‘What’s he know about the Premier League?’

Abstract

The 2016–2017 and 2017–2018 Premier League seasons saw several high-profile debates about the employment of English versus foreign managers at top-level football clubs. Two such examples include Paul Merson and Phil Thomson’s rant about Hull City appointing the Portuguese manager Marco Silva stating ‘What’s he know about the Premier League? What’s he know?’, or former England manager Sam Allardyce saying that English managers were being treated as ‘second class citizens’ (Nicholson 2017; Tyers 2017). These examples highlight the clear distinction being made between a version of ‘Englishness’ and a perceived threat of foreigners to English football. It represents a crisis in national identity (Porter 2004; Maguire 2011), which has been brought on by the processes of globalisation (Maguire 1999, 2011). This chapter uses Lule’s (2001) arguments around myth and its continued use in journalism. It takes a critical look at how the perpetuated archetype of ‘Englishness’ is portrayed. Furthermore, it examines the narratives present in football media around what makes a ‘proper’ football manager, and how this archetype is consistently reproduced and reinforced in football punditry and football journalism. The key arguments made in this chapter are that language such as this creates very distinct in and out groups in football media, and a skewed portrayal of modern football and managers who encapsulates a very particular type of nostalgic, myth-based nationalism.