Ken Jones: Managerial stress? Try telling that to those on the poverty line

The football public of 30 and more years ago saw Matt Busby as an urbane, avuncular figure, sucking on his pipe, seemingly unmoved by the pressure of managing Manchester United. It was, as he once confided to his friend and great contemporary, Stan Cullis of Wolves, a deception. "I may look calm, but there's plenty going on inside," Busby said.

In the whispering rush of memory those words connected on Monday, with the news that the West Ham manager, Glenn Roeder, had been rushed to hospital, after complaining of chest pains following the narrow victory over Middlesbrough that kept alive his club's slim hopes of avoiding relegation.

Dutifully, the popular prints made their own diagnosis of Roeder's condition, concluding that he had suffered at least a mild heart attack brought on by the cumulative stress of trying to keep West Ham in the Premiership. In no time at all they had built up dossiers to prove that the stress of football management is potentially a killer. Did it not take the life of Jock Stein when in charge of Scotland for a World Cup qualifier against Wales in Cardiff and cause Gérard Houllier, Graeme Souness and Joe Kinnear to undergo major heart surgery? Did it not weigh so heavily on Kenny Dalglish that he quit the game?

To an extent, football managers are prisoners of their natures. Tough, excitable, calm, thoughtful, persuasive, unforgiving. With an essentially docile team, Roeder had to labour for hardness, seeking out words and phrases that proved he could be as mean as the next man, as though the discovery that he suffered bouts of civility would establish him as something pallid.

It was announced on Tuesday that Roeder's condition is not, "despite press reports", heart related but due to the blockage of a minor blood vessel in his brain, put bluntly, a stroke. This is not to say that the stress imposed by abusive supporters and a harshly questioning press didn't get to Roeder but it does not excuse the excitable conclusions instantly reached at Upton Park on Monday.

It is reasonable to suppose that the stresses of football management have greatly increased with the advance of corporate activity and, in the Premiership, the importance of television money. Certainly, the urgency of a confusing present puts a terrible strain on the language of urgency. Is it a "big game" or just an "important game" or, heaven help us, a "must-win game"?

Scorn and applause, exoneration and abuse, indignation and sympathy (in small doses) are the expressions of this dubious trade and television in reporting the performances of football managers. Restraint is not on the agenda. Stress, we can assume, killed Stein; stress almost killed Houllier; stress drove Brian Clough to drink.

But at best these are glib assumptions. Stress exists in all trades and professions and all walks of life. Try explaining the stress of managing a football club for more than £1m a year to the many thousands of people in this country existing on the poverty line. Is it less stressful to perform heart surgery than to produce a winning Premiership team?

Roeder's plight has brought out the fact that 14 managers were found to have minor heart problems when attending a health-screening programme put in place by the League Managers Association with funding from the Professional Footballers Association. At 47, Roeder was among the 30 per cent who declined to take part.

The LMA's chief executive, John Barnwell, is careful not to over emphasise the effect of pressure on his members. "We accept that it comes with the job," he said. "On the other hand we have a responsibility to ensure that they clearly identify the increased intensity of the job."

When Sir Alex Ferguson reversed a decision to retire at 60 he put stress in its place. At 70-years-old, Sir Bobby Robson is beyond worrying about it. For their younger brethren the problem is coping with the pressures brought by football's popularity and consequently the amount of exposure it gets on television and in newspapers.

Sir Alf Ramsey once remarked that football managers get too much of the praise and too much of the blame. Seems that nothing much changes.