So much for three-year plan - what is the secret to manager longevity?

In his BBC Sport column, ex-Premier League boss Tony Pulis explains why it is so hard for football managers to keep their jobs in the modern game.

So much for three-year plan - what is the secret to manager longevity?

[Tony Pulis - Going Direct banner]

27 February 2026

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Last week, on a cold night in Glasgow, Celtic boss Martin O'Neill joined a very select club of managers who have been in charge for 1,000 professional games.

The League Managers Association (LMA) Hall of Fame 1,000 club is something I'm proud to be a member of too - there are only 40 of us, including Sir Alex Ferguson, Ron Atkinson, Jim Smith, Dave Bassett, Harry Redknapp, Graham Taylor, Brian Clough and Sam Allardyce.

It's getting harder to last that long, though. Far more managers are getting sacked, and more often, than there were when I started out, and for more than half of them, their first job is also their last.

According to the LMA, there have been 165 first-time managers since 1 January 2013, and to date 56% of them haven't got another manager's job.

In England now, the average time a manager is given at a club in the top four divisions of our men's game is one year and nine months, which is up from the end of the last season, when it was one year and four months, but is still crazy.

Gone are the days where you could get a job and think about building something - it seems to be more about survival now.

Longevity is highest in the Premier League, where the average time you get is more than two years, but it drops in the Football League - which is part of the reason why I'd definitely recommend that, given the opportunity, young coaches today should seriously look at jobs abroad, especially in Scandinavian countries for example, if they have the chance.

Martin, who turns 74 on Sunday, reached his milestone with Celtic, a club he adores, so it must have been something special.

I reached my 1,000th game with West Brom in 2016, and it came against my former club Stoke at the Britannia Stadium, as it was then. As I said at the time, you could not have scripted it better.

Like many managers of his generation who began lower down the pyramid, Martin started at the bottom of the ladder, in non-league.

It was looked on as good grounding and experience for managers who would go on to get jobs in our top division.

It was the same in Scotland too, where you would cut your teeth at smaller clubs before moving onwards and upwards - all of the names I mentioned earlier followed the same path, as did Bill Shankly and Howard Wilkinson. It was my route too, but so much is different today.

The advice I was given about how to stick around

Getty Images

West Brom captain Darren Fletcher presented Pulis with a Ship's Decanter at the club's training ground to commemorate his 1,000th match as a manager, the day before they played his old club Stoke. The game finished 1-1

My first chance as a manager came with Bournemouth in the summer of 1992. At first I was not thinking much beyond my first game - a draw on Preston's plastic pitch by the way - and neither, it seems, was my chairman, Norman Hayward.

I'd been given a club car, which was about 20 years old and, a few months into my first season, we went up to watch Grimsby play one night.

We drove there in his Mercedes and on the way back he dropped me off where I'd parked up. The windscreen was iced up so I turned on my engine and Norman got out his credit card to try to scrape the ice off.

While he was doing that, I heard him shouting: "Oh no, I can't believe it!" I thought he had snapped his credit card but he'd actually seen my tax disc. "They've given you 12 months. I told them six months!"

I laughed and said: "Thanks Norman, that gives me loads of confidence!"

Still, I was fortunate to get the chance at Bournemouth, and also lucky in that I received some good advice on how I might stick around.

I always remember the late Alec Stock - another member of the 1,000 club, who had long spells in charge of Leyton Orient, QPR and Fulham as well as with Yeovil, Roma, Luton and Bournemouth - ringing me up one night and explaining why I should work on a three-year plan.

The first season, he said, was to assess the players, staff, and get to grips with all the other aspects of how the club is run.

The second season was to reset it, to get it working on and off the pitch and win all the battles to get things my own way for the third season which, according to Alec, was the season that everyone - supporters, directors and yourself - should see progress.

He also told me any manager would only ever be judged a success by producing a winning team.

During my time at Bournemouth, I learned how true that was - never mind how hard you worked or how much you did to protect your club financially, management was all about winning.

The secret of longevity - learning how to win

[Celtic manager Martin O'Neill turns 74 on Sunday. His 1,000th professional game as a manager saw his Celtic side lose 4-1 at home to Stuttgart in the Europa League]
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O'Neill turns 74 on Sunday. In his 1,000th professional game as a manager, his Celtic side lost 4-1 at home to Stuttgart in the Europa League

At the end of my second season, a new chairman took over the club and I was on my way. So much for the three-year plan, but it was still a great two years of learning for me.

Norman was a hard chairman, but he was honest and we remain friends today. I was left more determined than ever to get back in the saddle and go again.

I was 34 when I got the Bournemouth job, which is very young for a manager but I learned the defining reason behind a long life in this new role - as Alec said, management is all about winning.

Irrespective of everything which surrounds the role - which has dramatically changed from my early days, by the way - if you don't win, then forget your philosophies because you won't be in a job for long.

Learning to win with different clubs and different players is a challenge but it was one I enjoyed.

Certain principles must be applied wherever you are and although your team's strengths can and do vary, those principles must stay rock solid.

Most young coaches today move on from academy football into professional football. Academy football is a teaching job, professional football is a winning job.

You only learn that when you get a professional job - but spaces are scarce for British managers in the Premier League, and they are dwindling in the Championship too.

Of the 44 clubs in England's top two divisions, there are only 21 British managers - 20 in permanent roles, plus Michael Carrick at Manchester United until the end of the season. That's the case even though our football associations deliver state-of-the-art coaching courses which are recognised as being as good, if not better, than in any other country worldwide.

Managers are seen more as coaches now

What's changed for British managers trying to get a job - or stay in one - is the rise of sporting directors, who have been appointed by mostly foreign owners.

As I've mentioned before in this column, both the Premier League and Championship also have enormous numbers of players from abroad and clubs know buying players from South America, Africa and Asia can be better value than the market at home.

So you have foreign owners and foreign directors of football - or even English directors of football working for foreign owners - who all see the value in appointing foreign coaches who have experience of working abroad, speaking different languages and understanding different cultures.

Because our top two leagues are so multicultural, the big agencies who have often provided assistance to the owners in buying the clubs and have helped guide their appointments too, have an almost direct line to the club's recruitment policies.

Recruitment is everything - if you can crack that side of things and bring good players to your club, then success will be forthcoming. Bournemouth, Brighton and Brentford have proved that.

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