When Does Ridiculous Become Xenophobia? Why is there a bias or a preference towards Britishness?

Throughout this piece, the terms "English" and "British" are not interchangeable. When I write English, I mean English. When I write British, I mean British. There's obviously a lot of overlap, and many other nations don't understand how our nation has four nations within one nation. Nevertheless, I wish to examine why so many fans and pundits insist on this concept of Britishness when it comes to coaches, what that actually means, and at what point do we cross the line from ridiculous and stupid to perhaps prejudice and xenophobia? Is there any evidence that would suggest we should stick with Brits?

I have looked into, in a previous article, just how important the coach is (in terms of WHO the coach is). The conclusion was that as long as they are not completely incompetent, then their own abilities rarely come into play, due to the large stew of ever changing variables that can affect the success of a team. There remains in the consensus of ageing pundits, armchair fans, and pub enthusiasts that British is best. Why? We once may have had the world's largest empire. The world was conquered again in the 1960s by British musicians. English has pretty much become a universal language. We did win the World Cup in 1966, and the Premier League is one of the most expensive and viewed leagues in the world.

Sounds pretty cool, right? I'm certainly swelling up with British bulldog pride. But what have we done since then? In 1992, when the top division of English football was rebranded as the Premier League (and Premiership), it sparked a revolution, changing football as we know it. What's even more amazing, is that to this day, no English manager has won it. It's a fact that is seldom mentioned by Paul Merson and the like when they ask "What does he know about the Premier League?" I have failed and succeeded both at home and abroad. Whereas being the foreigner, you can be at a disadvantage, not immediately knowing the language, players, teams, and customs, that's not too big of a barrier. Most of the world speaks English anyway, and there are plenty of very successful translators in football (Mourinho). On the other hand, being the outsider, you come in with fresh ideas and a new perspective. For instance, if we pick Mexico, and say there's a league of ten teams, that means nine coaches will be failing, doing things the Mexican way. Why not come in with your ideas and perceptions from your country, and apply them?

This Guardian article demonstrates some great work on the subject. Essentially, foreign managers are worth fourteen more points than British managers over a thirty-eight game season. That's a substantial amount. It also shows that club chairmen are quicker to fire foreign managers than they are British ones. As this is going to be a data intensive piece, let us begin with the current Premier League standings.

Premier League table with the head coach's nationality. On the right includes other head coaches this season.

As the table shows, there are currently no English managers in the top half of the English league. The first British entries are Tony Pulis and Mark Hughes at 8th and 9th. Eddie Howe is leading the way for the English in 11th place with Bournemouth.

Since the inception of the Premier League, as we know, no Premier League title has been won by an English manager. And thus, we require a second table.

Nationality of Premier League winning managers.

Evidently, Sir Alex Ferguson's achievements make him a freak of nature. He has won thirteen out of twenty-three titles to date. He retired three years ago, making it 13/20. 65% of Premier League titles belonged to just one manager. That's insanely good. Judging by the way things are going this season, it looks like there will be another Italian on the list. Unless Chelsea seriously slip up, that will make four titles for Italy, from four different managers.

Many dissenters might think that Ferguson's success might prove my point to be false. I believe it does the opposite. As a player, Ferguson never played in England. In fact, his first job in English football was manager of Manchester United. So what did he know about the Premier League? Dalglish is a living legend of Liverpool fame, but he will always be King Kenny to us Rovers supporters for his title winning season. The only one of the Premier League winning managers to have played in the Premier League was Roberto Mancini, making five appearances for Leicester City in 2001 at the age of thirty-six, and not once did he complete ninety minutes. In addition to their lack of English playing experience, Dalglish and Ranieri were the only ones to previously manage an English club before winning the league. Dalglish being in charge of Liverpool in what was the First Division, before the Rovers job, and Ranieri, the only one with Premier League experience, being at Chelsea over a decade before winning the title with Leicester.

Let's just reiterate this for the very important point it makes. Only one manager to win the Premier League had actually played in it (Mancini's five games at Leicester) and only one manager to win the Premier League had previously managed in the Premier League (Ranieri, spending four years at Chelsea, eleven years before managing Leicester). There is a slight caveat that Mourinho spent four seasons at Chelsea from 2004-2007, winning the title twice, and then came back in 2013 for three more seasons, winning it once. The point remains though. Their collective Premier League, or even football league playing and managing experience, was extremely limited. This begs the question... what did they know about the Premier League?

This wouldn't mean that football, is simply just... football... would it? It can't be the same game in all these other countries... right? Eleven versus eleven, on a grass pitch of similar size and dimensions, with a spherical ball, and two goals of the exact same size. Hmmm. I'm starting to think that cultural differences, perceived or otherwise, count for very little.

Let us go back to the first table of this piece, and in addition to nationality, we're going to look at Premier League experience.

Premier League, with nationalities and Premier League experience. Any season taken part in, whether fully completed or not, counts as one season that was experienced by that manager. The stars show clubs with manager changes.

It's surely obvious, but there clearly is no correlation between Premier League experience and success within the Premier League. It's the first season for both Guardiola and Conte, and the first full season for Klopp, having started late with Liverpool in the season prior. Those who know the Premier League; Mourinho, Wenger, Hughes, Pulis, Allardyce, and Moyes, aren't found near the top competing for the prizes. Before Big Sam went into Palace, the space was occupied by Premier League veteran Alan Pardew. One would definitely consider Pardew part of the Premier League merry-go-round, having managed a total of 302 games, with four teams in the league, over the last twelve years, having some relegations, promotions, and cup final losses in those times. Leicester City's position this season is largely down to Claudio Ranieri, whose Premier League experience we discussed earlier.

Swansea went through American Bob Bradley for his first spell in the PL, replacing Italian Francesco Guidolin, who lasted less than a year. Now they've opted for Paul Clement, taking his first spell in Premier League management after amassing one of the best CVs of a football manager not to have played the game. The events at Hull City pretty much sparked this piece. The summer was a strange one with Steve Bruce not getting the England job, and reportedly being annoyed at a lack of transfer funds, meaning he left Hull during the pre-season. Bruce has managed 392 Premier League games at Birmingham City, Wigan Athletic, and Hull City, going back as far as his first season in 2002. The club brought in experienced assistant Mike Phelan, who had been coaching in England since 1995, and had fourteen years with Manchester United, befor his first attempt at management. Both Bruce and Phelan won the Premier League as players at United. Now, they have Marco Silva in charge, who played his entire club career in Portugal. He's been managing since 2011, with only one season outside Portugal, at Olympiacos in Greece, before landing the Hull job. It might be too early to tell, but reports on Silva's work at the club look like this;

What impact has Silva had on the club?

He’s come in and he’s turned things around almost immediately. He’s brought in seven new players, including Lazar Markovic, and in fairness we haven’t seen too much of them yet, but any signings are good signings at the moment.

I think in terms of the whole club there seems to be a lot of confidence and optimism around the place; from the fans to the players, everyone seems to be positive.

In interviews the players talk about the work ethic he has come to Hull with. He’s always on the training ground, working hard and so far it’s paying dividends.

With the exception of Fulham away in the FA Cup, performances have massively improved and he’s getting results – we’ve just beaten Manchester United and we hammered Bournemouth.

But what does he know about the Premier League, right? It seems like that might actually be inhibiting of success more than anything. Perhaps too much Premier League experience brings with it biases, tunnel vision, dumbing down, even brain washing. There was outrage and bemusement at Silva's appointment. The same with Bob Bradley. Why wasn't Ryan Giggs given a chance? He knows the Premier League inside out! That doesn't mean he's a good coach or an effective manager. Something many simply don't understand.

The Premier League merry-go-round, this revolving door of the mediocre, has been occupied by the same names for a number of years. I was amazed to find out that Hughes and Pulis had been in the league for so long. Not only those two, but Sam Allardyce, Steve Bruce, Harry Redknapp, Alan Pardew, David Moyes, Roy Hodgson, Martin O'Neil, Mick McCarthy, Neil Warnock,  and perhaps even the likes of Tim Sherwood and Steve McClaren can be included in there. You get the point I'm making. Distinctly average, and underwhelmingly the same.

The book Inverting The Pyramid discusses in detail, the tactical trends of football since football first began, way back when. The influence of the British coaches seemed to fade away some time around the 1930s. The other countries had learnt about all they could from the travelling Brits, and then began to cultivate their own ideas. Nowadays, looking at modern coaches, we discuss the tactics of Klopp, Guardiola. Conte, Mourinho, Zidane, Emery, Villas Boas, Ancelotti, Sampoali, Van Gaal, Pochettino, Enrique, Tuchel, del Bosque, Low, Rangnick, as well as many more. The British coaches don't really come into contention. When sites such as Spielverlagerung and Outside of the Boot decide to do their in depth tactical analysis, there's not a whole lot to be found of any kind of British influence. Even in the Championship there are plenty of foreign managers. The current top three are Spanish, Irish, and Dutch, in the form of Rafa Benitez, Chris Hughton, and Jaap Stam. Going down the league we'll find the German David Wagner, the Italian Gianfranco Zola, and the Serbian Slavisa Jokanovic.

"But Will, you've told us before that it's often hard to make such comparisons due to the many variables that are considered here." Well yes, and as a rule of thumb, the manager will only have about 15% influence on the team. Unless there's a freak of nature like Alex Ferguson, or someone completely incompetent like Steve Kean, the manager is only worth about two or three league places. Club owners are seeking foreigners to influence that 15%, and as the Guardian showed, they can be worth around fourteen points per season in the Premier League. When looking to make comparisons, we need to seek situations where only the variable we wish to measure has changed. That's hard to do in football. Foreign managers do better in the same jobs than British ones. So how about with the England team? I think there might be enough data for us there to examine foreign coaches compared to English ones.

Removing England managers such as Allardyce, to have had minimal games in charge, below are the win percentages for England managers.

1. Fabio Capello 66.7%
2. Alf Ramsay 61.1%
2. Glen Hoddle 60.7%
4. Ron Greenwood 60%
5. Sven Goran Eriksson 59.7%
6. Roy Hodgson 58.8%
7. Walter Winterbotton 56.1%
8. Steve McClaren 50%
9. Bobby Robson 49.5%
10. Don Revie 48.3%
11. Terry Venables 47.8%
12. Graham Taylor 47.4%
13. Kevin Keegan 38.9%

The two foreigners to have managed England both have impressive win percentages. Two thirds of England games under Capello were wins (What did he know about the Premier League?) Sven came in at 5th place, finishing above eight English managers, and marginally below three others (1.4% behind 2nd). Both Sven and Capello lead successful qualifying campaigns. Sven qualified three times out of three, and Capello two out of two (although it was Hodgson who took the team in Euro 2012). So with foreigners in charge, England will win around 60% of matches, and will always qualify for tournaments. It's the English who have let us down.

World Cup winning coach Sir Alf Ramsay was in charge of six campaigns with England. One was obviously hugely successful. That was followed by a third place finish in Euro 1968, and a quarter-final defeat to that amazing Brazil side in the Mexican World Cup of 1970. Under Sir Alf, England missed out on tournaments in 1964, 1972, and 1974. Ron Greenwood, Steve McClaren, Graham Taylor, Don Revie, and the legendary Sir Bobby Robson were all responsible for one failed qualifying campaign each.

Since England began appointing managers, there have been thirty-one international tournaments, and eight have been failed qualifying campaigns. Roughly, that's one quarter. Specifically, that's 74.19%. To take this further, English managers were in charge of twenty-six of those qualifying campaigns. The two foreigners took five with a 100% success rate. With English managers in charge, the qualifying success rate is at 69.23%. This presents a rather worrying statistic. That's a 30.77% difference between English and foreign. When it comes down to win percentage, Capello and Sven achieve a 63.2% score. The English managers combined achieve a 52.6% score. Again, the foreigners win, and by 10.6%. To simplify, the foreign managers qualify for 10/10 tournaments, and win around 6/10 games. The English managers qualify for 7/10 tournaments and win around 5/10 games. These are important numbers.

When viewing English domestic cup competitions, the first foreign manager to win the FA Cup was Dutch coach Ruud Gullit with Chelsea in 1997. Since then, only Manchester United with Alex Ferguson of Scotland (twice) and Portsmouth with Harry Redknapp of England (once) have won the FA Cup for the Brits. Going back to 1991, only three Englishmen have won the FA Cup as manager; Redknapp in 2008, Joe Royle with Everton in 1995, and Terry Venables with Spurs in 1991.

The League Cup winning managers look fairly similar, though a tad better for the Brits. Since 1991, the cup was won sixteen times by Brits, including Alex Ferguson, Martin O'Neill, Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness, George Graham. Only five of those sixteen were won by English managers; Ron Atkinson (91, 94), Roy Evans (95), Brian Little (96), and Steve McClaren being the final one in 2003.

We can take away a few stats instantly here. Out of twenty-seven trophies won by Scottish coaches, twenty of them were won by Alex Ferguson. Truly remarkable. Overall, there have been seventy-three titles won, and Ferguson's twenty has him as winning 27.4% of trophies competed for since 1993. Considering this is now the fourth season since his retirement, it's even more remarkable. Out of all those trophies, only six have been won by English managers, at 8.2%.

Can you believe that? Since 1993, English managers have only won 8.2% of the big English trophies. Zero English managers have won the Premier League. One must ask, what do these English managers know about the Premier League? Why is there a consensus that English teams, or even the English national team, must stick with British managers? When combining the accomplishments of the British managers, they still make up less than half of all the successes, at 48% of trophies won. What would happen, if, for argument's sake, we looked at these stats without Alex Ferguson's achievements? That's seventy-three trophies, minus his twenty. For whatever reason, these competitions never happened. That leaves us with fifty-three competitions completed, Without Ferguson's trophies, the Brits combined have only won 28.3% of the above competitions.

 It gets scarier.

This table shows the accumulative efforts of countries that have produced a trophy winning manager in the top three competitions of English football since 1993. From 22 different football nations, only 10 have ever won anything. Before 1993, it was just Brits winning all the prizes.

A quiz from the Mirror just after Bob Bradley's appointment at Swansea City. I scored 19/22, with the three missing in red.

British coaches make up a combined number of 150 to have managed in the Premier League. At the time of this quiz, there had only been 206 permanent appointments since the Premier League began. British managers have made up 72.8% of all Premier League managers. English have made up 52.4% of Premier League managers. Let's just reiterate that one more time. English managers have had over half of the jobs in the league, and yet have never won it. Britain has produced 150 PL managers, and only two of them have won the league, both Scots, Ferguson (13) and Dalglish (1). You're more likely to experience success in England as a manager if you come from Portugal, France, or Italy, than if you come from England.

Being a British manager appears to be far more of a disadvantage than the actual advantage many pundits and fans would have us believe. These numbers are distressing. It looks to continue again this season, as the Premier League will be won by a foreigner that is new to the league. The League Cup has already been won by a foreigner (Portugal), who beat another foreigner in the final (France, in his first English season). The FA Cup will be won by a foreigner, as the semis look like this; Italy v Argentina, and France v Spain. That would make for a brilliant final four of any World Cup.

Clearly, as a country of football managers, we are absolute morons. So far, there has been nothing to suggest that this disdain towards foreign managers and their talents has any grounding in reality. Perhaps British managers have done so well in Europe's other top leagues, and that's why such a reputation has persisted? Well, no. In the modern era, Steve McClaren's Dutch league title with FC Twente in 2010 made him the first English manager to win a major European League since Sir Bobby Robson won the Portuguese league in 1996 with Porto. Still, these aren't top five leagues (England, Spain, Germany, Italy, France). Brits aren't winning those titles.

English sides like Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, and Aston Villa had a lot of European success in the 1970s and 1980s. Joe Fagan was the last English coach to win the European Cup/Champions League, back in 1984 with Liverpool. Since then, the only Brit to win it has been Alex Ferguson on two occasions with Manchester United, in 1999 and 2008. Bob Paisley and Carlo Ancelotti are the only managers to have won it three times. Paisley won all three (1977, 1978, 1981) with Liverpool, and Ancelotti won two with AC Milan (2003, 2007) and one with Real Madrid (2014).

Table showing managers to have won the European Cup/Champions League more than once.

As you can see, two English, one Scot. There's also four Spaniards, three Germans, and three Italians. So where's this idea of British superiority coming from?

Table of nationalities to win UEFA club competitions as managers.

The above table includes all of history. Remember that an Englishman hasn't won the Champions League since 1984, and with Alex Ferguson out of the game, does it look likely that any Scots will pick up from where he left off? It's the same in the other competitions. In the UEFA Cup/Europa League, we have to go back to 1984 when Englishman Keith Burkinshaw lead Tottenham Hotspur to the trophy. The Cup Winners Cup, which ended in 1999, had three British managers lift the trophy in the 1990s; Bobby Robson with Barcelona in 1997, George Graham with Arsenal in 1994, and Alex Ferguson with Manchester United in 1991. We really are clutching at straws to be able to justify any kind of superiority complex. Just how has this reputation persisted in the face of such a drought?

Is there perhaps a link with players? Even though we know playing experience at a high level does not necessarily equate to being a successful coach at a high level. From the last ten Champions League finals, I have had a look at the starting lineups. That gives us 220 players from 36 different nationalities. That's a remarkable statistic when one considers that the finals since 2007 have been contested by teams from only four nations; Spain (7), Italy (3), England (6), and Germany (4). 220 players of 36 different nationalities, competing within teams from only four different nations. Such is the dominance of the big leagues, and yet, a clear demonstration of how global our game is.

Only eight countries were able to supply double figures worth of players to these ten starting lineups. That means that on average, there was at least one player of this nationality on the pitch.
Spain - 37
Germany - 28
England - 23
Brazil - 18
France - 15
Argentina - 15
Italy - 12
Netherlands - 11

I think that says a lot about the slowing down of talent production in Italy. Mourinho's Inter Milan side that were champions in 2010 did so without an Italian in the starting lineup. There were four one nation finals; England once (2008 Chelsea v Man Utd), Germany once (2013 Bayern v Dortmund), and Spain twice (2014 and 2016 Real v Atletico) meaning that some years, the lineups would be heavily represented by that nation. For these ten finals, English players represented 9.6% of the talent on show. Frustratingly though, there hasn't been an Englishman on the pitch at a Champions League final since Chelsea's triumph over Bayern in 2012. Credit to the French and Dutch for producing so many Champions League quality players, even if their clubs aren't making it. Even more credit to the Brazilians and Argentinians, whose clubs don't compete in this competition.

Looking inward, this article from Sky Sports provides us with some figures of the Premier League. Perhaps the most global league on the planet.

Leagues in Europe showing the highest percentage of foreign players.

This is quite frankly ridiculous. Even our second division is half foreign. Sure, Germany and Italy have a high percentage of foreign players. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Especially as those two nations regularly compete for honours at World Cups and European Championships. What strikes me is the high percentage of foreign players in England and Scotland, the lack of success of our clubs and countries, and yet there remains an insistence on British superiority. Why?

When we separate Englishness from Britishness, this Telegraph article provides us with even more to be concerned about. By the end of the 2015/16 season, only 31% of starting players throughout the season were eligible to represent England. That means that on any given weekend of Premier League football, with ten matches and 220 players on display, only 70 of them will be able to represent England. Even sadder is that when Roy Hodgson picked a provisional twenty-six man England squad for Euro 2016, only half of those players had ever played in a major final.

Graph showing percentage of Premier League players eligible to represent England.

There were some key dates along the way.
26th December 1999 - Southampton v Chelsea - Chelsea became the first Premier League side to field an all foreign starting lineup.
14th February 2005 - Arsenal v Crystal Palace - Arsenal became the first Premier League side to name an all foreign sixteen man match day squad. Wenger has since named a squad without an English player in it 149 times.
23rd January 2011 - Blackburn Rovers v West Bromwich Albion - After several substitutions were made, the game reached a point where all twenty-two players on the field represented twenty-two different nations. The Premier League's most cosmopolitan match.

Twenty-two nations from four continents. But what did any of them know about the Premier League?

Incidentally, the last time there was an all English starting eleven was the same year Chelsea fielded their all foreign eleven. That was for Aston Villa as they played Coventry City on the 27th of February 1999. Coventry won that game, and their goals were scored by foreigners.

Did you know that foreign players were banned from playing professional football in England from 1931 to 1978? This Sporting Intelligence article states; "Relatively rare foreigners in that period played either as amateurs, students, prisoners of war, colonial Britons with familial ties, or only after living in Britain for two years for non-footballing reasons." Wow. That's either unknown or completely forgotten. There definitely is still racism in football, and as those people grow old and leave the game, it's happening less and less. We're exposed to different cultures all the time in our every day lives, and for most of us, we don't care about the nationality, only the abilities of the player. This season with my Aldershot boys, at U13 level, we've had Irish, Italian, South African, Dutch, Ghanaian, Greek, and Welsh. With Southampton Ladies before we had Swedish/Irish, Spanish, South African, Turkish, and a Canadian coach. Places as far away as Kuwait we had Lebanese, Palestinian, Canadian, Egyptian, French, and if I remember correctly, even a Saudi.

I have never cared. Looking at that list of Rovers players above, I had shirts with the names Samba (Congo), Givet (France), Pedersen (Norway), and Santa Cruz (Paraguay). They did the business for the team I love. Why would I care about what it says on their passport? Something I've touched on in other articles is Englishness. We have a view of what an English player is or should be. Superlatives like strong, tough, committed, resilient, fearless come to mind. John Terry, Terry Butcher, Bobby Moore, Vinnie Jones (although he represented Wales), Dennis Wise. You know who I mean. Diving and feigning injury is what those sissy foreign players do.

There are hundreds of Ashley Young diving videos on YouTube.

Here's a video of Serbian Nemanja Vidic, known for his Englishness.

Another player that typifies pure Englishness is French born Congo international Chris Samba.

I swear it's a myth. And a ridiculous one at that. Let's just recap what we have learnt so far:

• No English manager has won the Premier League.
• Only 2 British (Scottish) managers have won the Premier League, Dalglish (1) and Ferguson (13)
• Only one Premier League winning manager had played in the competition (Mancini's five games on loan for Leicester at the age of thirty-six).
• Only one Premier League manager had managed in the Premier League before winning it, which was Ranieri's time at Chelsea over a decade before winning it with Leicester.
• Only two managers had managed in English football before winning the Premier League (Dalglish at Liverpool and Ranieri at Chelsea).
• Only two managers to win the Premier League had played in England (Mancini's five games, and Dalglish's legendary Liverpool career).
• There hasn't been an English team in the Champions League final for five years.
• English players make up 9.6% of Champions League final starting lineups.
• The Premier League is made up of over half foreign players, and is continually becoming more and more each season.
• No English manager has won a top five European league since before the Premier League began.
• English managers are the fourth most successful in European competitions.
• English managers have not won the Champions League/European Cup or Europa League/UEFA Cup since 1984.
• Since 1984, only Scottish Alex Ferguson has won a major European trophy, in 1999 and 2008 (if we're not counting the now defunct Cup Winners Cup, won by Robson (ENG) 99, Graham (SCO) 94, and Ferguson (SCO) 91)
• Foreign managers have never failed to qualify for a major tournament with the England team, whereas English managers only have a 70% qualification rate.
• Italian Fabio Capello has the best win percentage of all England managers.
• Capello and Eriksson's combined average win record is around 10% better than English managers.
• Even World Cup winning manager Sir Alf Ramsay only qualified for three out of six tournaments he was in charge for.
• Since the Premier League began, only two English managers have won the FA Cup (Royle 1995, Redknapp 2008).
• The last English manager to win the League Cup was Steve McClaren in 2004.

Here's me and my foreigner, although in this photo I'm the foreigner.

Prior experience of the Premier League or English football means practically nothing. Speaking English as a first language appears to give no real advantage either. On the face of it, one could easily just brush it off as racial prejudice. I think it's even more stupid than that. What can be more stupid than racism? Not much really. I don't think the pundits on the TV and radio are racist. They are stupid, ignorant, lazy, and misinformed. Yes, that does lead one down a path to racism, but I don't personally think they'd ever knowingly discriminate based on race. Although many were surprised at the amount of sexism behind the scenes (Keys and Gray). If we take Paul Merson as an example, and we remember that racism is stupid, in a roundabout way, I think he is too stupid to be that stupid.

So is it stupidity or xenophobia? Let's find out.

Confirmation Bias - Also confirmatory bias or myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.

A bit like when a foreign manager fails. "See, I knew it! Doesn't know the English game!" Compared to when an English manager fails "The board sacked him too early. It was a difficult task and they should have given him another transfer window."

 
Cognitive Dissonance - The mental stress experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. Humans strive for internal consistency, and try to reduce the discomfort of cognitive dissonance by attempting to justify their behaviour by attempting to add or change parts of the conflicting cognition, as well as avoiding situations that are likely to increase such discomfort.

Listen to two weeks of the same show on TalkSport, and as they only ever discuss the same five topics, you will eventually have discovered plenty of times when the presenters and pundits have said something that conflicts with a viewpoint that they have previously expressed. It doesn't quite fit into everything else they believe.

Dunning-Kruger Effect - A cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. It is attributed to metacognitive incapacity, on the part of those with low ability, to recognise their ineptitude and evaluate their competence accurately.

This one could be explained by all those people that think Guardiola had it easy at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, and that also think they could successfully manage the England team better than all those failures. How hard can it be?

The three ideas from applied psychology can help us go some way to understanding why this preference exists in the minds of some football men. Foreign managers will fail, and when they do, we have the ready made excuses of;

• He doesn't know the league.
• He doesn't speak the language.
• English football is just different.
• He doesn't have the players he did at his old club, where it was much easier.
• The Premier League is a more competitive league than what he's used to.
• The league is more physical than he was expecting.
• He doesn't know the language.
• He needs to bring in a British assistant who knows the league.
• Those ideas don't work in the Premier League.
• Cold/wet/windy Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday in Stoke,
• That league only has two teams, unlike the Premier League, which is a fight in every game.
• Culture shock.
• Can't deal with the cold.
• Can't handle the media attention.
• The fans are too passionate that it's intimidating.
• He's unsettled living in a new country.

There's many more. I have discussed at length before the sheer ridiculousness of such statements. We've heard them, and more, countless times. They present a combination of half-truths, generalisations, and stupid rhetoric. In some of them, there may be nuggets of truth, and I shall explain. In some, they are evidently wrong, like needing to know the league. The Premier League is a global league. Most football fans watch it. They have the basic knowledge of it. That's enough. Mourinho knows football. He knows it very well. I doubt he's paid much attention to the WSL. Apart from his time at Chelsea, I would guess he's had very little experience with women's teams. Do you think a WSL team would turn down the chance to have Mourinho as manager because "He doesn't know the league?" Absolutely not. What he doesn't know, he'll work out quickly. What's important for him to do his job, he will find out. What did he know about the Premier League? What did Wenger know about the Premier League? What did Conte know about the Premier League? I knew nothing about the Hampshire Futsal League or BUCS football, yet still won those leagues at the first attempt. In the grand scheme of things, it's probably not even worth a tenth of a percent.

Language is another one. It's more important than league knowledge. If league knowledge was actually a thing, why would Premier League teams keep buying foreigners? Bobby Robson was successful in Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands. He didn't speak those languages. He had translators. Fabio Capello, England's most winningest (stupid American phrase) did not speak English when he first took the job. Watford manager Walter Mazzarri does not speak English and communicates to his players through translators. It's a cheap shot, and an easy scapegoat. When I first worked in Mexico, I found it very hard to communicate with the youngest players. They had no idea what I was on about, and I could do very little with them. It was a mess. Language and communication is important. We soon solved the problem. A dad, captain of the men's team, with a good understanding, and a top bloke, began translating my instructions to the boys. I knew enough Spanish to know he wasn't telling them something else entirely. With seven year olds, you don't have time to think and translate in your head.

Adult players will try to meet you half way. And since adults have a far better understanding of football, they can often get what you mean through contextualisation. "Three teams. Blue, red, green. Blue and red have ball. Green want ball. Eight versus four. Possession." Most players and coaches will understand what's going on here, if working with twelve players in a 20x20 box. Going back to the Premier League top four, Conte learnt English last summer, Pep still struggles occasionally, and spent six months learning German before moving to Bayern, Klopp apparently knew English already, and Pochettino hardly spoke English when he first joined Southampton. It's a hurdle, definitely, but it's a very small one to get over. Effective communication is important. Most managers know that if you can't do something, you bring in someone who can.

It's hardly like British managers have it easy from that point of view anyway. Coaches like Mourinho and Van Gaal were polyglots, as they had worked in many countries, with all sorts of nationalities. How long do you reckon it took Ji Sun Park to understand Ferguson's thick Glaswegian accent? Bare in mind that Carlos Tevez spent years in England and never learnt English. His trophy cabinet is rather full.

Me and my foreigner again. Although in
this picture, we're both foreigners. Hmm.
Perhaps foreigness is down to perspective
and is therefore a pretty stupid concept
anyway.

Then there's this English philosophy. I'm not sure how English a team's playing style is when the manager is foreign, and most of the playing staff are also foreign. Still, it persists. It's hard to shake such a reputation. The Premier League is viewed as fast-paced and tough. Yet we know the Bundesliga is faster due to their counter-attacks, and one could argue La Liga is tougher due to their yellow cards (tactical fouls in the attacking third). So we're largely basing this on subjective opinions. The football in Europe's top five looks remarkably similar these days. That could be something to do with the fact they're all so closely linked, with a multitude of coaches and players moving from one to another. Clearly, it doesn't take long for foreign managers or players to come to England and figure out the Premier League.

Is it because we like to stick to our own? Or we wish to see our own do well? That's natural, but wishing is something entirely different to making an exclusive club. Shirts sell rapidly around the world when a player from a certain country moves to a big team. Morten Gamst Pedersen playing in the Premier League made him the second most popular man in Norway. Norwegians must have loved seeing his goals against Manchester United. We all do that. We like it when someone from our town, our school, our team, our country does well. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just don't use it to create a barrier. Don't promote your own ahead of others when no such justification for your perceived superiority exists. Isn't that a little bit like what racists do?

I would argue that it's more of a threat intellectually. Racism, homophobia, and sexism still exist in football. We're slowly tearing down those walls. What I believe this to be, is that it is a challenge to the norm, and the accepted ideas. We have our opinions on what is right and wrong, good and bad. That's based on years of hard work, trial and error, experience, and observation. "I'm English, I know the Premier League, I know English football." Such a statement suggests that someone is incredibly sure of themselves, and likely to the point where their beliefs are set in stone. You can't get them to shift, even in the face of conflicting evidence. "How could some bloke from [any foreign country] come in and do a better job than [any mediocre British manager... Alan Pardew]? He doesn't know the league! He's not worked in England before! He's too young! He won't be able to handle the physical English game!" All this is nonsense.

Due to this lack of intellectualism, as I recall being told by FA tutors that "you academics are ruining the game, you have no clue!", I think what we're witnessing is a gross misrepresentation of the importance of certain factors pertaining to experience and attributes. Language and league knowledge are relatively unimportant when compared to tactical knowledge, ability to inspire and motivate players, eye for talent, and the ability to coach and train groups and individuals. Those are obviously huge factors. One could argue you need to know the league in order to be able to successfully motivate players. No. Good players are intrinsically motivated. They just need to be focused, and the coach helps with that. Whether you're in China or Argentina, the players want to win. There's a few different techniques that display a varying level of success depending on age, gender, ability, and level, which most coaches figure out quickly. I'll save you some time; you can be more direct with men, you have to be softer with women. Wow. Mind blown. Crash course in motivation. That would have taken one session to figure out, not three years in the Premier League. There's so many other factors like that, which really are not issues at all.

"Bloody Foreigner, coming here wanting to know what love is!"

Culture shock? I didn't eat baked beans for about nine months in Mexico. I have them nearly every day in the UK. What effect that had on my coaching, will take years of close scrutiny, observation, and research to figure out. It's not important. And let's face it, the TV and radio pundits, and many of the journalists that write sensationalist articles, actually have no idea what they are talking about. Ex-players as pundits may have been fantastic players, but they're not intelligent people. Just watch them attempt to string a sentence together on Soccer Saturday. Many of them played at a time where nutritionists, physios, strength and conditioning coaches, psychologists, analysts, scouts etc. were either non-existent, or done by the same bloke in a cloth cap. These pundits that criticise players for not being able to play two games in three days played at a time where the drinking culture in football was huge. It's not that you can't play two games in three days, it's just that you'll only be at 80% recovery, and the longer you perpetuate that cycle, the larger the risk of injury. Again, it doesn't take three years of Premier League experience to learn that. I've just told you. And that's pretty much all you'll have to know, as anything deeper than that will be delegated to the sports science department.

These were good players, from an era where football was quite different, but they are not intelligent blokes. They can't provide in depth analysis, evaluation, or insight. They're out of touch, with a cushty job, allowed to spout all sorts of nonsense about the game. Many viewers are in the same boat, but without the top level playing experience. Such viewers are searching for soundbites that they can repeat to their colleagues at work, or their mates down the pub. It's often like listening to last night's episode of Match of the Day.

So no, I don't think it's racism. It's a fear of new ideas, and a challenging of perceptions that they just can't tolerate, that often manifests itself in a form of disdain and distrust towards those of a foreign origin. Okay, reading that back, it sounds like racism. Just not in a direct way. They're dismissive of ideas, and it just so happens that those ideas are foreign. Though I always say; "You don't know you're a racist until your daughter brings home a black boyfriend." You don't know you're homophobic either until your son does the same.

And finally, we end up here.

A tweet from BT Sport presenter Jake Humphrey.

You should probably know by now what the answer is. In case you were unaware, the people of Twitter filled in.

So no need for me to get involved. Statistically, I have about as much chance as winning the Premier League as Scholes, Lampard, Gerrard, or Terry. We're all English, putting us at roughly 0%. If anything, I'm at a slight advantage, having never played in the Premier League, and never playing for England. I also have more coaching experience too. And in other countries, with more languages, and without baked beans. John Terry did a session on our B license course, so we were using the same tutor and would have passed around the same time.

Could Gerrard become the first English manager to win the Premier League? I sincerely doubt that, but we'll see. Football is a funny old game. Although it's not that funny when we unjustifiably seek to exclude foreigners.