There has been no rise in the number. But there is one significant difference. Now those managers are much more concentrated in the Premier League and, not just that, the top half of the division. Indeed, this season, for the first time ever in the top flight of English football, there is not one single English manager who has achieved a top-10 finish.
In fact it is the first time there is only one Briton in there with Wales' Mark Hughes clinging on in ninth place with Stoke City. There are a mere three English managers at the 20 clubs – the lowest total yet – and they are all at the three clubs immediately above the relegation places with Alan Pardew at 15th-placed Crystal Palace, Eddie Howe at Bournemouth in 16th and Sam Allardyce at 17th-placed Sunderland. The only other Briton to survive? Well, he is another Welshman, Tony Pulis, with 14th-placed West Bromwich Albion.
It is strikingly obvious that the trend is increasingly for British managers – and particularly English managers – to be at clubs fighting lower and lower down the Premier League or now to be given their chances only at clubs trying to avoid the drop or whom they have led to promotion.
It was a sobering thought as the managerial community gathered at Old Billingsgate in central London on Monday night to raise a glass at the annual League Managers Association dinner. That January 2008 date is significant because it was then that Richard Bevan was appointed as the LMA’s chief executive and he admits that the overseas trend is “a cause for concern”.
“We all obviously want to see as many homegrown managers being as successful as possible,” Bevan says. “We will continue to invest in the education and career development of our young homegrown managers, we will do everything we can to prepare them for the increasing competition for managerial roles that is a function of the global appeal of working in England at the top level.”
That is the rub. The Premier League is the richest league in the world so can offer among the best salaries and attract the best managerial talent. There is also the school of thought, put forward by executives at some Premier League clubs, that while they struggle to attract the world’s top 10 or 20 player, because the likes of Lionel Messi and Thomas Müller want to operate in leagues in Spain, Germany, Italy and France that they can dominate, it is the not the same for managers.
Partly that is due to the money, partly that is because – despite changes in the way a number of clubs, such as Watford and Swansea City, operate – managers in England still tend to be given more control than in other countries.
And so we see Pep Guardiola coming to Manchester City and Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool, Antonio Conte heading for Chelsea and Jose Mourinho eyeing the Manchester United job – to succeed Louis van Gaal – as he declares he wants to continue working in England rather than return to Spain or Italy. So we cannot necessarily celebrate the fact that the elite want to work here and, at the same time, lament that they are taking the best jobs and stifling English managers.
Foreign managers also like the way the Premier League is organised. The stadiums; the infrastructure – even the fixture list is not changed at the drop of a hat with inconvenient kick-off times, as happens in Spain in particular.
There is also the presence of more foreign owners who tend to take a greater global view but would also instinctively rather recruit from beyond these shores than consider the Championship.
While little can be done about that – beyond trying to influence them to make decisions based on ability as well as reputation – it is a surprise that English managers have not taken matters into their own hands. After all, if they are being overlooked in the Premier League, why are they not attempting to get jobs in the Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A or Ligue 1?
Gary Neville did not last long at Valencia, David Moyes did not last much longer at Real Sociedad and ... that is about it. The fact is that while there are 20 Spaniards and the same number of Italians managing the 98 clubs across the five top European leagues, there are only those three Englishmen: Pardew, Howe and Allardyce, who complained that soon there will not be a single English manager in the Premier League.
Although that was dismissed by Bevan, it is hard to see, right now, which one of them will challenge towards the top of the table and, even more unlikely, manage a Champions League club.
Since Howard Wilkinson’s Leeds United won the title in the final season of the old First Division, 1991-92, no Englishman has finished top. The highest was second for Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United in 1996. After that the highest finish has been third – and then only twice – with Roy Evans at Liverpool and Sir Bobby Robson with Newcastle United in 2003.
So where do the English managers go? They go down the leagues, it seems, given the overall number of foreign managers has not increased, which for the national team is also a problem. There is no strong domestic field to choose from when it comes to deciding Roy Hodgson’s successor and that decision may have to be made sooner rather than later.
Hodgson was saving Fulham from relegation when Bevan was appointed, before achieving a top 10 finish the following season. In 2008 there were four foreign managers in the Premier League’s top 10. Admittedly there were only two Englishmen – West Ham United’s Alan Curbishley and Harry Redknapp at Portsmouth – but there was a far more domestic, homegrown feel to the managerial landscape. There were 11 English managers in the Premier League. Now there are just those three and although there will be Sean Dyche at Burnley next season, no one is expecting the trend to be reversed. The English manager in top-flight football is becoming a dying breed.