UNLESS I’m missing something Phil Parkinson hasn’t become a bad manager overnight.

While I’m fairly confident the powers-that-be at Macron towers won’t be contemplating springing the ejection seat in the manager’s office there are murmurs of discontent beginning to surface in some quarters.

Wrongly in my opinion.

The problem with football is there is no middle ground when it comes to the perception of managers.

You’re either the best thing since sliced bread or you’re sacked.

Football, consequently, fails to help its managers become the best they can be at their job.

In any other business a manager is given ample time and support to work through challenging times, something which just isn’t afforded their counterparts at football clubs.

To only be given one year – two if you’re lucky – on average to manage anything, let along a huge organisation like a football club, is quite simply stupid.

A football manager will never develop his skills and knowledge if he is not given the chance to learn how to handle the most challenging parts of the industry.

But that’s the nature of football. It’s not like any other business because those who own football clubs panic the second they’re put under serious pressure to sack the boss.

If a manager’s team struggles for results for more than a couple of games – and woe betide them if they are at the bottom of the league when it happens – then it is written into the constitution of football fans everywhere that his head must be called for.

I’m not here to fly the flag for Parkinson but anyone who thinks a man who did a good job at a number of clubs, including the one he left to come to Bolton, has suddenly lost his ability they are wrong.

To be fair, the majority of supporters seem to be sticking by him, and rightly so.

The difficulty of managing Wanderers over the last couple of years cannot be overstated thanks to the mismanagement of the past which left Wanderers facing a long, hard financial future.

Remember he has not been able to sign any players who cost either a transfer fee or a loan fee. That means any player who costs anything has been out of Bolton’s reach.

So the only ones he has been able to bring in have been ones other clubs don’t want.

If he was on the Great British Bake Off chef Parkinson would have to make a cake out of free ingredients which has been looked at, squeezed and thrown out or left on the shelf by his fellow contestants.

It has to be said he baked a pretty fine cake out of those ingredients last year but the standard has risen and, quite frankly, there’s only so much you can do when your opponents are shopping at Fortnum and Mason and you’re going down Aldi.

Fans, of course, always have the right to vote chef Parky off the show if they can no longer stomach the fare he serves up, such is the knee-jerk nature of the football world.

And it is rather palatable that Parkinson is still to the taste of most Wanderers supporters.

Let’s hope one day he gets the chance to rustle up a tasty team bought from the same market as other clubs.