How British football is learning to use a European idea.

Andre Villa-Boas may or may not get the sack soon. Certainly the media pressure on him is huge and with the Tottenham board keeping the shutters down in the way the old Soviet-style Kremlin would have envied there is no way of knowing what will happen to Spurs' Portuguese head coach. Observe I use the words head coach to describe his job, not manager.

The reason is that what is really interesting about this saga is the light it throws on the concept of director of football, an idea English football was supposed to shun. Indeed its acceptance means the constant changing of the head coach, something that has always been routine on the continent, is now beginning to emerge in this country.