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How helpful could management training be for the manager's of English Professional Football Clubs?

If you were to ask Alex Ferguson, or Harry Rednapp this question then you might get a very short, sharp reply.

However given the wide ranging responsibilities that often fall on the shoulders of football club managers then it is clear that they would benefit from broader management training to deal with the everyday people management and business issues that they are faced with.

There are often a number of classical people management challenges that a football club manager is faced with that a management training initiative could help them with e g motivation, discipline, leadership, team building, performance management, personal development.

In addition there are a number of other aspects of business management that can come under the remit of the manager, depending upon how the Club is structured and who the Club’s Board of Directors decide to appoint as a management team. Some of these aspects are financial e g
Transfer fees, salary negotiations, budgets, income and expenditure management and some aspects are of a more Legalistic nature e g Health and Safety, Contracts, Restraint of Trade, Employment Laws etc. There are also significant and high profile business activities that any successful Club needs to undertake in the fields of P R, Marketing and handling the Media.

The effective management of all of these aspects could be greatly improved by the provision of management training to Club managers at an early stage of their employment. This is especially important when you consider the fact that 90% of Club Managers go straight into this role shortly after they finish playing and in some cases even before they have ended their playing careers by
working as “Player managers”. Most but not all of the people who find there way into Club management have not had the benefit of further education at a young age because they have had to concentrate on their football career and developing their football skills rather than worrying about a broader and deeper education. There are of course some exceptions to this with Club managers such as Steve Coppell and Ian Dowie who have experienced a degree level education.

The one type of training and development provided for newly appointed Managers is that of a coaching badge which concentrates on the tactics, fitness, preparation and the playing aspects of the role. This qualification, which does include some business aspects in it’s syllabus, is now insisted upon by the Football Association as a pre-requisite before a new Club manager can take up their post with a Club in one of the top 2 leagues.

As well as the day to day handling of individual players who can at times be temperamental and volatile there is also the aspect of dealing with their boss, who is usually the Chairman of the Club and who has invested a significant amount of their own money into the Club. These individuals are often notoriously fickle and reactive and the longevity for football manager’s in their posts is well known to be short lived and subject to the whim of a Chairman desperate for success. Club manager’s who manage to build and to sustain a healthy working relationship with their Chairman over a sustained period are indeed very rare. A good management training programme could greatly help football Club Managers to explore and learn about how to develop and maintain healthy, respectful relationships with their boss.

In conclusion, given the special circumstances of Football Clubs and the backgrounds of their managers there is a strong case for providing management training inputs to newly appointed Club managers.