude followed when it was suggested that some Americans were keen to buy the Aston Villa club, in its entirety. This was a chance that the elderly directors of Aston Villa could not resist; their legendary club, now with not very much present or future, was in the news again. So they kept it there a day or two longer by firing Mr Tom Cummings. He was the manager.

The next week exposed one of the remarkable features of the First Division of the English Football League: not all the teams

can be in the lead. So Leicester City and Nottingham Forest, two clubs down the bottom with Q.P.R., told their managers, Messrs Matt Gillies and John Carey respectively, that they could go.

All this, of course, is terribly repetitious, but quite recently the volatile Mr Docherty injected fresh life into the game. He resigned from Q.P.R., 28 days after taking up his appointment, “on a matter of principle.” This was an intriguing state of affairs. When Mr Docherty joined Q.P.R., he was told no money was available to buy players. So he did commonplace things, such as dropping the captain and everyone else with any experience and replacing them with teen-agers. He achieved only moderate success this way, so decided he wanted to buy one of his old Rotherham players for £35,000. The chairman of the Q.P.R. board decided Mr Docherty could not have the money (there was none anyway) so Mr Docherty resigned, of course. Next day, it was reported that Mr Docherty had a new job with a Spanish club, Atletico Bilbao.

There are two men apparently not very Interested in the game within the game. They are Mr Bill Nicholson and Sir Matt Busby, who are managers of Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United respectively. Mr Nicholson has been manager of Spurs for more than 10 years, and the venerable figure of Sir Matt Busby has guided the great United since 1946. The suggestion is now circulating that these two nonconformists are attempting a revival of the bad old days when managers were given, sometimes, a year to do their stuff.