OTTAWA If you want to be head coach of a soccer club in Englands top four leagues, you had better fling job security out the window. Since the current season began in September, 23 coaches have been fired, which is exactly 25 per cent gone in four months.

When Malky Mackay was shown the red card by Cardiff three days after Christmas, he became the sixth Premier League boss to go. It leaves Arsene Wengers 17 years at Arsenal longer than the 19 other coaches put together.

The pressure comes from all directions the moment you begin your first training session. Losing leads to relegation. Relegation often leaves clubs financially destitute. Owners who have sunk countless millions into buying success have that sort of money because they are ruthlessly successful in business. They will not tolerate defeat.

It is a wonder why anyone would take up such a challenge, but they do. The ignominy of it all doesnt even appear to dent reputations. Men who tried and failed and still want to take another crack at it can find a new club even with losing rsums.

Look at someone like Andre Villas-Boas, who arrived with great expectations at Chelsea. Multibillionaire Roman Abramovich took him on after tossing out Roberto di Matteo, who had just led the club to the European Championship. Apparently Abramovich didnt like the playing style di Matteo used to fashion a winner.

On the sidelines, AVB often looked as if he was praying for divine intervention. When it didnt work fast enough, he was gone, too. His reward for being fired? Some $15 million by all accounts and a job across London with Tottenham, another Premier League club. That one ended on Dec. 16, putting more failure cash in the bank. The man need never work again, but Im betting he will. Maybe coaching is actually an addiction.

While winning is the only way a coach is judged, his job is far, far more than being the man directing operations from the sidelines. He has to deal with myriad elements. There is the academy, where prospects are melded into players who fit the club philosophy. There is the medical angle designed to keep players healthy. There are the player personalities, their egos.

Harry Redknapp, one of Englands most respected coaches who has been with a host of clubs in his time, can attest to player troubles better than most. He provides a frightening snapshot in his autobiography, writing about his troubles after taking on what turned out to be an unsuccessful bid to keep Queens Park Rangers in the Premier League.

He talks with horror about players being habitually late for training, many earning so much they were happier to be fined two weeks wages than to show up to work. He describes how it took him only a week or two to realize that 35-year-old New Zealander Ryan Nelsen was his best player. However, Nelsen was so disgusted with the overall attitude at QPR that he couldnt wait to leave to take on the Toronto FC coaching job.

Nelsen told Redknapp he didnt have a prayer of keeping the club up, that it was the worst dressing room he had ever been in and he didnt think there was any way the problem could be solved. Player power personified.

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Heads roll and roll in English soccer