For those of us who sometimes wonder how the much sought after Alan Hansen can resist the temptation of having a go at football management, Brian Kidd's experience at Blackburn Rovers, who sacked him last Wednesday, hinted at why Hansen's decision to stick with television punditry was as well-judged as many of those timely tackles he used to make on behalf of Liverpool FC.
"I still have every confidence in the manager - why shouldn't I?" So said Blackburn owner Jack Walker a week before relieving Kidd of his duties, and just 11 months after removing him from the shadow of Alex Ferguson at Manchester United.
When he took up Blackburn's offer of his first serious foray in to management (after a brief spell at Preston earlier in his career) there were those who thought Kidd foolish to abandon the apparent comfort of his job at Old Trafford, but, at 50 years of age, his reasoning for taking the plunge seemed understandable enough.
"You can leave it too long and I don't want to die wondering," he said at the time of his appointment. Well, Kidd won't die wondering: he tried, he failed, suffering much the same fate as countless other renowned assistant managers - among them Colin Harvey, Stewart Houston, Ray Harford and Don Howe - who discovered their true talents lay in assisting (and coaching) rather than managing.
Spending £4.5 million of Walker's cash on goal-shy striker Ashley Ward, for example, probably did as much to damage Kidd's reputation as a judge of players as Alex Ferguson's spiteful revelation that his former assistant thought John Hartson a better prospect for United than Dwight Yorke, but talk of Kidd `blowing' £30 million of Walker's money is hardly fair - he also brought in £23 million by selling nine of his squad, including three of the club's best players, Chris Sutton, Stephane Henchoz and Tim Sherwood.
And if Kidd failed at Blackburn, as he did, then his cause was hardly helped by the players who remained at the club or those he brought in. Many of the obituaries on his brief reign at Blackburn, that appeared in the English press during the week, claimed that he failed to command the total respect of his players which, if true, probably says more about those over-paid, under-achievers than it does about Brian Kidd. And maybe it says something too about the state of English football where an ever increasing number of pampered prima donnas abound.
Is it any wonder that Roy Keane is so highly regarded in England (by everyone but his chairman, that is)? At times during Tuesday night's meaningless Champions League match against Sturm Graz he played like his life depended on the result, because he knows no other way. How Brian Kidd could have done would a few players with a similar sense of duty at Blackburn.
A team that includes players such as Jeff Kenna, Jason Wilcox, Lee Carsley, Per Frandsen, Damien Duff and Matt Jansen might not quite have the potential to play Barcelona off the park but quite how they could be 20 points adrift of division one leaders Manchester City and lie sixth from bottom of the table at the beginning of November, God only knows. Jack Walker blamed the Blackburn players for Kidd's fate - what a pity he couldn't sack them rather than their manager.
If we can trust the opinion of many of those who know and have spoken or written about Kidd he would appear to be a thoroughly decent, honest man, making his experience at Blackburn - one from which his managerial ambitions may never recover - all the more depressing.
Many of the current Manchester United first-teamers he nurtured through the youth system - including Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes and the Neville brothers, Gary and Phil - often described him as a `players man', `one of us', which probably precludes him, in this day and age, from ever being a successful manager.
From the outside, at least, it appears that the most successful of managers in England keep a distance between themselves and their players, an aloofness that ensures they receive a degree of respect in return. Kidd, one suspects, couldn't be aloof even if he tried.
Can you imagine George Graham going out for a few pints with Sol Campbell and Darren Anderton? Or Arsene Wenger clubbing it with Ray Parlour and Emmanuel Petit? Or Alex Ferguson visiting a lap-dancing establishment with Mark Bosnich and Dwight Yorke? No - in some cases probably just as well - because they're all shrewd, smart and slick enough to know that that's not what successful managers do.
Furthermore, nineties managers' media-handling skills have to be as finely tuned as their tactical know-how - Kidd could never handle the media, mainly because he was too honest for his own good. And, after all, rule number one in the manager's media-handling rule book is `Never Ever Tell It Like It Is'.
