You might look at the football old guard’s suspicion of foreign managers getting a chance over more ‘deserving’ British candidates as a new thing.
It’s certainly been flavour of the month of late, not least with the comments from the likes of Paul Merson and Phil Thompson that Marco Silva – a man with Champions League experience and a league title to his name – might be unsuited to the Premier League on the grounds of not knowing English football.
But this sort of thing has been going on for ages, and few are immune – not even Sir Alex Ferguson.
The former Manchester United manager, and the most successful boss in the Premier League era, was similarly sceptical of a manager who moved to England after spells overseas after the dismissal of a British counterpart.
That man? Arsène Wenger.
Shaun Botterill/Getty Images
“It’s straightforward,” says Ferguson about something which clearly isn’t straightforward.
He’s talking about Wenger ahead of the Frenchman’s first full season in England, and he’s clearly got his suspicions.
“He has no experience of English football. He’s come from JaPAN [yes, the ‘pan’ of ‘Japan’ is emphasised, for some reason] and is now into English football, and is now telling everybody in England how to organise their football.”
Here's what I was actually trying to find, though – Fergie saying the word "Japan" with more disdain than anyone has ever had for anything. pic.twitter.com/AS9zLQVeqh
— Adam Hurrey (@FootballCliches) February 6, 2017
Now, ignoring the fact that Wenger would go on to win three Premier League titles in his first decade at Arsenal and his predecessor Bruce Rioch would win another 78 games in his entire career (we would say ‘so far’ but he hasn’t had a managerial job since leaving Aalborg in 2008), there’s another reason why the statement isn’t the smartest.
Before joining Manchester United in 1986, Ferguson’s playing career read Queen’s Park, St Johnstone, Dunfermline Athletic, Rangers, Falkirk and Ayr United, while his managerial CV included East Stirlingshire, St Mirren, Aberdeen and Scotland.
We’re trying to find ‘experience of English football’ in there, but – unless we’re missing something obvious – it doesn’t seem to be there.
Luckily for Ferguson, and for Manchester United, the Scot soon realised he was better off trying to prove Wenger wrong on the pitch, rather than writing him off entirely based on his time with Nagoya Grampus Eight. And he’ll probably have few complaints about what ultimately followed.
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