The pattern is familiar. The promising young manager gets his chance with a Championship club. He leads them to promotion. He talks a good game of pressing and position, shape and transition, passing and control. And then the financial reality of the Premier League strikes. The manager is reluctant to adapt his philosophy, perhaps doesn’t know how to; that is his style, the way he will make it to the top.
They perhaps achieve a couple of notable results. Maybe, people think, this young manager is the real deal. But they play against an elite side and lose. The cumulative effect of playing against high-class opponents every week takes its toll. The players who swaggered through the Championship become error-prone and, in the Premier League, those mistakes are punished. Confidence dwindles. Form deteriorates. Results go against them. There is a cycle of decline.
