Yesterday Burnley appointed Brian Laws to be their new manager following the departure of Owen Coyle to Bolton Wanderers.
First off, Laws must be one of the most experienced managers ever hired into the Premier League. He has managed close to 800 games since his first post at Grimsby in 1994 - thats 300 more than Rafael Benitez. Without going and looking at each manager individually I would guess that he ranks 3rd or 4th in terms of experience in the Premier League after Fergie and Wenger. And perhaps the highest in terms of when he entered the league. This guy clearly knows his way around a football club. For this we applaud Burnley. So many managers in the Premier League are just handed the top job with no experience whatsoever, and inevitably fail or become tiresomely mediocre. Hiring someone with experience is an astute move on Burnley's part.
On the other side is that the sides that Laws has gotten his experience with, have not been Premier League quality sides. His last club was Sheffield Wednesday, from where he was fired. Before that he was managing Scunthorpe and Grimsby. Two sides who have jumped around between the lower divisions.
The calibre of player at Burnley will not be drastically different from that which he managed at Wednesday but clearly the quality of the opposition will be light years apart.
It would appear to me that Burnley have hired someone who considers this a huge promotion, is used to working on a strict budget, and will not want to leave the club if they get relegated. With Coyle leaving mid-season, the club have been left in a tough position, and hiring someone like Laws, a survivor, is someone that the board clearly fill two different roles for the club. Firstly someone with the determination to keep them in the league, but also someone who wont have a bruised ego if they get relegated.
If I were a Burnley fan I wouldn't be overly disappointed with the decision but I also wouldn't be overly optimistic. I think this is a classic case of giving Laws a chance to see what he can do. Unfortunately the Premiership and Burnley are multi-millon pound organizations and they just put someone in charge on millions of pounds of assets who has not had a great deal of success with other million pound assets.
Perhaps also in the mind of the Burnley decision makers is the fact that if Laws was unable to keep Burnley up and then they wanted to go in a different direction with a different manager, few fans would shed a tear over Laws departure.
Overall its an interesting appointment, not quite as black and white as it first appears and has several possible outcomes.
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