Alan Pardew has been in the news a lot recently and is of interest in this area because of his time with Saints.

Would you believe he was at Newcastle for four years? Time does fly.

The surprising thing was, when he left Newcastle for Crystal Palace, it was said he was the fourth-longest serving of the 92 managers and the second-longest behind Arsene Wenger in the Premier League.

We also saw Tony Pulis – who had been waiting on the sidelines since walking out on his last job at Crystal Palace, and had been linked with any Premier League vacancy which might crop up – find his way back in to management at West Bromich Albion.

The difference to the old days is that Premier League managers moving do not get too much sympathy because, to be fair they are all on high salaries.

And why not, when the players are and there is so much coming in from television?

People like Tony can afford to wait until the next opportunity crops up.

Years ago it was every manager’s wish to do well enough to be given an extension to his contract.

I think one of the headlines that was possibly not seen by too many was that Peter Taylor, who in his career has had spells as a coach with England and many other clubs, was quietly dismissed from his managerial job at Gillingham.

I remember the terrible headlines many years ago regarding a man called Derek Dooley, who had been a great centre forward at Sheffield Wednesday and had a tragic accident on the pitch which cost him his leg.

The club had retained him and during my time there he was actually the commercial manager.

He then, would you believe, did the unthinkable and went to neighbours Sheffield United where he was appointed manager for a spell, but he was sacked on Boxing Day.

This was totally unheard of, and you can imagine the outcry at the time.

Now it seems to just be half expected, but you can picture the sort of Christmas Peter Taylor and his family had, and apparently it’s his birthday today.

So happy Christmas, happy birthday. His chairman, incidentally, is called Mr Scally.

The point is that the Pardews and Pulises, and anyone else who has been fortunate to manage at the highest level, would be able to spend as much time with their family as they want, because of the financial situation, whereas the lower division fellas would be wondering if and when they would get another appointment.

I suppose they could keep an eye on Leeds United, where a gentleman called Massimo Cellini has cropped up in the last year.

I read that he is not too happy with the results at present and if he decides to finish the current manager, Neil Redfearn, his successor will be his fifth managerial appointment in seven months. That’s months, not years.

The other parts of all of this are that in the lower divisions jobs possibly crop up more often, but if and when a man is appointed the decisions to be made away from work with a family are: do we move house, do we take the children out of school? There are many cases in the game where the family are split, and this surely cannot be a good thing.