Mid Table Manager Syndrome

Symptoms

Low Expectations, Less Pressure: With all sufferers, the pressure  in managing a mid table team is significantly less than their higher counterparts. A bad result here and there is quickly forgotten when the team is in a safe eleventh position and guaranteed top-flight football for another season.

Smaller Budgets: Most mid table teams have shoestring budgets, so their transfers aren’t under the microscope as much as those for the extravagant spenders.

Less Egos: As with all mid table teams, most star players are big fish in a small pond. Once the player becomes unhappy, the team normally sells him for a big profit and replaces him with an adequate replacement. Nobody ever blames the manager for a star player's departure in a mid table club.

The bigger clubs, on average,  have four or five egos that all need careful minding. Bigger personality clashes and players who can't accept being a squad player when they could have been a star for a smaller team.

Known Suffers: Sam Allardyce, David Moyes, Mark Hughes, Steve Bruc.

When mid table managers move on to bigger and better things, the sufferer expects to be cured. Unfortunately, that always never seems to be the case.

Case in study, Sam Allardyce: He was doing wonders at Bolton, a mid table team, but decided to go to Newcastle, a bigger team with more expectations. He failed and now plies his trade at Blackburn, a mid table team.

Another case study is Mark Hughes: Having done brilliant things at Blackburn, he found himself under intense pressure at Manchester City, which had transformed from mid table to contenders with a boost of cash. He failed and was sacked soon after.

There is always hope for mid table managers syndrome sufferers as demonstrated by Harry Redknapp. He took over Tottenham when it was a big club fading into mid table obscurity. He transformed the team into Champions League participants.

Why have I gone on with a rant about nothing, you ask? Well, I believe Roy Hodgson suffers from mid table syndrome. After watching Liverpool struggle to contain Sunderland and having only won 1 in the 6 games this season, my diagnosis is Roy Hodgson suffers from mid table manager syndrome and the disease is quickly spreading to Liverpool football club.

Roy is a classic sufferer. He excelled with a small club like Fulham, only to be swamped by the sheer pressure of managing one of the biggest clubs in Europe. He has not gotten the best out of Liverpool players and seems to have no cohesive plan for Liverpool. I hope Liverpool can find a cure fast, or else Liverpool fans will wake up to a new reality: mid table obscurity.