The first ever Premier League game was played on the 15th of August 1992 between Sheffield and Manchester United. Both teams were managed by men from the British Isles and there were a further fifteen English managers in the league that season.

In those days, the Premier League was dwarfed in popularity and prestige by Italy’s Seria A, but as the nineties became the noughties, the pendulum shifted completely. Roman Abramovich’s purchase of Chelsea football club for one hundred and forty million pounds in 2003 marked a new era of big purchases of clubs and outrageous player fees all backed by oil money.

This catapulted the Premier League into becoming the most profitable and popular league in the world.

This meteoric rise led to a shift. Thirty-three years on, the first Premier League game of the season was contested between Bournemouth and Liverpool managed by a Spaniard and a Dutchman with just three English managers in the league.

This begs the question, where have all the English managers gone?

This decline is seen by many as a natural result of the globalisation of the league as it attracts the best managers from across the world. It’s also a consequence of the money that’s been pumped into the league by gulf states and American billionaires.

Owners and investors risk millions on the success or failure of eleven men kicking a ball around a grassy rectangle. It’s simply not worth risking all that money on an unproven English manager, who might fail.

This decline really came to the fore with the appointment of Thomas Tuchel as England national team manager. This is again out of step with Italy, Spain, Germany and France, who all have managers from that country.

It’s not the first time England have appointed a foreigner as manager and Tuchel is certainly an exciting prospect as a proven winner in knockout football. The more level-headed England fans are not opposed to Tuchel because of his passport but believe a national team should reflect the best of that country on the pitch and in the dugout.

Cleary the FA decided there were no English managers they believed could win the World Cup.

However, there is one English manager who in recent years has had success at the top of the Premier League. Newcastle manager Eddie Howe, who last season ended Newcastle’s fifty-six-year trophy drought and has got them into the Champions League two seasons in a row.

Eddie Howe started out at AFC Bournemouth in League Two and worked his way up through the divisions into the Premier League. In recent seasons it has become clear that the money thrown at the Premier League has severed this vital artery.

It’s never been more difficult to take a team up through the leagues and be successful. Last season, the three promoted teams, Ipswich, Southampton and Leicester, were all relegated, collecting between them the lowest points tally of three relegated teams in Premier League history.

The main casualty of these failures has been the managers.

For instance, Russel Martin, an up-and-coming English manager whose insistence on playing the progressive possession style football that worked in the championship led Southampton to a disastrous Premier League season. Southampton collected just twelve points on their way back down, just one above Derby County’s record lowest points tally of eleven.

Russel Martin is the most textbook example of this phenomenon, but a similar fate has befallen Rob Edwards, Scott Parker, Chris Wilder, and even those who have had success such as Graham Potter and Gary O’Neil are not immune to being cast as not good enough due to their subsequent failures.

The huge popularity of the league has affected many parts of the English game.

Perhaps the decline of English managers is not the worst downside of this success, but for the English game, it is disappointing to see a world where there’s no English manager deemed good enough to take one of the best England teams ever to a world cup where we are real contenders.

Of course, if Thomas Tuchel wins the World Cup with England, no one, not even the most hardened xenophobes, will care what’s written on his passport. However, it’s still a worrying trend for the English game.

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