What a weird week

With the transfer window closed and teams getting ready for the business end of the season, managers throughout the Premiership must have been looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet.

Normally, February is a time when the focus turns on-field matters and bosses up and down the country can allow themselves the time to concentrate on the job in hand.

But if there is one thing Premiership managers can rely on, it's a life of perpetual uncertainty and unpredictability. And this week proved that perfectly.

First we had two managers unceremoniously fired for the mutual crime of underachievement - Tony Adams by Portsmouth and Luiz Felipe Scolari by Chelsea.

This was followed by the news that Newcastle boss Joe Kinnear needed heart surgery, plunging his club back into turmoil just when it looked like they were starting to get their act together.

Let's take a look at those three events in turn.

Pompey panic

Firstly, Tony Adams. A run of just two wins in his 16 matches in charge prompted the club to show him the door after barely three months as boss. The irony is Portsmouth hadn't been playing badly and were incredibly unlucky not to take at least a point off Liverpool in what turned out to be Adams's last game in charge.

Despite being forced to sell his two best players - Diarra and Defoe - the team were still showing signs of turning the corner and, more importantly, there were no indications that Adams had lost the dressing room.

But Portsmouth are up for sale and owner Alexandre Gaydamak knows the club will be almost entirely worthless if the nightmare of relegation becomes a reality. So he reached for the big red button marked 'panic'.

Who will replace him? To be honest, the question should be who would want to replace him?

At the moment, Sven Goran Eriksson seems to be favourite. The former England manager is busy making a pig's ear of running Mexico the national team and, despite his denials, is probably desperate for an escape route out of Central America.

But would he really want to join a struggling club that doesn't have two pennies to rub together? I have my doubts. Rightly or wrongly, he thinks he is better than that.

That also rules out just about all other big names that have been linked with the job, with one possible exception - Avram Grant.

The Israeli has ties to Portsmouth, having been director of football there and, more importantly, has a Premiership point to prove after being booted out of Chelsea despite taking them to within a slip of the Champions League.

He would be my bet for the Fratton Park hot seat.

Abramovich itch

The second dismissal this week was Big Phil who was shown the door after watching his side struggle to an uninspiring 0-0 draw with mighty Hull.

To be honest, I think we all saw this one coming. After a sparkling start to the season, things have gone a little pear-shaped at Stamford Bridge. And comments from John Terry that only two or three other players were giving the manager their full support add weight to the argument that all was not well at the club.

What I find a bit stupid, though, is that they have given the job to Gus Hiddink on a part-time, short-term basis. Unless the man can work some sort of miracle, I can't see Chelsea seriously competing for either the Premiership or the Champions League.

With that in mind, why not let Scolari finish the season? Maybe he would have been able to turn things around and have the club ready to hit the ground running next season. He certainly wasn't going to get the club relegated.

What Roman Abramovich, in his infinite impatience, has yet again failed to realise is that stability, more than any other single factor, breeds success. The two most decorated managers currently working in the Premier League are Ferguson and Wenger. Both of them have been in their jobs for considerable amounts of time.

Chelsea have now had four managers in 18 months. And, with Hiddink unlikely to stay after the end of the season, that will become five in two years. Even the American banking system is more stable than that.

Toon doom

The final bit of managerial news to break this week, and saddest by far, involves Joe Kinnear at Newcastle. After being taken ill before last week's match with West Brom, he had expected to be out of hospital by Tuesday.

However Kinnear, who has a history of heart trouble, was told he needed to have triple bypass surgery, which was carried out on Friday.

Obviously, the most important part of this particular story is the health of the manager. And I am sure I speak for all football fans when I wish him a full and speedy recovery.

But the other side of the story is how damaging is this for a Newcastle team that were actually starting to show signs of recovery?

It makes you wonder exactly how many mirrors have they broken at St James' Park? Is there a series of ladders you have to walk under to get into the ground? Is the boardroom full of aimlessly wandering black cats? The levels of bad luck around the place are absolutely incredible.

Assuming all has gone well with the operation and Kinnear makes a 100 per cent recovery, that still rules him out for most of this season. Hardly ideal when you are embroiled in a relegation battle.

So what do Newcastle and owner Mike Ashely do next? Leave it in the hands of assistant manager Chris Hughton? That seems a little risky as the man has always been a number two and never in charge of a team for any length of time.

Even then, there is no guarantee that Kinnear will be capable of retaking the reigns when he has recovered. And, with health more important than football, he may not want to.

Newcastle do have a ready-made replacement in Denis Wise sitting in the boardroom. He has managerial experience and would probably be ideal if it wasn't for the fact that he is universally despised by the club's fans.

That means they are probably going to have to start looking for a more palatable short-term replacement. Terry Venables, Gus Poyet and Bryan Robson are some of the early contenders to replace Kinnear.

If the latter gets the job then I may just think about selling my house and putting the proceeds on Newcastle going down. A great footballer but, as a manager, about as much use as a paper frying pan.

There is one name that hasn't been mentioned so far in connection with the temporary Newcastle job. Kevin Keegan. Unlikely and improbable, but not entirely impossible.

And, to be honest, that would be a fitting end to a week of Premiership weirdness.

Seville lesson

If England's recent winning streak had given them delusions of grandeur then they must have been shattered on Wednesday night.

The simple truth is they were given a football lesson by a Spanish team that out-passed, out-played and out-thought them at every turn.

The 2-0 final score was incredibly flattering on Capello's team when the margin could and should have been more. Much more.

True, England were missing one or two key players like Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney, but even they could have done little about the sublime fluidity and overall supremacy of a Spain team that is in its absolute prime.

Capello has since said that he found the game against the European champions a good test, a way of finding out exactly where England are at the moment, what they have achieved and what still needs to be done.

And while he put a brave face on it, I can't help but imagine that the sheer gulf in class must have left him feeling shocked, stunned and more than a little amazed.

Spain, with the irrepressible Xavi pulling the strings in midfield, played the football around like their opponents were not even there. Hardly a pass went astray, and you got the feeling they could have scored at will if the urge had grabbed them.

England, by contrast, were one-dimensional. They were often reduced to launching long balls up to the strikers, which may be acceptable if you are Stoke fighting for your Premiership lives, but not if you are team supposedly made up of the crème-de-la-crème of English football.

There were times when I physically cringed. Spain would string together 20 or 30 passes, culminating in an attempt on goal. In response, an England defender would hoof the ball the length of the pitch looking for a Peter Crouch flick-on. It was men versus boys. The good versus the bad and the ugly rolled into one.

The only positive I could find was, yet again, David Beckham. When he came on to win his record-equalling 108th cap, he showed passion, determination and ability, including a superb through ball that almost resulted in a goal for Carlton Cole.

That display, coupled with those he is putting in for Milan, makes him a definite starter for the competitive games coming up over the next few months.

If Capello learnt that much at least then the lesson England were taught in Seville won't have been for nothing.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com