There is a plague sweeping through English football which is threatening to rip apart the very fabric of the game - gross impatience.

Hardly a day goes by without one luckless manager or other getting sacked and it is a trend which is getting worse with every passing season.

Only a couple of decades ago, managers were brought in and given time to build a team. Instant results were not essential as the long-term was given more importance than the short.

Well, those days are confined to history. If a new manager doesn't bring an instant turnaround in form, the fans get restless. And when the fans get restless, the club's directors go into panic mode.

The result? Managers fired after just a handful of games in charge before they have had any sort of chance to leave their mark on the team.

There are, of course, rare occasions when this panic-sacking is actually the right thing to do. Chris Hutchings at Wigan, for example, was evidently out of his depth and getting rid of him was clearly a wise decision. But for the most part, this culture of impatience is simply unjustifiable.

The perfect example of this ludicrous mentality is the current situation at Newcastle where Sam Allardyce is one or two defeats away from the boot despite only taking over at the beginning of the season.

The pressure on the Toon boss is mounting with every match and, if his team somehow conspired to lose their FA Cup clash with Stoke yesterday, he may well have already gone by now.

I appreciate that Newcastle are something of a sleeping giant and their long-starved fans are desperate for some sort of success. But if they really believe they will get success by changing managers as often as most of us change underwear, they are sadly mistaken.

In recent years, Kevin Keegan, Bobby Robson, Ruud Gullit, Graeme Sounness and Glenn Roeder have all tried to wake the giant from its long-term slumber but with little or no success.

With the exception of Keegan who self-destructed, a key reason the others never managed to revitalise the club is that they were not given time.

As soon as things started to go a bit wobbly they were all given the chop by chairmen who took drastic action because they were afraid of supporter unrest.

I appreciate that the fan should always come first in the thinking of any board of directors. Without the fans, there would be no club in the first place.

But does that mean the minute the fans get restless the manager needs to be fired? I think not.

When Newcastle appointed Allardyce in the summer, I too thought they might have found the right man for the job. His no-nonsense approach to the game coupled with his belief that science plays a big role in football success seemed to be just what the doctor ordered.

Yet here we are, just half way into his first season in charge and the vultures are circling, even though the club is in relative mid-table safety.

In fairness, the club's owner and chairman have both given Sam their public support through the dreaded 'vote of confidence'. But somehow you just know a few more defeats and the axe will fall.

The reality is that Allardyce needs to be given time. He needs to ship out the players he doesn't want and bring in ones he thinks will play with pride, passion and style.

He needs time to get his coaching methods across to his squad. He needs time for his meticulous, scientific approach to the game to start bearing fruit.

The most strikingly obvious example of how things have changed in football comes in the form of Manchester United. When a youngish Scottish chap called Alex took over at Old Trafford he spent three years building his team.

Towards the end of that period there was one famous occasion when he was one defeat away from the sack. He didn't lose the match and, I think it is fair to say, United have not looked back since.

How different would United's history have been if their directors back then had adopted a similar results-based mentality to that which is common place today?

If you were to offer the Newcastle fans a deal right now where they had to endure three more years of mediocrity in return for 20 years of success, would they take it? Given this disease of mass impatience, I actually doubt it.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a truly sad reflection on the state of modern football.

Liverpool out of the running

Rafa Benitez is a man in denial.

But if he really believes - as he said this week - that his Liverpool team still have a chance of winning the title, he really has misplaced the plot.

In the past three games they have drawn with Manchester City and Wigan and very narrowly beaten doomed Derby. If they were serious about winning the league, then those are the sort of games they simply have to win. No two ways about it.

They are now 12 points adrift of Arsenal with just one game in hand. True, there is nearly half a season of football left to play. But top teams like Arsenal and Manchester United rarely throw away that sort of advantage.

Despite the near hopeless situation Liverpool find themselves in, in terms of the league that is, Benitez insists his team can still win it. I don't agree.

If I were him I would focus my efforts on the FA Cup and the Champions League and hope that victory in one of those will be enough to keep the vultures currently circling St James Park away from Anfield...

Searching for positives

I have to say I am suitably impressed by the way the football world has treated the tragic death of Motherwell captain Phil O'Donnell.

I can't say he is one of those players whose name readily springs to mind. In fact, if I have ever seen him play - which is possible considering how much football I watch - I certainly don't remember it.

But despite being one of the game's lesser stars, football in Scotland and England has united in paying their respects to the 35-year-old father of four who died of heart failure towards the end of a league match.

Cancelling games north of the border was very much the right thing to do and the minute's applause at numerous grounds in England was an equally appropriate tribute for a man who was, by all accounts, a model professional.

It's always hard to find silver linings in stories as tragic as this one. But there could be a glimmer of something starting to emerge.

As a result of O'Donnell's death the Scottish football authorities are now considering making heart scans compulsory for all players.

There are no guarantees that this would have brought Phil's condition to light, but it might have done. And his life may have been saved.

If Scotland does go down this route, one would hope that England and the rest of Europe (apart from Italy where it already happens) follows suit.

Over the past year or so, the number of players in Europe who have died from heart-related incidents is relatively small.

But if compulsory screening could have been able to save just one of those lives, then it has to be introduced without question.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com