PB Week: What can we learn from Scolari’s sacking, if anything?

Seven years

It took Sir Alex Ferguson seven years to win his first title with Manchester United, and yet Phil Scolari is given seven months with limited resources to try and replicate this success. So far this season we have already seen the departures of Alan Curbishley from West Ham, Roy Keane from Sunderland, Juande Ramos from Spurs, Kevin Keegan from Newcastle United, Harry Redknapp and Tony Adams from Portsmouth, and Paul Ince from Blackburn; and no doubt there will be more to come. This lack of patience and emphasis on short-term success is not healthy for football and is costing millions of pounds of payouts. At their last home game, some Chelsea fans booed the players off the pitch after a poor performance and chanted 'You don't know what you are doing' to the manager; a manager who has won the World Cup. Is this a lack of respect or a natural reaction to the way the team was playing at the time, and Scolari's inability to coach the team?

It has never been easier to criticise the manager: radio phone ins are live after the game, blogs, the internet, comments, fanzines, newspapers and television are all hungry to hear the fans' reaction, and often that reaction will be based on emotion, especially the closer it is after the game finished, rather than a cool rational judgment of the facts. Presumably Abramovich was looking at the league table and seeing his side going in the wrong direction, yet was this really Scolari's team we were seeing? Personally I think the undue haste in this saga started when Scolari decided to announce his appointment in the middle of the European Championships while Portugal was still in the tournament. It appears, too often, fans, players, managers and chairmen are all in an undue rush for success, when indeed patience, support and sympathy of fans and directors are indeed the real ingredients for a successful team; just ask Alex Ferguson.

Zurich chief's snow conundrum

Guy Munnoch said he had a tricky dilemma last week after deciding whether to go ahead with a leadership conference despite snow on the horizon. Having just returned from the Antartic, he decided that a little British snow shouldn't get in the way of the conference, so he gave the green light and rose at half five in the morning just to make sure he got there. Unfortunately for Guy he was the only one who made it that morning, although he showed great leadership skills, nobody was following him on thjis particular day. We are sure though that announcing Zurich's latest set of results to head office – a £295m profit – was a more pleasant experience.

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