Middle Management

My official title at work is Library Manager. This is something of a misnomer as, in a company of just five people, I don't really have anyone or anything to manage apart from myself. That remains a challenge due to my tendency not to listen to myself but is probably not on a par with two positions that have been in the news of late.

The first is the manager of my beleaguered football team, Ipswich Town. Mick McCarthy took the role recently, replacing the sacked/resigned Paul Jewell and immediately led us to an improbable 1-0 away at Birmingham. Will he succeed where Jewell and Roy Keane before him (and Jim Magilton and Joe Royle before them) failed and lead us to the Premier League? Will he even be able to save us from relegation, languishing as we do near the bottom of the Championship?

I have no idea and, frankly, I doubt he does either. He was appointed on the basis of having the profile to command the respect of the players and the experience of not only leading two teams (Sunderland and Wolves) from the Championship to the Premier League but of keeping (one of) them there, albeit fairly briefly.

This all sounds fine and dandy until you consider that these were the exact same criteria that were used to select our previous two managers. Indeed Paul Jewell's CV is remarkably similar (just substitute Bradford and Wigan for Sunderland and Wolves). The two men are good friends, of a similar generation, come across as honest and hard working and have a nice line in dry humour.

McCarthy may well be the man to take us forward. But if he does I can't help feeling that he will be riding partly on the coat-tails of a levelling out of Ipswich's natural position in the world of football. Unless you've been as badly run as Portsmouth a club of our size, fanbase and financial resources should be at home in the upper reaches of the Championship or lower reaches of the Premier League.

There was an article in the London Review of Books some years ago making just this point, albeit with more eloquence and scholarly rigour. Football doesn't sit naturally in the pages of the LRB much as post-modernism has little place in the ITFC matchday programme. So perturbed was I that I wrote a letter questioning the article which they chose to publish. Using Ipswich as my reference point (a consistent theme) I argued that George Burley's achievement in taking Ipswich to 5th in the Premiership the year after promotion and securing a place in the following season's UEFA Cup (a holy grail for Town supporters after winning it in 1981) showed that an exceptional manager can buck the statistical trend and consistently overachieve.

I still think that's true. I just don't think it was true of Ipswich at that time, as our subsequent relegation made clear. Burley wasn't an exceptional manager; nor was Jewell; nor is McCarthy. They have all had periods of success and failure - have they managed 'better' during the good times and 'worse' during the bad? Or have they been more at the mercy of events than we care to admit?

Being manager of Ipswich Town is a tough job. But it's not as tough as being the manager of a radio station employing Danny Baker. Before going any further I should make it clear that I consider Baker to be the finest broadcaster of his generation (or any other come to that). He has that rare combination of a magpie mind, a phenomenal memory and a natural eloquence that makes him perfect for radio. And he attracts calls like this:

http://youtu.be/8Hhk8VVS2AU


The recent axing of his BBC London show has drawn righteous anger from across a wide spectrum of listeners and fellow broadcasters. His last show was an epic two hours of controlled invective, utterly compelling.

And yet.....reading the comments of the head of BBC London the following day, my managerial genes twinged with some sympathy. David Robey pointed out that Baker had taken 3 months off the show at short notice earlier in the year due to pressure of work (finishing his autobiography). On the back of that Robey wondered if it might make more sense for Baker to host a weekly show. Apparently this was communicated to Baker's agent as the BBC London management had been told all such communication must go through his agent first. This somewhat undermines Baker's claim that it was an outrage that no one had discussed the idea with him directly.

I suspect there's some truth in both accounts. BBC London clearly have a wider agenda than just looking to 'refresh their schedule'. And I doubt that Baker's time is overburdened with checking the finer details of employment contracts.

Whatever the truth it must be a bloody nightmare managing a station which has Danny Baker on the schedule. He's a loose cannon, someone who plays by his own rules and is good enough to get away with it. But for all his rant about there being more meeting rooms than studios in the BBC now, the station also needs a manager, someone with talents very different from its start attraction.

And that manager has to decide if he can allow someone to play by his own rules simply because he's really good at his job.

In many ways Robey took the only rational decision. Would I have done the same in his shoes? No. Because Danny Baker is a titan of radio and for him to be expressing his genius on a daily basis on a small local radio station is the equivalent of Sinatra playing a weekly residency at the Bush Hall.

But I can't help but feel a little sorry for the bloke trying to square an impossible managerial circle.