Sky Sports' Johnny Phillips: It's open season on the 'dinosaurs'

Be it supporters or commentators, the absence of domestic football these last two weeks has left the usual void to fill. And, in the light of speculation linking Sam Allardyce with the vacant manager’s post at Everton and David Moyes’ appointment as West Ham boss, there has been plenty of material produced.

The suggestion is that the dinosaurs in English football are holding back the progress of the younger generation or they are getting second chances they don’t deserve at the expense of more talented foreign coaches. They are, generally speaking, clogging up our game with an out-of-date approach to management. So the critics say.

That is not true, of course, but it is all about perceptions. Partly this is down to the way some senior figures present themselves off the pitch and this is why it is important to separate the man from the manager. Allardyce came in for plenty of criticism for a recent television interview, which sparked the whole debate.

“I think you are almost deemed as second class because it is your country,” he said of British managers. “It is a real shame that we are highly-educated, highly-talented coaches with nowhere to go. The Premier League is the foreign league in England now.”

Had he just picked up a memo from Nigel Farage? ‘Brexiteering with Big Sam’ – the new outward bound arm of Ukip.

At the time, Allardyce was jockeying for position for an Everton audition, but that sort of rhetoric does him no favours. It isn’t even backed up by the facts. Only Chelsea and Arsenal in the Premier League haven’t employed a British manager in the last ten years, and Arsene Wenger has been an unusual long-term employee in the game.

But forget about Allardyce the man and have a look at Allardyce the manager. Since taking Bolton into the Premier League 16 years ago he has proved himself time and again; winning promotions, turning clubs around, leaving them all in a better state than when he arrived and adapting his football accordingly.

At West Ham he used 6ft 4in Andy Carroll as the target man, yet at Sunderland he played 5ft 7in Jermain Defoe on his own up front and kept the ball on the deck in a relegation fight.

He was one of the first managers to bring the ProZone analysis software into the Premier League. The humble Euxton training ground Bolton used was transformed, with 17 backroom staff offering t’ai chi, yoga and Pilates as top overseas players like Youri Djorkaeff, Jay Jay Okocha, Ivan Campo and Nicolas Anelka found a new lease of life. He has always been a progressive manager willing to embrace change.

Moyes’ arrival at West Ham was met by fury from some sections of the Hammers support and ridicule by rival fans. Critics point out that were he a foreign manager he would never have got a chance again after two failures at Manchester United and Sunderland.

That is true, but the same applies to any other league abroad. In recent memory, Moyes and Gary Neville were jettisoned quickly from La Liga after short spells and they will never return. Managers are given more opportunity in their native leagues the world over, there is no mystery there.

Similar to Allardyce, Moyes hasn’t helped himself with comments made off the pitch in recent times, but maybe judgment on his managerial capabilities should be reserved until at least May.

Closer to home another veteran touchline inhabitant, Tony Pulis, is also a man under fire. This is the biggest test he has faced for some time, after years of sustained success.

Albion are in a terrible situation now and the atmosphere has turned pretty toxic at The Hawthorns. But even if Pulis doesn’t come through this, his credentials suggest he should be judged on his wider work.

Ten successive seasons in the Premier League saw a transformation at Stoke, Crystal Palace saved from the most perilous position and a steadying of the ship at Albion. It is hard to defend the results and performance so far this season, but nobody knows this more than the manager himself.

Below Albion in the table lie Bournemouth, with more defeats and an inferior goal difference. But Eddie Howe is a bright young prospect, right? He’s in vogue, so nobody is questioning his position.

It was interesting to see how quickly Watford’s Marco Silva became the plat du jour on the continental menu. He has impressed in the opening months of the campaign – I’m a big fan of his work too – but to see him so coveted this early in the season raises a smile. Let him amass a body of work before heaping too much praise on him.

Managers are as much a part of the show as the players these days. That’s not necessarily a good thing and it can bring greater pressures on the men at the helm. Judgements fly in from all quarters. Everybody is looking for the next big thing. But don’t write off all the oldies just yet.