Hands up everyone who thought that bob Bradley was the right appointment for Swansea City? That’ll be no one, then. Whether Swansea gave him long enough to stamp his seal of authority on the club is academic. I can’t name you another person who thought Bradley’s appointment would end in any way differently to how it turned out. Hands up who sees more than a little Deja Vu about the latest appointment?
Paul Clement has been summoned from the number two job at Bayern Munich to take over the ailing Welsh club, but how long will he last? Not as long as he lasted at Derby County, his only other managerial role, I fancy.
Clement is revered as one of the finest coaches in the game, which explains why he has had such a glittering coaching career. Chelsea, Real Madrid, the Republic of Ireland are among those who have benefited from his talents, but not as the number one. There is probably a reason for this: he is an excellent coach, not an excellent manager.
I could be wrong here, of course. Clement may merely have spent 20 years or so carrying out a lengthy apprenticeship, just waiting for the day when a big club like…er…Swansea came knocking. I have the feeling that this is probably not true.
When you are in the manure, as Swansea are, your ideal manager will be a recognised firefighter, someone who has been there, done that, whose teams might not play the most attractive football but they don’t go down. This is why the likes of Sam Allardyce and Tony Pulis are rarely out of work. Managers who know how to organise, motivate and grind out ugly results. There is nothing in Clements’ CV that suggests he will manage anything like that.
Of course, I want Clement to succeed and in many ways I am glad to hear of his appointment. He is young and English for two things which are not synonymous with the Premier League, and when Gareth Southgate quits in 2020 after yet another miserable tournament for the country, it would be handy if a credible and obvious successor was waiting in the wings.
More likely, Clement will last a few months, probably until late March, and a desperate punt will be taken on some familiar face or other, or maybe Alan Curtis will be caretaker as usual, until finally Swansea are relegated.
Managerial sackings are often a case of be careful what you wish for because you can often end up with someone even worse than you had before, as we found at Bristol Rovers until the club got lucky/made the inspired selection of Darrell Clarke who, as I write, is one of the most popular managers in the history of the club. But even Clarke, despite all his brilliance, could not initially prevent relegation and I doubt very much whether Clement, for all his credentials, will prevent Swansea’s either.
It could be that, again like Bristol Rovers, Swansea might wish to stick with their gaffer if they go down because magical things can happen from the lowest expectations. However, money talks louder than anything else in the Premier League and I expect by the start of the 2017/18 season Clement will be someone else’s assistant or coach.
Either way, good luck to the fellah. He will need lots of it.
