Far to sensible

Arabestfaefife wrote:

A rolling contract doesn’t automatically mean that there would be less to pay if a Manager is sacked. It is all about the termination clauses that would be agreed as a part of the contract when it is signed.

It could be that if the Manager is sacked for gross misconduct then nothing would be paid or if he is sacked for some other reason maybe he would get the equivalent of 3 or 6 months salary. It isn’t automatically the case that the contract has to be paid up in full. It can be seen from the club’s account that while quite a bit of money has been spent on redundancy costs this isn’t anywhere near what it would have been if we had paid up contracts in full when somebody was sacked.

You could also argue that in the case of a manager doing well a 1year rolling contract might not protect the club’s position that well in terms of if another club wanted our manager, the amount of compensation payable would probably be less than if the manager had say 2 years of a contract left. Again there could also be release clauses built in to specify amounts payable to release him from the contract.

We don’t know all the facts about the contracts that were awarded and so shouldn’t jump to try and slag the club off about that. Whether the people that were sacked and received a pay-off should actually have been employed in the first place is probably the real question.

​I've commented in my post about the possibility that we might lose a manager if he is doing well for us under such a contract.  I think that we have made a mistake whilst being in the Championship by trying to recruit for the possibility of getting back to the Premiership at first or second time of trying.  Now we should have our targets firmly set on one thing and only - promotion.  If we bring in a great manager who gets us up at his first time of asking and he leaves at the end of that season for another job, then we are a more attractive club for any potential incoming replacement.

As for your other point, the chances are that the rolling contract would be a cheaper way to part company with a dud manager as the maximum you are going to have to pay for is 12 months at whatever level of compensation that has been agreed.  Whilst that outlook isn't an exact science it can be a pretty good barometer.

​I just think that we have been a bit too quick to appoint a manager since Peter Houston left and we haven't seen past the crap that the candidates come out with during the interviews.  Maybe the board are asking the wrong questions or their gut instinct is wrong, but the manager is possibly the most important appointment a club can make and Craig Levein is a perfect example of that in the way he turned the club around, set the foundations for our most successful tie since 1994 and set the club up to run smoothly for a few years after he left, all within a matter of weeks of getting systematically taken apart by Falkirk when Brewster was the manager.