Good Career Move?

Looking over the BBC and other sporting websites, I noted a rumour that, while Bolton's Sam Allardyce and Gordon Strachan are more likely candidates, Charlton's Alan Curbishley is emerging "as a surprise contender to be the new Manchester City boss".

Another site speculates on the attractions of the Man City job: "Established mid-table Premiership team with great support and a decent squad - most managers would be happy with this one".

Er... right. But don't Bolton and Charlton fit the above description anyway? And they are slightly higher in the table than City, and finished a lot higher last season as well. Their support is great, too; unless by great they mean numerous, but if so that isn't true. Or maybe the key word is 'established'. But City came up as runners-up when Charlton won the First Division championship in 2000, and as they haven't done so well, can hardly be considered as better established. Bolton have been up longer still.

I think it is yet another example of "if they were in the top division when I was a kid, then they're a big club" syndrome, suffered by practically all British football journalists.

Why on earth would Allardyce or Curbs leave something they have painstakingly and satisfyingly put together to move to a club which is actually smaller? For that is what Manchester City are - a club in a city (but Bolton is now part of Manchester and Charlton is in London) and thus able to call on a lot of potential support. But in actual fact they don't. No more than Charlton or Bolton do. The attractions for potential fans in these cities are the Arsenals, Chelseas and Man Uniteds of this world. And Man City have huge accumulated debts, and while I don't know about Bolton, Charlton owe nothing to anyone.

Every time a Premiership manager's job falls vacant, up they come with Curbs's name, thinking that he will surely want to move away from his little club and manage someone better-known, but as I say, why should he? Money is almost certainly not the name of the game for him, and having taken Charlton this far, he more than likely wants to see the job through, as that is the kind of man he is. Would you swap Curbs's current situation for whatever might happen at debt-ridden Manchester City? The upheaval of moving, especially as Curbs is an inveterate Londoner with his connections and contacts? I certainly wouldn't.

Last night saw the final quiz of the term, as most of us teachers will be stopping work on Thursday for a week or so - some people even get two weeks, but most of us will have nine or ten days. As St. Patrick's Day falls this week too (the pub is, technically, an Irish one), the quiz was a Charity event, and a lot more contestants had been chivvied along, to raise money for the rebuilding of a Sri Lankan school, or maybe village, I didn't quite catch the bit at the end. So instead of the usual five or six teams, there were eleven, and without our cinema expert, who wasn't feeling very well, we weren't good enough to carry off the first place, settling for third; our eternal rivals didn't even manage that, though I put it down to that most irritating aspect of quizzes, complete strangers getting there early and sitting at your usual table, which is what happened to them.

No quiz next week; a chance to recharge the batteries, and I am off to Britain for a few days, though no doubt I'll post again before that. Charlton's much-postponed home game against Tottenham is tomorrow night, anyway.