Alain Curbishlée

"Mr Curbishley, welcome to the Bates Motel. How long will you be staying?"


Poor old Curbs, he flies off to New Zealand for his first holiday in 16 years and he's being linked with more jobs than Alfred Marks. Firstly Bryan Robson was politely invited to spend even more time in the pub, and then today Kevin Blackwell was sacked presumably for not having brought Leeds back into the Champions League yet.

I happen to think Robson is a poor manager, whilst Blackwell has been very poorly treated. However am I the one who thinks that Chairmen are not accountable enough for appointing their managers in the first place? To quote WBA's Jeremy Peace back in November 2004, Robson was their "..first and unanimous choice."

Since then Robson performed a miracle during the remainder of 2004/05, had a disappointing season in 2005/06 (but not extraordinarily so) and his team lie 9th after a mightily significant eight games this campaign. So was Robson really the 'first and unanimous choice' or was he really just another stop-gap at yet another club seemingly keen to lurch from mediocrity to averageness.

As for Leeds, I'm almost lost for words at the way Blackwell has been treated. Back in April when Curbs announced his departure, I suggested he might be an interesting up-and-coming candidate for the Charlton job, and no-one told me I was crazy. Up until that point, his record was as good as say Billy Davies, Phil Parkinson or Ady Boothroyd's. So in other words, the Leeds board is implying either that his reasonable record with no money (43 wins and 37 draws from 113 games) was down merely to good fortune (possible), or that since the play-off final in May he has completely lost those very attributes that caught the eye of so many neutrals (highly unlikely). Is it purely a coincidence that the likes of Arsenal, Charlton, Crewe and Man Utd have had so much success by staying loyal to their manager?

I'm not sure meanwhile what Curbs must make of all this. He turns Charlton from a basket-case into a solid Premiership outfit whilst always balancing the books, and the best jobs he has been linked with so far are WBA and Leeds. To use a term from the insurance industry (this is one for you, Chicago Addick), he is faced with a type of adverse selection, a situation that arises when there is asymmetric information between buyers and sellers.

The most commonly used example of adverse selection is used car sales. Sellers know whether a car is any good or not, but the buyer does not. As a result truthful sellers seek to provide 'signals' about the quality of the car, for example by allowing test-drives or by having their cars AA tested. Without these signals, market failure would result because buyers would offer a low price (to reduce the risk of being ripped off), and the sellers would refuse to sell because they (and only they) know the car is a good one.

"Ah yes" I hear you say, "...but surely Curbs has the best signal of all. He turned Charlton from basket case to established Premiership club in just a decade. Surely he has nothing to prove?" Well, we know that, Curbs knows that, so let's all get that new stand built so we can name it after him. Yet somehow it doesn't seem to wash with the so-called 'big clubs' and I'm keen to understand the reasons. Here are a few that I believe are relevant:

Modesty: Curbs has never been one to shout from the rooftops. When we won he was 'satisfied' and when we lost he was 'disappointed', never at either extreme. In a subjective business like football management (it's subjective because the key is not how many points or wins you accumulate, but how many you were expected to accumulate), modesty might be perceived as lack of ambition. Meanwhile that perennial self-publicist John Gregory has got himself another job.

'Little Old Charlton' Syndrome: We all know we don't get the credit we deserve in the media, and as a result those that rely on so-called 'pundits' for their information might belittle his achievements. We would all like to think we're not affected by the media, but it's near-impossible not to be. Go on be honest, did you hate 'You're Beautiful' by James Blunt when it first came out or when you were told by the media you were meant to hate it?

He's from East London: There's a tendency to assume that foreigners are brighter than their English counterparts. Why? Because, we can't discern from their use of grammar how intelligent they might be. We all assume for example that David Beckham or Steven Gerrard are thick (despite never having spent time with them), but could we even hazard a guess at the IQ of say Xabi Alonso or Didier Drogba? How else do you explain the appointments of Alain Perrin, Christian Gross or Josef Venglos? If his name was Alain Curbishlée, he'd probably be planning a Champions League campaign quite literally as we speak. I have a friend, a regular reader of this blog as it happens (hi mate, if you're reading this) who only seems to build meaningful relationships with foreign girls - perhaps he falls into the same trap? Unfortunately for Curbs, he can't shake his Cockney twang and has a tendency to mangle his tenses, and I'm not sure it goes down very well in top Premiership boardrooms.


(So if I was you Curbs, I'd stay in New Zealand. The nights are getting longer and the quality of life is better for a start.)