Graham Kelly: Managers' chance to end the muddle of ignorance with one-year course

Football is undergoing a quiet revolution. Behind all the glamour and hysteria of the World Cup build-up, the Football Association's technical director, Howard Wilkinson, who doubles as the chairman of the League Managers' Association, has taken time out from overseeing the building of the national football centre near Burton-on-Trent to help develop a new course for potential managers.

Warwick Business School, part of the University of Warwick, opened its doors to the first intake on Friday. Students will undergo a one-year programme designed under the auspices of the Footballers Further Education and Vocational Training Society, which is funded by the game's major bodies.

It is good that, as it embarks on only its second decade as a separate organisation, the LMA is finally making strides in raising standards and achieving status for its members and for the game. For too long we have muddled along in ignorance and the number of sackings still reflects the fact that we hit and hope far too often.

The one-year course, aimed at increasing the management skills of former players who want to move into management, concentrates not on football itself but on the application of business practices and human relations to the game.

The first intake of 17 includes Mark Hughes, Brian McClair, Kelham O'Hanlon, Nigel Spackman, Paul Groves, Dave Watson, Stuart Gray and Brian Laws.

Heralding the launch of the programme, the Professional Footballers' Association chief executive, Gordon Taylor, referred to the changing nature of the game and the need for high quality management training.

As the LMA vice-president, Lawrie McMenemy, had reflected at the annual awards dinner earlier in the week, it was only by the hard work and foresight of those such as Graham Taylor, Sir Alex Ferguson, David Pleat and the late John Camkin that the body came to enjoy a separate existence. Previously the LMA was part of IFMA, not a throwback to Tommy Handley, but the Institute of Football Management and Administration.

They and others saw the need for a specific body to represent managers' interests and tapped into Gordon Taylor's expertise in order to get the fledgling administration off the ground. Even Brian Clough went to the earliest meetings to show solidarity, interrogating Steve Coppell, then the PFA chairman: "Are you with us or with them, young man?"

At last week's dinner Ferguson accepted the special LMA merit award given to Bobby Robson, which he accomplished with no little aplomb. Paying tribute to the Newcastle manager from a platform which he himself had graced on so many previous occasions, he spoke of the special passion and dignity which Robson always brings to the game, never better epitomised than by his grace in defeat in Italia '90 and by the attacking force of the Newcastle team he has reinvigorated.

McMenemy, in a comment reminiscent of Ferguson's barb about the Arsenal manager, Arsène Wenger, never joining him for a post-match drink, said it was sad that the foreign managers such Wenger, Gérard Houllier of Liverpool, and Chelsea's Claudio Ranieri did not come to many meetings and exchange views. He also complimented the former managers who were always prepared to put their knowledge and experience at the disposal of the younger men coming through.

In this connection, the best news of the evening came when West Bromwich Albion's Gary Megson, accepting the Nationwide First Division award from the Minister for Sport, Richard Caborn, informed the gathering that his assistant, Frank Burrows, was recovering from cancer. And the table containing Jim Smith, Ken Furphy, who managed Pele in the United States, Alan Dicks, Noel Cantwell and Jimmy Sirrel positively creaked with the weight of experience.

Sirrel, the canny Scot who guided Notts County's fortunes for so many years, was 80 in February. The story goes that, after one particularly long lunch in the company of his counterpart across the Trent, he was stopped by the law whilst attempting to drive home. "Good afternoon, Mr Sirrel. Have you been drinking?" "Aye, I've been for a bite with Brian and we opened a bottle of white, then we opened a bottle of red... and we had a couple of brandies." "I'll have to ask you to blow into this bag. " "D'ye no' ******* believe me?"

One of my first tasks in football administration was to ring Jim Smith at Boston United and take his order for the Football League Review, the weekly insert which clubs stapled into their match programmes. Anything over 500 copies and I'd got a result.

Like Smith, McMenemy and Clough cut their managerial teeth in the lower divisions. Education, education, education, is never wasted. I just hope the graduates of the future still have the opportunity to practice their craft at the smaller League clubs. And their new skills equip them not just to sense when the axe is about to fall.

grahamkelly@btinternet.com