Matthew Mann recalls when Aston Villa took a new approach by appointing a foreign manager...
WHILE it is fashionable for Premier League clubs to have foreign managers - when the 2023-24 season kicked off, just seven of the 20 bosses were British – it wasn’t always the case.
Thirty years ago, at the start of the 1993-94 campaign, a staggering 20 of the 22 top-flight managers were born in the British Isles. Ossie Ardiles, of Tottenham, and Wimbledon’s Joe Kinnear were the exceptions. In fact, it wasn’t until Arsene Wenger’s arrival at Arsenal, in the summer of 1996, that Premier League chairme...