SWANNY'S WORLD OF SPORT: Wrong jobs for the wrong boys

Why on earth would a man of Gerrard’s pedigree and class want to work at at a club with no hope of success like Rangers? If he wanted to manage a basket case of a club he may as well have taken up that offer to work at MK Dons that apparently came his way earlier this year.

It’s less of a goldfish bowl down there - Gerrard could probably walk around such a non-footballing new town without being recognised - and the expectations would have been so much lower.

Bobbing around League One for a few seasons would have been acceptable at Stadium MK. At Rangers you’re supposed to be able to beat a club with three times your budget, one that can attract loan players from Paris Saint-Germain while you try and entice the best players from Port Vale and Accrington Stanley north of the border.

Maybe there’s a billionaire about to take over at Ibrox. I can think of no other reason to risk your reputation with so little chance of success.

Joey Barton has the right idea. He will learn his trade at Fleetwood next season when failure - which it will be - can be blamed on low crowds and subsequent underfunding.

If Barton does succeed he will get a much better job pretty quickly. Or one at Burnley FC or Leeds United.

I must confess I was disappointed Sunderland dispensed with Coleman as soon as relegation from the Championship was confirmed. A duff manager might be the only thing capable of stopping the Wearsiders romping away with League One next season.

Coleman appears to have let his ego run riot. Without Gareth Bale to prop him up he was always likely to fail back in the real world of club football.

If Coleman had left straight after Wales’ fluke run in the 2016 Euros he’d at least have walked into a half decent Premier League job before getting sacked. Instead he hung around in international football and failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, an inevitability once Bale picked up an injury.

And who would have thought after England’s own debacle at the last Euros that Roy Hodgson’s stock would be back higher than Coleman’s within two years?

I have to admit I felt Palace had blundered in giving an in denial, ageing manager a job at Selhurst Park.

But, while I still say Wilfried Zaha deserves as much praise as Hodgson for Palace escaping relegation despite losing, and failing to score in, the first seven Premier League games, the loveable old codger has done a fine job.

His last win was a 5-0 drubbing of grubby Leicester City, a side who again appear to have downed tools as they prepare for another change of boss.

Poor old Claude Puel. Sacked by the fools at Southampton after an eighth place finish and now about to get ‘Ranieri-ed’ by an untrustworthy bunch of players.