The Football family

Footballers are a group renowned for reeling out the odd cliché. One of their favourites is to describe the atmosphere at their club as being ‘like a family’. But football clubs strike me as a pretty broken family, laden with pushy in-laws and disappointing children and culminating in a heartless divorce.

Family relationships are based on trust and loyalty – an unconditional affection for those around you. In football, loyalty is also a frequently used term, chiefly by supporters to criticise players for their apparent lack of it. Professional footballers are the moody teenagers, with no respect or gratitude towards those who provide for them. Owen Hargreaves demonstrated this by shamelessly lashing out at Manchester United’s medical department after joining bitter rivals Manchester City, despite United’s management having waited patiently and continued to pay his wages while he offered a paltry seven minutes of playing time across two years.

That supporters, the under-appreciated but ever vocally dissatisfied housewives, consistently level this criticism at players smacks of hypocrisy. I don’t just mean fans who have only had eyes for Manchester City since Sheikh Mansour entered the boardroom and hurled dirham at every Arsenal player with itchy feet. Even long-standing supporters reveal a similarly disloyal side towards their manager – the breadwinner given the unenviable task of bringing them prosperity and providing them with the perfect offspring.

Take Blackburn. Hundreds of Rovers fans have been staging demonstrations less than ten games into the season, demanding the sacking of Steve Kean. Worse still, some Gooners, for years besotted with Professor Wenger, are now angling for a divorce after a few barren years.

The blame certainly does not lie solely at the feet of supporters though. Above all, they are pushed into this intolerance of failure by their impatient parents: those at the top of the club’s hierarchy. The definitive pushy father, Roman Abramovich has separated the Chelsea faithful from no less than six men during his eight years at the club, including their soulmate Jose Mourinho.

This doesn’t just take place at Chelsea, or even the Premier League. In the Championship, the managers ousted last season lasted an average period of less than a year, and less than two years in the Football League’s other two divisions.

The situation is now so severe that a chairman expressing support for his manager is invariably reported as ‘the dreaded vote of confidence’. So often, coaches are publicly backed yet cast off. Does anyone really believe Bruce Buck, the Chelsea chairman, when he says that Andre Villas-Boas could be part of the Chelsea family “for ten or fifteen years”? This is feasible, as Villas-Boas is the only Premier League manager young enough to get away with wearing a skinny tie. But surely Buck’s adding: “it shouldn’t be longevity for longevity’s sake” is much closer to the truth – only if the Stamford Bridge trophy cabinet bulges come May of each year.

The managerial merry-go-round in football has made the job even more difficult. The result: a vicious cycle that puts more pressure on managers to succeed and treats them more harshly when they fall short. Maybe Villas-Boas is the man to bring the elusive Champions League trophy to Stamford Bridge, but make no mistake: should he not do it this year, wise money says Abramovich will once again be out looking for a new man to introduce to the supporters.

The success of managers who were given the chance to turn things around during tough times highlights the need for those involved in football to show some loyalty to their chosen man. Sir Alex Ferguson took five years to raise a family capable of winning silverware with Manchester United, but was retained despite the supporters getting cold feet – such as the infamous banner at Old Trafford which read ‘Three years of excuses and it’s still crap… ta-ra Fergie’ – and has since turned United into the most successful club in the country. More recently, Alex McLeish was given the chance to redeem himself as Birmingham’s poster boy following his failure to stave off relegation in 2008. The Blues were subsequently promoted, secured their highest league position for half a century, and won the Carling Cup, their first major trophy since 1963.

That’s not to say that managers are innocent victims. McLeish repaid the faith shown in him by hotfooting it over to the more attractive claret model across the city once his boys at Birmingham were relegated a second time. Harry Redknapp went from Portsmouth to Southampton and back again on a whim in 2005, and flirted with Newcastle whilst in his second spell with Pompey. Martin Allen arrived as Barnet’s knight in shining armour in March before Notts County lured Allen away within a month, leaving the Bees standing at the altar. I could go on. While you have to admire men like Roberto Martinez, who turned down the Aston Villa post in the summer to stand by his litter at Wigan, you also have to concede that he is merely an exception that proves the rule.

Ultimately, all parties are guilty of putting themselves first – loyalty is virtually non-existent in football. Even fans are willing to sleep around until they find the man with the perfect genes, rather than fight for the long-term commitment they have already made. Some family.