David Foot column: Exploring draughty managerial halls

David Foot column: Never have football's managerial corridors been more draughty. They carry an eerie, glance-over-the-shoulder wariness. We don't need Luiz Felipe Scolari or the hapless Tony Adams to confirm that.

Scolari's appointment, underpinned by impressive credentials, had at first looked astute but the chemistry – and the collective endeavour on the field – weren't working at Chelsea.

As for the likeable Adams, someone who had already beaten his own demons, he simply was not up to the job when Harry Redknapp walked away from Pompey.

All-powerful owners are sadistically cracking the whips as they search for obsessive success and some kind of return on their mad, massive investments.

So again this past week, it has been speculation time as an inexhaustible catalogue of potential candidates has been reeled off, many of them fancifully imagined.

Am I alone in sensing that the shifting attitudes and habits in the game's higher levels, with their shows of vulgarity and often meaningless glitz, are bringing compensations for more modest clubs.

They may struggle to survive but they haven't yet quite lost the true spirit of football.

In this week of management topsy-turvy, a letter from a reader in Radstock, one who supports both City and Rovers, poses a debate-intended question. Who was the best manager the two Bristol clubs ever had?

I have frequently given some idle time to this. Pat Beasley was always the choice of John Atyeo. Alan Dicks, however, took City into the top tier to fulfil that lingeringly frustrated Ashton Gate dream. One will also find a genuine volume of support for Gary Johnson for his achievements of recent years.

At Rovers, Bert Tann's assertive leadership and longevity put him on top in this subjective guessing game. But Gerry Francis doubtless has his advocates. And where do we place Ian Holloway? His seemed the perfect appointment – he epitomised the grit and fervour of east Bristol where once he had played and then returned to manage.

Olly, with an accent to rival Jethro, could be at times nearly showbiz. But, of course, he was never going to match the extrovert style of Albert Prince-Cox, for six years Rovers' manager-secretary in the 1930s.

As a referee he took charge of 32 European internationals. As a boxing promoter at the Colston Hall, he had Tommy Farr top of the bill.

In the head-spinning role of football manager, he came up with innumerable gimmicks. He took his happy, unsophisticated players on end-of-season tours of Paris and Amsterdam. He signed internationals and persuaded the outstanding amateur international centre forward Vivian Gibbons, a schoolmaster, to play for the Eastville club.

Prince-Cox was many things in an extraordinary career – on the music halls where he did cockney impressions, RAF and army, organiser of a circus and aqua show in north Wales. Perhaps not the finest manager Rovers ever had. But certainly the greatest showman. Not that he would have appealed to Roman Abramovich.