Iain Dowie is not our idea of a man who might appear on a list of bosses people would least like to work for.
Gordon Ramsay would be up there because anyone who delivers anything other than unfailing excellence is belittled and held to ridicule with no feeling or expletive spared.
Sir Alan Sugar would be up there too along with Kelvin Mackenzie, the former editor of the Sun who once replied to a woman feature writer's plea to "At least give me an 'e' for effort" by retorting "You can have an 'f' for....". Well, I think you can fill in the blanks.
But we just do not have Dowie down as a man who was sacked from his job at Charlton, as some reports have suggested, for ranting and raving in the changing room.
Don't get us wrong. We're sure Dowie likes a rant as much as any Premiership manager who sees his future in the hands of overpaid, overpampered men-children who know the price of every Ferrari in the car park but not too much about the value of shedding every drop of sweat in the team's cause.
I'm sure Dowie did his fair share of shouting during the 12 Premiership matches during which he was in charge.
But he was not sacked because of the decibel levels. He was sacked because his team could muster no more than nine goals and eight points during his reign.
And because Charlton chief executive Peter Varney and chairman Richard Murray, who were becoming increasingly twitchy about the television cash they would lose if the rock-bottom club were relegated, lacked the guts and resolve to back their own appointment even though they had handed him £11million for reinforcements.
If a football manager's message is coming over loud and clear you can be sure the board will turn any number of deaf ears to allegations of "ranting and raving".
No-one has sent the spittle barometer soaring quite like Sir Alex Ferguson in English football over the past 20 years.
He has raved for Queen and country. The key fact is that his players have listened and continue to listen to him.
At Charlton it seemed the board were too eager to listen to disaffected players who had an axe to grind, in a preposterous poll of staff's views, rather than to a manager who was one of English football's brightest talents.
Yes, Dowie could be eccentric.
He was prone to ask and answer his own questions in press conferences. He was well-read enough to quote great literary figures and took many of his motivation techniques from the works of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and uplifting stories in the 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' series.
He also employed former Australian rugby league fitness coach John Harvin and techniques such as boxing and pulling sleds to get fit. Not always guaranteed to make you Mr Popular.
No, Dowie was no softie. He was intelligent, opinionated. Oh yes, and he had taken Charlton to the quarter-finals of the Carling Cup for the first time in their history with a winnable tie against Wycombe to come.
Not much consolation perhaps compared to their bottom spot in the Premiership, but with Dowie given time there was a chance of survival.
No offence to former number two Les Reed, who takes over in time for this week's trip to Reading.
But Charlton, by all accounts, now have a lovely man to work for - and even less of a chance of staying in the Premiership.
A question for BFR - why is taking a difficult and potentially embarrassing decision at an early stage lacking in guts and resolve?
If you realise that you have made a mistake, to continue down that path is surely foolish not "gutless"?
Anyway, how do we know that it was ranting and raving that got him the sack? Much more likely that he couldn't fit into the system that they had devised or the fact that his training routines were so off the wall that they neglected the basics.
I find it amusing that Reg Varney commented that they had made a mistake in setting up the structure they had put in place over the summer, but went on to change nothing about it other than one staff member in a particular role. Doen't sound to me that they had lost faith in the system - merely one cog in that system!
[....and on a non-footballing matter, I must take umbrage at your criticism of Gordon Ramsey. Yes, he doesn't hold back in giving home truths to people who need to wake up and smell the coffee, but he always finds positives and leaves them with a message that he believes in them and knows they can do better. If you watch Kitchen Nightmares, in particular, you can see how motivational he is and why he is such a successful restauanteur (and don't forget that it's TV, not real life!)]
Why would anyone read anything on Teamtalk? It's "news" is usually ripped off from somewhere else without crediting it.
Incidentally, Teamtalk is owned by a firm called 365 Digital Media (which also owns Football 365 and Rivals.net) while Talksport is owned by UTV, which runs ITV in Northern Ireland and a clutch of radio stations in the UK and Ireland.
"A question for BFR - why is taking a difficult and potentially embarrassing decision at an early stage lacking in guts and resolve?"
Mark...I was cut & pasting the article here as the link supplied in the OP didn't work. My apologies I should have made it clear that was what I was doing as the text does not mirror my thoughts.
Comments
All tossers
If you realise that you have made a mistake, to continue down that path is surely foolish not "gutless"?
Anyway, how do we know that it was ranting and raving that got him the sack? Much more likely that he couldn't fit into the system that they had devised or the fact that his training routines were so off the wall that they neglected the basics.
I find it amusing that Reg Varney commented that they had made a mistake in setting up the structure they had put in place over the summer, but went on to change nothing about it other than one staff member in a particular role. Doen't sound to me that they had lost faith in the system - merely one cog in that system!
[....and on a non-footballing matter, I must take umbrage at your criticism of Gordon Ramsey. Yes, he doesn't hold back in giving home truths to people who need to wake up and smell the coffee, but he always finds positives and leaves them with a message that he believes in them and knows they can do better. If you watch Kitchen Nightmares, in particular, you can see how motivational he is and why he is such a successful restauanteur (and don't forget that it's TV, not real life!)]
Incidentally, Teamtalk is owned by a firm called 365 Digital Media (which also owns Football 365 and Rivals.net) while Talksport is owned by UTV, which runs ITV in Northern Ireland and a clutch of radio stations in the UK and Ireland.
Mark...I was cut & pasting the article here as the link supplied in the OP didn't work. My apologies I should have made it clear that was what I was doing as the text does not mirror my thoughts.
As the old proverb goes - "Too many chefs............make television programmes for BBC2"