By Stefan Dagher

Another day, another manager sacked. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink was in charge at QPR for just over a year, until he was sacked after a draw at Nottingham Forest last month. He became the seventh manager to be sacked this season already.

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Managers can get fired for a series of reasons. Even if they are well-suited to a job, the growing pains of adjusting to a new club and performing at a higher level are mitigated by managerial acumen.

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This season we have seen managers sacked after being at a club for only a few months: Walter Zenga (Wolves) – 87 days, Roberto Di Matteo (Aston Villa) – 124 days, Nigel Pearson (Derby) – 4 months.

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The average life of a championship manager is only 11 months – the lowest of the top four divisions in the country.

The League Managers Association is becoming concerned, naturally, that the career of a championship manager, and of those in the leagues below, is becoming too precarious. It is not necessarily the fear of the sack, which has always been a factor, but more the fear that you never get another chance elsewhere. There are 38 managers who were sacked across all four divisions last season in England who have not found new jobs. It is not just the manager who pays the price, but also the backroom staff, who often have to move away from family to work on much lower salaries and have less job security than the man in charge. In addition there were 39 managerial sackings in the Championship in the two seasons previous to that, which equates to a lot of assistants and coaches facing an uncertain future.

One of the temptations for club owners is that there is always an alternative in their mind. LMA chief executive Richard Bevan has accused owners of playing “stick or twist” as if they were at a casino. The LMA has 375 members, about 140 of whom are looking for work, and there are only 92 positions to fill in the top four divisions.

A statement from the LMA said: “With the hire-and-fire culture engrained within football, it’s so difficult to survive for any meaningful length of time in order to learn your trade, learn from mistakes and experiences. Managers must cope with instant judgements and, often, success and failure are rarely that far apart. If the trend continues, we are on course to exceed the highest number of dismissals in one season over the past 10 years.”

It has been proven that if you stick with your manager even after a poor run of results, things can be turned around. Nigel Person for example, had several difficult spells at Leicester before he managed to lead his team to the Premier League. Mick McCarthy was appointed in 2012 when Ipswich were lying near the bottom of the championship. After only a year he managed to make them a team challenging for promotion. These examples prove that if you trust and have patience in your manager, results can go your way.

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The question now is if the word ‘patience’ has gone from all the club’s boards these days?

The concept sounds so simple, and yet rarely seems to be put into practice. The message should be to remain patient, loyal and consistent.