THE most troubled football clubs are often portrayed as beyond repair. Until there is a complete overhaul of ownership and structure, it will be impossible to improve the club’s fortunes.

Not even the greatest manager in the world can turn them around, but what happens when a manager comes in a does just that? Is the influence of a good manager so great that they can paper over even the biggest cracks?

The idea that one person can completely change the outlook of a football team reinforces the idea of the manager in football, and that with the right person at the helm, a team can triumph against both internal and external adversity. 

It also raises the question of what the role of the manager is in modern football, and how that role has evolved throughout the history of the professional game.

It is too early to say that Erik ten Hag has fully turned Manchester United around, and the case to oust the Glazer family, who are up there with the worst owners in the Premier League, remains strong, but the team’s improvement under the Dutch manager has been clear.

This doesn’t just apply to results on the pitch, which have experienced an uptick in recent times, but also to the feeling around the squad and the club, which to their supporters is now more recognisable.

Under Ten Hag’s guidance, they have only lost once in all competitions in 2023 — a 3-2 Premier League defeat to league leaders Arsenal — and have won 11 of their 15 games this year.

It appears the club have finally found the right man to propel the club forward having experienced years of uncertainty and relative decline since Alex Ferguson stepped down, just under 10 years ago, in May 2013.

Ferguson was perhaps the archetypal hegemonic football manager. Even the areas in which he didn’t excel, he would often be the one delegating and deciding who would perform those other tasks.

The idea of a manager becoming the person who has the capacity to control everything at a football club in this manner developed steadily from the late 19th century throughout the 20th century.

The first “managers” were more akin to administrators of the club’s day-to-day business behind the scenes. Early football club management revolved around committees, often led by a club secretary who would later be considered the de facto “manager” as we understand the term today.

The birth of working-class professional sports teams out of factories and places of work will have influenced this initial setup, where club staff were involved in the same administrative and financial tasks they might be in their other profession. 

This also applied to those clubs founded by local businessmen or politicians, who would then use the experience from their other line of work to run the clubs.

On the pitch, it was often the more experienced and well-travelled players who influenced how the team played and were pioneers in the game’s early tactical development.

These on-pitch tactical changes happened organically and were usually a response to adversity (notable defeats) or changes in the laws, especially the change in the offside law in 1925 that required just two defenders between the attacker and the opposition goal (as we know it today) for them to be onside, rather than three.

Names such as Charles Buchan (later a journalist and co-founder of the Football Writers’ Association), George Ramsay, Peter McWilliam, RS McColl (co-founder of McColl’s newsagents), Jimmy Hogan, Bill Nicholson, Arthur Rowe and Vic Buckingham all influenced the way football was played in its early days, and many went on to become successful and/or influential managers.

This sharing of ideas by players from club to club, generally arising in the north of England and Scotland before working its way south to teams like Aston Villa and then Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, before travelling overseas to the Netherlands as an influence on total football, was the foundation for many of the tactical ideas we see in football today.

As these players became managers, the dynamic began to change. They would use the experience gained during their playing days to become more hands-on tactical managers and technical coaches.

Players with certain attributes, characteristics and ideas continued to influence tactical evolution and football decisions, but the on-field direction was increasingly down to the manager.

Whereas the backroom committees at clubs would once perform administrative tasks, there are now committees to decide on tactics, transfers, and the overall sporting direction of a club.

That’s not to say a modern-day football manager is free of administrative duties. It can be quite the opposite.

A manager has to deal with an increasing number of newer, non-football-related tasks, not least the large number of media duties throughout the week, pre and post-match.

These include discussing anything from politics and cultural events to the intricacies of modern-day football administration which they may personally have nothing to do in a practical sense, but still have to understand and be able to answer questions on.