The chances of one of the Big Six employing a British manager in the near future are slim and none.
If any of those posts became available tomorrow, there would not be a home candidate on the shortlist.
Not even Sean Dyche, whose work at Burnley has been excellent.
There is a glass ceiling for British managers, and the Big Six sit above it.
Which is why Dyche’s reported interest in the suddenly-vacant Leicester job is understandable.
It would carry greater remuneration for a start, offer a fresh challenge — and the Foxes were Premier League champions the season before last.
Dyche has been at Turf Moor for five years, doing a great job on limited resources and would probably get more financial backing at the King Power.
But he should not touch the Leicester job with a bargepole and not just because, currently, Burnley sit eleven places higher than them in the table.
Sympathy for Craig Shakespeare is limited.
He stepped into Claudio Ranieri’s shoes in February, commendably earned himself a lengthy contract and will be very decently compensated for his dismissal. An awful lot of people have done exceptionally well out of Ranieri’s incredible achievement, and Shakespeare is one of them.
He has a lot of friends and contacts in the game and offers will soon arrive, if not for number one jobs.
Yet his sacking remains an insult.
As caretaker and permanent manager, he has been in charge for 21 Premier League games, winning eight, losing eight and drawing five.
The defeats were inflicted by Manchester City (twice), Arsenal (twice), Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Everton.
“… the Board feels that, regrettably, a change is necessary to keep the Club moving forward - constant with the long-term expectations of our supporters, Board and owners,” declared vice-chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha.
Moving forward?!
The club took the giant step back into ordinariness, returned to being just another run-of-the-mill Premier League struggler, when it canned Ranieri.
Shakespeare has now been sacked, just as Ranieri was, because at Leicester, like in so many other places, there is a pathological fear of relegation — as if the club is going to spontaneously combust if it goes down.
For so many, scrambling around in the bottom half of the table — getting pummelled by the elite, trying to scrape points with defensive football — is the limit of their ambitions.
Leicester gloriously showed it doesn’t have to be that way.
And what if they went down?
Just do it again in another tier, as they have done previously. Enjoy the crack of winning football matches again and come back up.
It’s simple.
Burnley did it.
They were relegated from the Premier League at the end of the 2014/15 season, won the Championship the next year, and finished 16th in the Premier League this past May.
In the two Premier League campaigns sandwiching their one back in the Football League, they won 18 matches. In that Championship season, they won 26.
They scored 67 goals in those two Premier League seasons, 72 in that Championship one.
Fans love the glamour of the Premier League, but relegation is not the cataclysmic disaster it is made out to be.
You might get to see your team have possession, score goals, win matches — the point of football, last time I looked.
But financial and commercial considerations conquer all, and so Shakespeare goes just eight matches into the season because Leicester are in the bottom three.
What if Dyche, now second-favourite in most bookmakers’ lists, took over and Leicester were still in the bottom three come the New Year?
He would be sacked.
Dyche was not sacked when he took Burnley down.
They recognised they had a good manager, trusted him to have a good go at the Championship, had fun there and have been rewarded.
Good luck to Dyche if he eventually feels, for the sake of his career, he needs to move on.
It just shouldn’t be to Leicester.