IT'S A sign of the times that second and fourth positions in the Premiership are no longer acceptable with some of the bigger clubs - certainly not Liverpool or Chelsea who look set to install new managers.

The case of Claudio Ranieri has been well documented. After a slow start, he won over the majority of football people, whether they supported Chelsea or not, by learning enough English to conduct good-humoured interviews. Two years ago he said the top four was his target and he achieved that, and this year he took his club to their highest Premiership position, second to the invincible Arsenal.

Then a semi-final defeat in the Champions League blotted what would have been one of the grandest exits of all time.

Gerard Houllier somehow never captured the affections of the Liverpool fanatical followers in the same way as Ranieri did at Chelsea. His heart attack naturally brought lots of sympathy and probably bought him more time. Gerard will forever say that that in the period when they won the UEFA Cup, had lots of domestic cup triumphs and were rarely out of the top four or five proved on paper that he did well.

Unfortunately the supporters still remember when Liverpool were the top team in Europe and the most successful team of all time on the domestic front, and there were enough of those legendary players still working around Anfield, particularly within the local media and conducting phone-ins on an almost daily basis to haunt Mr Houllier.

It even got to the stage where there was talk of banning legends like Tommy Smith and Ian St John from the ground which was a big mistake.

While the end of his Anfield tenure was conducted in a fairly dignified way, it was still strange to see Gerard handling his own press conference which gave him the opportunity to have the last word.

However, you can rely on players to ruin everything and one sentence from Emile Heskey, who had been transferred to Birmingham only the day before, made sure of that. He said his former boss had got stale and it was time to go.

Thanks a lot Emile, and best wishes for the future from Gerard.

So who will follow Ranieri and Houllier?

I have always been a fervent supporter of the British manager having myself managed in all four divisions and also at international level for over 1,000 games.

I still think there are enough lads around, particularly those who have completed a hard apprenticeship lower down, who would work well in the Premiership.

While Messrs Ranieri, Houllier and the more distantly departed Fulham manager Jean Tigana had certain qualities, they didn't necessarily achieve anything more than a British manager could have done given the same financial backing.

The only thorn in my argument is the great Arsene Wenger and I can only put both hands up and say, fantastic.

However, if we look into most of these European visitors' backgrounds, Wenger arguably served the type of apprenticeship I'm talking about before he arrived here.

I would still argue, though, that people like Sir Alex Ferguson has and could handle clubs at the lower levels in Britain while I'm not sure whether any of the aforementioned foreign visitors would be comfortable, or would even consider working at a first or second division club with a small squad, very low budget and poor training and playing facilities.

But the names liked with the vacancies at Chelsea and Anfield are certainly not British...