Managerial Veterans Are Now in Demand: An Insight into the Premier League's Trend

English football has long had a carousel of managers that troubled Premier League clubs would seek out to try and avoid relegation. However, this carousel has now been joined by a new one, featuring a group of veteran managers who are well into their 60s and 70s. These include Neil Warnock, who at the age of 74 has returned to Huddersfield to rescue them from Championship relegation. Roy Hodgson, 75, is also still working wonders at Crystal Palace, and Sam Allardyce, 68, has recently accepted the call from Leeds, his ninth Premier League club.

Sometimes referred to as the "ferryman" in Italy, these veteran managers may not spend their winters at icy training complexes, but they remain a drug to those who have managed multiple clubs. One factor that sets these managers apart is their level of man-management and the personal touch that modern football's other developments can sideline.

While modern football places much emphasis on "underlying numbers" of match analysis, certain players within struggling teams can find their sense of self-worth being reduced to a cold, negative spreadsheet. However, the sharp shock of Warnock's ribald dressing-room antics or Hodgson's gentlemanly tones, reminiscent of a 70s London sitcom, can counteract this.

The benefits of analytics have indeed become explicit within modern football, but leading managers like Pep Guardiola, Jürgen Klopp, and Mikel Arteta marry their technocracy with a collective motivational approach. However, replicating that among lesser talents offers no guarantee of success, as seen by Nathan Jones’s ill-fated recruitment at Southampton.

Managerial recruitment has diversified in recent times. That old roundabout rusted to a halt. Different solutions are sought but survival rates lessen considerably, with 14 Premier League managers sacked this season, smashing the previous record of 10.

The late-season relegation equation of three clubs from five is split between three Premier League veterans against two first-season rookies. Only Steve Cooper at Nottingham Forest has stayed the full course. At Southampton, Rubén Sellés’s two wins from 13 will not be enough to cover for Jones’s doomed regime; Bournemouth, staying up, had far more success in replacing Scott Parker with Gary O’Neil.

Leicester turned to Dean Smith, Everton to Sean Dyche. At 51 and 52, both took on challenges in hope of further, “permanent” employment. The Warnock/Hodgson/Allardyce trio, the springtime set, have no such expectation. They may only offer short-term success but is success anything other than short term in modern football?

Come next February, with the right conditions and finances, expect to see the old boys’ names linked with the stragglers again.