THE dust has not yet settled on the season and the best fun of the summer has already started. No, not the World Cup, and, no, not even the annual scramble for players who, this time next year will generally be regarded as hideous mistakes. The best laugh of the first couple of weeks after the playing ends is the game of musical chairs involving the country's managerial talent. Is there any greater fun than sitting outside a pub, working out how the whole sordid business will unravel if X moves - despite endless protestations of loyalty - to Y? I doubt it. This whole business is usually referred to as the managerial merry-go-round ; the merriment, one suspects, is limited to those not actively involved. For the purposes of entertaining the football-loving public, the Premier League's no poaching during the actual season policy does a great job. It keeps useless managers in highly-paid jobs long after their realistic sack-by date. This, in turn, builds up a reservoir of resentment as dark and bitter as a pint of Guinness in both board and dressing rooms. So far, so good; but for the merry-go-round to really start spinning, you need one or two big clubs to do the decent thing and get rid of/fall out with their gaffers. This, thankfully, Celtic and Sheffield Wednesday have done while Everton, almost certainly, and possibly Tottenham may soon give the old whirligig an extra shove. And so, off we go. Wheeeee!!… First off, a new tradition has emerged. Whenever the job at any club bigger than Blackinthorpe Pork Butchers Reserves becomes available, Martin O'Neill must, by law, be linked with it. This is where, therefore, we'll start. O'Neill will be among the favourites for the Celtic job vacated by Wim Jansen. The other person who they'll try and prise away from his present employer - if they've an ounce of sense - is the passionate, canny Gordon Strachan. Should O'Neill go to Celtic Park, Leicester - big enough to attract the cream of upcoming managerial skill, but not big enough to hold onto them - would, for the third time in recent memory, be left in the lurch. Celtic, of course, could go for broke. Why don't they try, just to see what happens, for Kenny Dalglish? Kenny remains a hero in Glasgow and, despite his horrible team and year at Newcastle, has top managerial credentials. And you know what he's like; after the disappointments of this year, it would only take a single director to look at him sideways and he'd be off. This, in turn, would trigger the departure of teacher's pet Alan Shearer to pastures foreign, but that's another matter. And while we're speculating… if Liverpool got the slightest inkling that Dalglish was anything less than ecstatic on Tyneside, wouldn't they be very tempted to push Roy 'Third In The Table' Evans upstairs and try and reinvent their last golden era by putting the pilot of those days back at the helm? Of course they would. Slightly further down the food chain, Wednesday's hilariously-worded dismissal of Ron Atkinson (why didn't they just come out and say it: we're getting shot of the old larger ?) has opened another can of ambitious worms. Danny Wilson has already denied any interest in the job, which is football-speak for: of course I want it, but I can't be seen to be replying to the ad in The Guardian . If he goes, expect Stuart McCall - a Yorksire boy, newly released by Rangers - to be in the frame. If Wilson does stay, where does that leave Wednesday? Well, John Toshack (remember him?) is a big wheel in continental management circles and is unhappy at Besiktas; he, though, rather fancies the Celtic job. Deliciously complicated, isn't it? Much likelier for the Yorkshire side is Martin O'Neill (there we go, all legal requirements taken care of), although, incredibly, the name of Howard Wilkinson keeps bubbling to the top of football's fetid compost heap of gossip. But where would that leave all Wednesday's prattle about going gloriously forward into the sunlit uplands of modern football management ? Into the tray in our office marked 'bollocks' where it belongs, that's where. Everton? Howard Kendall is surely a goner. They'll approach O'Neill (nobody wants to fall foul of local bye-laws, do they?) but he's not a fool, so they'll probably have to try and prise Goodison old boy David Jones away from Southampton. Although you can't help feeling that this is exactly the sort of big club who might benefit from the Strachan blow-torch treatment. What seems clear though is that Everton, and maybe Tottenham, are one more managerial disaster away from doing a Manchester City. Spurs, incidentally, mesmerised by the success of neighbours Arsenal, continue to quietly scour the continent for someone to replace Herr Gross in case a night of the long knives becomes necessary. Wim Jansen, anyone? And finally, for today at least, both Sheffield United and their manager Steve Thompson have given each other a vote of confidence, so that's that settled. United are exactly the sort of glamour-starved outfit who would benefit from a big-name managerial team. Maybe Chris Waddle as assistant, and, say, Big Ron as the figurehead. They wouldn't even have to be paid moving expenses, which would appeal to the skinflint board at Bramall Lane. So, Big Ron's back in work then. This is where we came in…

OL' BLUE EYES IS GONE Ron Atkinson And The Demise Of Old School Gaffers   By Harry Pratt OL' BLUE EYES has passed away… and this time it is improbable we will witness one of those famed comebacks. Stop worrying all you Football365 fans! This is not a tribute to Frank Sinatra, that great and late Mafia-mixing singing icon who died last Friday at the age 82. This, in fact, is an RIP of sorts for arguably the game's most charismatic and colourful manager of the last three decades. Pink champagne, white shoes and a clutter of gold jewellery that would rival any medallion-laden modern-day rapper made Ron 'Bo-Jangles' Atkinson the last of a dying breed - a wide-boy boss capable of producing teams as entertaining on the pitch as he was off it. Worryingly for lovers of flash football folk, the showmen of football management are apparently now extinct at the highest level following the weekend decision of Sheffield Wednesday not to renew the contract of the 59-year-old Liverpudlian who, until that point, was the oldest manager working in the country. The parting of the ways came less than six months after returning for a second spell at the Hillsbrough helm, and only a fortnight on from securing the club's Premiership status - therefore fulfilling the task asked of him when replacing dismissed David Pleat in November. Understandably, Atkinson, as fierce a competitor as anyone anywhere, did not take kindly to the news, departing for a break in the Caribbean without so much as a comment. The silence said it all coming from someone who, apart from when faced with the London press, is unable to keep his mouth shut. For someone of his experience and standing, there can be little worse than to find you are being put out to grass by a club which is hardly deemed a world-beater. Atkinson, though, has suffered such humiliation three times in four years. First, it was Aston Villa sacking him in the wake of Coca-Cola Cup glory the previous season. Then it was Coventry pushing him upstairs in favour of the more-youthful Gordon Strachan. Now Wednesday have gone down the same road. No doubt, Ron will sooner or later be airing forthright, outspoken views on the matter in a big-money, newspaper buy-up. It will be billed as The Truth. But I would argue that the truth is already staring us - and him - in the face. His good managerial days, particularly at West Brom first time round and Manchester United between 1983-85, are a thing of the past. So too are the gung-ho tactics that his sides always employ. Great to watch while the goals fly in at the opposition end, but naïve and outmoded in the current high-tech climate. Like it or not, Ron, the time has come to move aside, to let the younger brigade of player-manager or at least a less glitzy boss take centre-stage. After all, it has to be better to go gracefully with one's reputation still intact. And, of course, when the whipper-snapper know-it-alls - most of whom were in nappies when Big Ron was appointed Cambridge United boss 34 years ago - mess up, he can deliver some choice words from the comfort of his ITV pundit's chair about there being no substitute for a decent grounding in the art of soccer management. Fulham boss Kevin Keegan, a close friend of Big Ron, admitted to Football365 he was "surprised by the news. I didn't expect that at all. I'm disappointed for Ron, I thought he would have stayed on there."

top