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It's a sad fact that managers like Billy Davies will not last very long at a club like Derby County. After a 16-year playing career, which went largely unnoticed, he turned to club management and showed success with Motherwell, Preston North End and Derby, before shown the door by what appears to be an uncommitted boardroom.

When Davies was in charge at Motherwell, in Scotland, he almost led them to European football a huge achievement considering the dominance of teams like Celtic and Rangers north of the boarder. But after just seven games of the 2001-2002 season, he was sacked because of poor results, despite arguably being Motherwell's most successful manager for a long time.

He then moved down to Lancashire in England where he first became Craig Brown's assistant at Preston, then full-time manager when Brown left the post. In his two years at Preston, Davies led the club to two successive play-off finals in their bid to reach the Premiership. Both times they were beaten at the last hurdle as they tried to return to top-flight football for the first time since 1961.

Because of his success, Davies was linked with other clubs and became Derby's manager in June 2006. In his first full season in charge, Billy Davies took them to third place in the league and won promotion via the play-offs to take Derby County back to the Premier League for the first time in five years.

However, the harsh reality of the Premiership soon struck and Derby found themselves bottom of the table and with little realistic chance of survival. Part of this may have been due to a lack of Premier League experience on behalf of the manager, but he also criticised the lack of investment by the club. Although new owner Peter Gadsby cleared their 52 million debts from when he took over in 2006, the team was still lacking strength and depth for Premier League football.

Unfortunately the team didn't include enough skill and experience to compete at the top level and soon found themselves rooted at the foot of the table where they've been ever since.

The run of defeats and lack of points, combined with Davies' criticism of the lack of investment, eventually cost him his job in November 2007.

The modern game of football is such that it depends more on making profits than what happens on the pitch. The Premiership is so lucrative than relegation will cost clubs millions of pounds and they don't want to risk it; so managers who are deemed unsuccessful are given the sack rather than offered support. And unfortunately for Davies, despite his successful track record as a manager, he was made the scapegoat in an attempt to maintain a successful business.

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