4 ideas
When Walter Winterbottom became England's first manager in 1946, he did not pick his own team: a committee of FA officials chose the players, sometimes favouring men from their own clubs. Alf Ramsey accepted the job in 1962 only on condition that he alone would select the side. Four years later he won the 1966 World Cup, and that victory fixed the single all-powerful manager as the English norm.
The early English 'secretary-manager' was an administrative functionary who handled correspondence, wages and travel, while club directors picked the team. The modern manager's sweeping authority was not designed. It accumulated gradually as boards found it convenient to hand a single employee both the job and the responsibility.
English football treated playing experience and working-class instinct as the only legitimate source of football knowledge. The result was a culture that selected managers for credibility with players rather than for method, and it rewarded a gruff, anti-intellectual persona.
Concentrating visible authority in one person gives owners and boards a disposable figure to absorb failure. Sacking the manager is a ritual that signals action without changing the underlying structure. Seen this way, the manager's apparent omnipotence and his extreme insecurity are two sides of the same arrangement.