So it’s official then, Owen Coyle will be the new manager of Bolton Wanderers and Burnley now have to find the right man to replace him as they look to continue the good work this season has produced. It is crucial that the chairman, Barry Kilby, makes the right decision in who to appoint as Coyle’s successor at Turf Moor.

Without wanting to state the obvious, it is paramount to Burnley’s continued success this season that the right man is given the job. That means the chairman has to avoid being star struck when the same old names come calling for the vacancy. Get it right and Burnley’s home form should see them stay up. Make the wrong decision and the club could spiral to the foot of the table in weeks.

Whilst Kilby should be rightly lauded for appointing Coyle in the first place, I don’t think anyone could have predicted just how much of an effect he would have on the sleeping giant. Stabilising the club by keeping them in the Championship and slowly building, improving the side year on year would have been a wonderful achievement. He surpassed all that when they won the play off final with their highest finish to a season since 1976.

Yet, you only have to look back to the mid nineties to see the age old disease that afflicts certain chairman. They get star struck and with the tenures of Adrian Heath and Chris Waddle still in the minds of Burnley fans, the last thing the club needs is a ex-footballer who thinks he can manage in the Premiership. They need someone who knows the demands of Premiership football and what the club means to the fans. It is not an easy decision for the club to make but they have to keep their eye on the prize.

It also means avoiding such arch self publicists as Graham Souness, Ruud Guillit, Bryan Robson and Gianluca Vialli. Men who’s reputations are fanned by the hero worship dished out to them as pundits on Sky Sports. Ignore their failings as managers, they’ve won countless trophies as players, men such as Tony Cottee who took over a Barnet side flying high only to completely destroy them in less than 5 months. Star struck chairman should be banned.

So I had a look on the League Managers Association Website earlier, to see who was available on their list. Oddly, Souness, Vialli and Guillit are still touting their wares, but a couple of oddities appeared. Burnley’s two previous managers before Coyle, the overrated Steve Cotterill and the universally detested Stan Ternent are still on there.  In fact most of the list reads as a who not to give the job too, with John Barnes and Tony Adams still refusing to realise their limitations and the ever popular Gary Megson available if you want to alienate your entire fan base.

Yet there are some stand out candidates, firstly Alan Curbishley is there, as is Mark Hughes and Steve Coppell. Former Scotland manager George Burley and  Paul Jewell are still available. For me, those are the 5 top options of unemployed managers that the LMA are offering. Curbishley wouldn’t probably want to move so far North and probably Coppell is wrestling with the idea of returning to Reading no doubt.

It may be too soon for Mark Hughes to return to the game so quickly after his ignomious exit from Manchester City which leaves Burley and Jewell. Burley proved at Ipswich that he could work on a tight budget, play effective and attractive football and earn promotion whilst at Ipswich. What he has against him is his failure to deal with bigger name players and keep sides in the Premiership. Jewell also has proved an ability to make a purse out of a sows ear, as his spells at Bradford City and Wigan Athletic showed.

Jewell though is still tainted by his awful spell at Derby County and Burley proved in his third Premiership season with Ipswich and during his time as Scotland manager, he just can’t handle big name players. He was also tainted with a torrid spell at Pride Park, which begs the question, what happens to managers at Derby County?? So would going after a manager currently employed be the answer?

Looking outside the Premiership though only seems to point to one candidate who could cope with the job and the pressure of Premier League football. He’s managed an international side and took a team from non league to the cusp of promotion to the Championship. He then took over another sleeping giant and took them up before almost taking them to the Premiership in 2008. That man is Gary Johnson at Bristol City and I believe he’s the only man out there for the job at Burnley.

Now, don’t laugh but I honestly feel he’d be perfect for the job and would keep Burnley up. The only downside is that potentially, Bristol City are a bigger club, with a larger fan base. This season, they’re averaging 14,553 fans a game, whilst Burnley are almost at capacity with 20,344. Promotion for Bristol City would be a massive boost for the area, and with plans to move the club to a 30,000 seater stadium by 2011, with option to increase it to 42,000, would Johnson give all that up for a crack at the Premiership? It’d be a tough ask, but if they could get him, then they should bite his hand off. Just don’t give it to one of the usual suspects, it’d be curtains for Burnley.

When the final whistle went and those West Ham fans who’d spent most of Saturdays game against Chelsea abusing former old boys, Frank Lampard and John Terry, had disappeared to the pubs around and about, I bet they never thought they’d ever see either player back at Upton Park that soon. Obviously they were unaware that both players have agreed in principle to play for West Ham in a testimonial match for the Hammers’ academy director, Tony Carr as a celebration of his 36 years working for West Ham.

Now the West Ham fans have to swallow their pride after Saturday and think about how their actions toward those two former players reflects on Tony Carr’s night. Here’s a guy who’s given years of service to West Ham United and brought through countless players since he took over the role as Director Of Youth Development in 1973.There’s no doubt if Chelsea had played anywhere that weekend, they’d have got a lot of stick, especially Lampard and Terry and the chants weren’t that bad in the context of some of the things that are sung at football matches.

Yet, Lampard hasn’t helped himself before, with some comments about how his time was at West Ham, that he didn’t enjoy it as well, his family was badly treated by the club, he also said in a Chelsea supporters meeting he’d love to score the goal that sent West Ham down as well as the allegation that when he broke his leg playing for West Ham, some fans were cheering. I’d hate to think that was true, in fact I find it very hard to believe that West Ham fans would do that at all.So the abuse he got on Saturday was to be expected really.

People forget that Lampard has a history of slating West Ham whenever he seems to be interviewed but to say Lampard had a tough week last week would be an understatement, with the anniversary of his mothers death, an on air argument with a sad little shock jock and then the gauntlet of abuse he ran at Upton Park.

West Ham fans didn’t sing anything about his mother, but they did about the rant with the DJ and splitting up with his girlfriend, Terry got the same about his mother’s shopping indiscretion. That’s what happens at football matches, away players get rude songs sang at them, always have done, always will do. Some of the criticism the West Ham fans have received seems to be rather calculated in my opinion and I don;t think the stick they got was any worse than they would have received at Arsenal, Tottenham and Fulham.

I’m sure the majority of  West Ham fans that attend Tony Carr’s testimonial remember it’s a celebration of someone that has brought through the calibre of  Joe Cole, Lampard, Carrick, The Ferdinand brothers, Glen Johnson, Mark Noble,Tony Cottee, Paul Ince and the latest batch of Collinson, Tomkins, Sears and Stanislas. Let’s hope the minority don’t spoil a celebration of a man who would bleed claret and blue if you cut him, a more humble and proud Hammers fan you’d be hard pressed to find. Save all your singing for the next time you play Chelsea and give them the stick you feel they deserve, just don’t overstep the mark or spoil Tony Carr’s night.