Why are Southern English such sh*t managers?

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   There is a geographical line in Britain, a sort of managerial Hadrian's Wall, that separates the managerial country north of it from the non-managerial country south of it.
It stretches from Ellesmere Port at the mouth of the Mersey in the west, skirts north of Manchester and then follows the M62 and skirts back around the southern border of Yorkshire, before making for the coast just south of Scarborough. 

Every great British manager comes from north of this line. 

The Scotch are, pound for pound, the greatest football managerial nation on earth. 

The great English managers were all northern. 

Clough and Revie were from Middlesbrough. Herbert Chapman was from Scarborough. Stan Cullis was from Ellesmere Port. Joe Fagan was more Scouse than Yosser Hughes. Bill Nicholson was a Yorkshire man. Wor Bobby and Wor Jackie were from north east mining country. As was the greatest of all English managers, Bob Paisley. 

Even the last English manager to win the league, Howard Wilkinson, was from Yorkshire.

But, you may say, Alf Ramsey won the World Cup, and he was from Dagenham. Alf Ramsey was a jammy git who got lucky in one season with Ipswich and with England was blessed with a load of gifted northerners and a jammy git from West Ham and a dodgy Russian linesman. He ended up making a tool of himself in the next two World Cups when he threw away a 2-0 lead against Germany in '70 and then failed to qualify at all in '73.. Alf Ramsey was not a great manager. Alf Ramsey was also widely regarded as a patrician dickhead.

What is it about managers from south of this line that precludes them from greatness? Is it that they are essentially spivs, that they are essentially Del Boy?  

Malcolm Allison, Terry Venables, Glenn Hoddle, Harry Redknapp, Barry Fry, Alan Pardew, Frank Lampard - would you trust these men?

As Frank would say, no, but seriously, would you trust them? 

Is there an essential difference in trustworthiness between wideboys who you know vote Tory, and old school Scotch and northern socialists born into a tradition of working with your hands - shipbuilding, steel working, coal mining - putting your body on the line to earn a wage, men you knew came up the hard way?

But now there is no more shipbuilding, steelworking or coal mining. And thus, no more grizzled Scotch and northern football men like this. All we have left are the muck and bullets of Chris Wilder and Neil Warnock. And British football managerial greatness has ceased to exist. The managerial Hadrian's Wall has moved south to the English Channel, to meet Brexit.

Edited by sid waddell - 20 Jul 2020 at 1:53am