@eric_plant - It is certainly a two way street here, clubs are just as fickle as managers, if not more so. But clubs end up paying off contracts in full when they break them, managers seem to be able to simply up and leave.
Do you think we got fully remunerated by QPR for the true value of our contract with GA? Considering the timing where we were still well in contention for another shot at the Championship, that would be potentially £7-8million and we might have got to see some Championship stadia in the flesh this time. I'd contend that the value of an employee's contract is very much easier to quantify and very much more fully remunerated than vice versa.
That's a different point. I wouldn't know how to value a contract. I always thought compensation was the value of his contract up until the end of it, more or less.
But the point stands that if a manager is under contract they are not simply allowed to just walk out into another club.
@mooneyman - of course and I am not decrying that facility, I think my previous comments make that clear, so your question seems redundant.
@eric_plant - oh but they are, they can simply resign and then move into the new position. There will be consequences and those will be thrashed out by the legal departments, but that can and does happen.
@mooneyman - ps to directly answer that, yes, within the confines of what I consider to be acceptable behaviour I would. I have always tied up loose ends very thoroughly before changing employment and have never left projects where I am the key deliverer unfulfilled. That's my own stance on what I consider fair behaviour, I realise that not all of it is a legal obligation and therefore entirely extracurricular.
@eric_plant quit/resign/leave - if a manager wants to go he goes and my point stands that whilst the manager is fully remunerated for the length of his contract should a club decide to sack him, the club is never even close to made whole for the upheaval that losing the key man on their project implies. QPR dropped like a stone when Beale went to Rangers, why didn't QPR simply say 'no, you are contracted to us, tough luck?' We all know the reality of the situation, they do walk out of one job and into another, Beale, Ainsworth, Evans, I could go on ad infinitum but I won't.
You are well within your contractual gasroom rights to disagree with all of that.
I think nowadays most managers have clauses in their contracts whereby there is a fixed compensation sum, which if met by another club, that manager is automatically allowed to speak to that club. Wasn't that the case with us and Colchester regarding Blooms?
It's a fig leaf, all those clubs agreed to this either because they were flying high and thought 'hey, we can do without this manager, someone else can do the job equally as well which is really no trouble anyway besides which we get a wedge t'boot. or because they really had no choice but to accept the inevitable. If you choose to believe that QPR vying at the time for automatic promotion to the Premier League had any enthusiasm whatsoever for losing their manager, that's your prerogative, neither of us know but I reckon they probably didn't. Sorry I know it is a bore to disagree.
Whether they did it with enthusiasm is neither here nor there. Beale would not have been able to become manager of Rangers without them sorting out his contract situation with QPR. That's not an opinion, it's just a fact.
Anyone else think manager moves should be limited to two windows a year, like player transfers? How many (usually smaller) clubs' season have been derailed because they lost their manager at an inopportune time and with relatively little notice?
Can't see Chelsea or Watford voting for that though.
A fixed term employment contract without the right for an employee to resign is unusual.
If the right to resign does not exist and an employee walks out midway through a fixed term contract, the employer can sue for damages . Those damages however need to be clearly defined and hence it would be extremely unlikely that a football club would be successful in any claim for losses from a potential lost promotion.
It is not true, indeed unlikely, that a manager on £100,000pa with two years left on his contract would receive £200,000 compensation if he was sacked from his job. It is only his losses that are compensated and in court, he would be expected for example to obtain alternative employment during that period reducing his losses.
I don't think that player and manager contracts are quite the same as the ones we would all have to, for example, work in an office.
But even if they were, even mere mortals such as ourselves can't just resign, walk out and start working for a competitor immediately. There would be a notice period of at least a month usually.
In law they are the same. Obviously precise contract terms will be different between different contract but the principles are the same.
In practice there is very little to stop you walking out of your job today and starting work for a competitor tomorrow. Legally you will have breached your contract and hence you would be liable for damages directly accruing from that breach and they are unlikely to be large. Its very very rare for any company to pursue this. You MAY have a non competition clause in your contract, but even if you do they are notoriously difficult to enforce. Of course that is the law, in practice its nearly always better for both employee and employer to act reasonably - no one benefits from getting a bad reputation or pissing other people off.
Remember too that player transfers are selling a players registration not his employment - so effectively selling his right to work in the restricted world of football leagues under the rules of those leagues. There is no such registration scheme for managers.
Stevenage fans mostly laugh at the idea of GA, but then have this list on their forum:
They do know that they are basically describing GA to a T? This might as well be chapters in his biography! Not only that, but if any club has no right to claim some kind of need for a L1 Pep stylistically, it is that lot.
Geographically just about possible from Reading (but not for Dobbo) but otherwise they seem at the top of their potential so hard to see how he could be seen to have done a good job there without a "miracle" promotion. If he just wants a job any job maybe, but otherwise I would have thought a bad move. If Bristol Rovers came up that would feel much more attractive if their player budget was competitive.
Of course only he will know how much the phone is ringing and with what seriousness.
Someone said GA turned down four L1 jobs, which were assumed to be something like Port Vale, Burton, Cambridge and Shrewsbury - though could have been Bristol Rovers or Charlton too. Either way, GA has established that he (currently) has a strong market at a certain level, so this makes me think he will make sure he stays at the L1 level at a minimum.
However, I think he has two issues: firstly, if he is out of the game too long he may lose some traction for these jobs, and secondly, with how many L1 sackings there were in the second half, there may not be many (if any) jobs besides Stevenage (and Barnsley, though that one seems unlikely for more than one reason).
So if GA were to be offered the Stevenage job, would he really turn it down? Yes, there is the jeopardy of following a very good manager in Steve Evans, but there is the benefit of a squad already fairly similar stylistically.
I think this is fair, and I initially thought he might have to drop into L2 as a result, but the four job offers this season changed my mind, and I think what Dev said is likely ringing in the ears of L1 clubs at a certain level - if a club is winning, fans will enjoy themselves more than a team with a better "style" but poor results.
I do wonder how he would feel about GA coming, as he was never truly trusted as a starter under Ainsworth. It might be a bit like getting a job and leaving your parents' basement only for your parents to move in to your new home!
Comments
@eric_plant - It is certainly a two way street here, clubs are just as fickle as managers, if not more so. But clubs end up paying off contracts in full when they break them, managers seem to be able to simply up and leave.
But the club they are moving to pay compensation, like we got from QPR
Do you think we got fully remunerated by QPR for the true value of our contract with GA? Considering the timing where we were still well in contention for another shot at the Championship, that would be potentially £7-8million and we might have got to see some Championship stadia in the flesh this time. I'd contend that the value of an employee's contract is very much easier to quantify and very much more fully remunerated than vice versa.
If you were offered double your current by another employer for doing the same job would you honestly turn it down?
That's a different point. I wouldn't know how to value a contract. I always thought compensation was the value of his contract up until the end of it, more or less.
But the point stands that if a manager is under contract they are not simply allowed to just walk out into another club.
@mooneyman - of course and I am not decrying that facility, I think my previous comments make that clear, so your question seems redundant.
@eric_plant - oh but they are, they can simply resign and then move into the new position. There will be consequences and those will be thrashed out by the legal departments, but that can and does happen.
@mooneyman - ps to directly answer that, yes, within the confines of what I consider to be acceptable behaviour I would. I have always tied up loose ends very thoroughly before changing employment and have never left projects where I am the key deliverer unfulfilled. That's my own stance on what I consider fair behaviour, I realise that not all of it is a legal obligation and therefore entirely extracurricular.
Sorry, I know it's boring to keep disagreeing but managers really aren't allowed to just walk out of one job into another if they're under contract.
@eric_plant quit/resign/leave - if a manager wants to go he goes and my point stands that whilst the manager is fully remunerated for the length of his contract should a club decide to sack him, the club is never even close to made whole for the upheaval that losing the key man on their project implies. QPR dropped like a stone when Beale went to Rangers, why didn't QPR simply say 'no, you are contracted to us, tough luck?' We all know the reality of the situation, they do walk out of one job and into another, Beale, Ainsworth, Evans, I could go on ad infinitum but I won't.
You are well within your contractual gasroom rights to disagree with all of that.
All three of those only left once the club they were leaving and the club they were joining agreed on compensation
I think nowadays most managers have clauses in their contracts whereby there is a fixed compensation sum, which if met by another club, that manager is automatically allowed to speak to that club. Wasn't that the case with us and Colchester regarding Blooms?
That is effectively allowing a manager to leave in advance. It's not a club powerless to prevent a manager just walking out
It's a fig leaf, all those clubs agreed to this either because they were flying high and thought 'hey, we can do without this manager, someone else can do the job equally as well which is really no trouble anyway besides which we get a wedge t'boot. or because they really had no choice but to accept the inevitable. If you choose to believe that QPR vying at the time for automatic promotion to the Premier League had any enthusiasm whatsoever for losing their manager, that's your prerogative, neither of us know but I reckon they probably didn't. Sorry I know it is a bore to disagree.
Whether they did it with enthusiasm is neither here nor there. Beale would not have been able to become manager of Rangers without them sorting out his contract situation with QPR. That's not an opinion, it's just a fact.
Anyone else think manager moves should be limited to two windows a year, like player transfers? How many (usually smaller) clubs' season have been derailed because they lost their manager at an inopportune time and with relatively little notice?
Can't see Chelsea or Watford voting for that though.
I guess the caveat could be that you could appoint from within if you did sack your manager.
A fixed term employment contract without the right for an employee to resign is unusual.
If the right to resign does not exist and an employee walks out midway through a fixed term contract, the employer can sue for damages . Those damages however need to be clearly defined and hence it would be extremely unlikely that a football club would be successful in any claim for losses from a potential lost promotion.
It is not true, indeed unlikely, that a manager on £100,000pa with two years left on his contract would receive £200,000 compensation if he was sacked from his job. It is only his losses that are compensated and in court, he would be expected for example to obtain alternative employment during that period reducing his losses.
I don't think that player and manager contracts are quite the same as the ones we would all have to, for example, work in an office.
But even if they were, even mere mortals such as ourselves can't just resign, walk out and start working for a competitor immediately. There would be a notice period of at least a month usually.
In law they are the same. Obviously precise contract terms will be different between different contract but the principles are the same.
In practice there is very little to stop you walking out of your job today and starting work for a competitor tomorrow. Legally you will have breached your contract and hence you would be liable for damages directly accruing from that breach and they are unlikely to be large. Its very very rare for any company to pursue this. You MAY have a non competition clause in your contract, but even if you do they are notoriously difficult to enforce. Of course that is the law, in practice its nearly always better for both employee and employer to act reasonably - no one benefits from getting a bad reputation or pissing other people off.
Remember too that player transfers are selling a players registration not his employment - so effectively selling his right to work in the restricted world of football leagues under the rules of those leagues. There is no such registration scheme for managers.
Player/Managers?
Stevenage fans mostly laugh at the idea of GA, but then have this list on their forum:
They do know that they are basically describing GA to a T? This might as well be chapters in his biography! Not only that, but if any club has no right to claim some kind of need for a L1 Pep stylistically, it is that lot.
It should definitely be more a case of why on earth would Ainsworth go there.
He could do far worse
Geographically just about possible from Reading (but not for Dobbo) but otherwise they seem at the top of their potential so hard to see how he could be seen to have done a good job there without a "miracle" promotion. If he just wants a job any job maybe, but otherwise I would have thought a bad move. If Bristol Rovers came up that would feel much more attractive if their player budget was competitive.
Of course only he will know how much the phone is ringing and with what seriousness.
Someone said GA turned down four L1 jobs, which were assumed to be something like Port Vale, Burton, Cambridge and Shrewsbury - though could have been Bristol Rovers or Charlton too. Either way, GA has established that he (currently) has a strong market at a certain level, so this makes me think he will make sure he stays at the L1 level at a minimum.
However, I think he has two issues: firstly, if he is out of the game too long he may lose some traction for these jobs, and secondly, with how many L1 sackings there were in the second half, there may not be many (if any) jobs besides Stevenage (and Barnsley, though that one seems unlikely for more than one reason).
So if GA were to be offered the Stevenage job, would he really turn it down? Yes, there is the jeopardy of following a very good manager in Steve Evans, but there is the benefit of a squad already fairly similar stylistically.
I think it is a very intriguing situation.
Nick Freeman
Or said another way, how many owners in League 1 or League 2 for that matter, are willing to front up heavy losses, in return for long ball football?
For me, GAs problem is that football has moved on from the John Beck era that he idolises and modelled himself and his style on.
The market for GAs type of management style, and his football style, may well be very small.
He seemed to get pretty good results for an apparently outdated style.
I think this is fair, and I initially thought he might have to drop into L2 as a result, but the four job offers this season changed my mind, and I think what Dev said is likely ringing in the ears of L1 clubs at a certain level - if a club is winning, fans will enjoy themselves more than a team with a better "style" but poor results.
I do wonder how he would feel about GA coming, as he was never truly trusted as a starter under Ainsworth. It might be a bit like getting a job and leaving your parents' basement only for your parents to move in to your new home!