Manager changes cost clubs £99m

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By Ian Dennis
BBC senior football reporter Five managers have lost their job this season, with pressure mounting on more Premier League and Football League clubs spent almost ￡100m changing their manager last season.

According to figures released to the BBC by the League Managers Association (LMA), the cost of compensation, legal fees and 'double contracts' amounted to ￡99m.

A 'double contract' is when a sacked manager's contract is honoured until a certain point in time but his replacement also requires a salary.

October is traditionally the month when clubs begin sacking their managers. Between October 2010 and February 2011, 25 clubs opted for that course of action.

Continue reading the main story In 2010-11, managers sacked in the Championship had an average tenure of less than a year.It was 1.33 years in League 2, 1.67 years in League 1 & 2.07 years in the Premier League.

Several managers have already lost their job this season, including Peter Reid, who was sacked by League Two Plymouth Argyle last week.

Keith Millen left Bristol City on Monday with the club bottom of the Championship, while Steve McClaren departed Nottingham Forest on Sunday, resigning after only 112 days in charge.

The figure of ￡99m would have been higher had agents fees and the cost of sacking and replacing a manager's backroom team been taken into account.

According to the LMA, which represents managers in the Premier League and Football League, more than 100 coaches also lost their jobs last season.

Reid, who was in charge of Plymouth at a time when the club were battling to avoid administration, was on BBC Radio 5 live to discuss the issue.

He said: "Chairman and owners need to be more realistic about their expectations.

"Certainly in the Championship where they're all trying to get to the Holy Grail and that's the Premiership. There needs to be a bit of realism."

Reid was joined by LMA chief executive Richard Bevan, who believes managers are not being given enough time to prove themselves.

"We want to move away from managers being judged on their last three results," Bevan said.

Continue reading the main story The average length of time it takes a sacked manager to get another job is currently 1.63 years.Almost half of first-time managers are never appointed to a second management position.

"In fact, when results take a downturn that is when the club should support its manager even more, not jump for the quick fix."

Sir Alex Ferguson, who has been in charge of Manchester United for almost 25 years, agrees.

"It's always a problem in modern-day management," said the 69-year-old Scot. "You see time and time again that these guys are only in a position a year before the clubs are sacking them."

According to the LMA, Championship managers who were sacked in 2010-11 had an average tenure of less than a year.

The average was 1.33 years in League 2, 1.67 years in League 1 and 2.07 years in the Premier League.

The average length of time it takes a sacked manager to get another job is currently 1.63 years. Almost half of first-time managers are never appointed to a second management position.

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Drive Power Manager review

In a time of increasing software bloat is there any talk of a small, efficient application that goes about its business without fanfare or distraction.

Drive Power Manager weighs at only 1.5 MB installed completely and has a single function: to provide component access to hard drives and optical storage devices, enables highly granular control of use, performance, standby and noise power settings. The interface is simplicity, with all the features available through a single window per unit. Drive Power Manager applies your changes immediately, with no restart is required.

Laptop users are trying to always extend battery life, and it is here that the Drive Power Manager makes his biggest impact, such as hard disks and optical drives can represent significant power drain. With the power of disk usage properly leashed, useful improvements in uptime a reality. Standard battery systems can address some of these issues, but often falls short in practice, compromising usability.

Because the drive Power Manager allows discrete settings for each device functions, is to find a sweet spot to meet individual usage patterns at all. Of particular note are welcome possibility of Cap peak RPM and silent optical drives, virulent problems with laptops, where a spinning DVD can make an entire system vibrates like a coin operated massage Chair.

Drive Power Manager also contain a number of enhancement options speed, but these have a more modest effect on system performance. Both real world usage scenarios and synthetic benchmarks show any objective advantage but subjective impression is another matter. With units of the standby and hibernation timeouts are reduced or eliminated, felt portable systems more responsive, avoiding annoying waiting time involved with the disks spin up or restore from hibernation modes. A compromise for this reduced battery life, but for users who spend much of their time plugged in at a desk, it is not a problem.

For all its tight coding and efficiency, there are some issues with the Drive Power Manager. Better hardware support would be welcome, because some older devices seem to register the correct but returns errors when changes to settings are tested. Check the target computer's compatibility with the fully functional, time-limited trial version to avoid potential problems in this area.

Addition of profile settings that automatically adjust to AC/battery consumption would extend benefits, instead of forcing the laptop users to perform manual adjustments each time they disconnect. Site support is also thin and could use a review. These are relatively minor issues, but given the overall utility of the package.

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