Howard Wilkinson, the League Managers' Association chairman, says the position of football manager is becoming "debased" by the recent spate of Premier League departures.

Sam Allardyce became the eighth manager to leave his position this season after parting company with Newcastle United last night.

Wilkinson insisted Allardyce should still be in charge at St James' Park and blasted the short-term thinking he believes is preventing managers being given the time they need to make an impact at a club. "It debases the position of manager," Wilkinson said. "You have to start to ask, what's the manager there to do?

"It is actually a sign of the times in the sense that the position of manager now seems to be increasingly overvalued in terms of money and increasingly devalued in terms of the job they're supposed to responsible be doing.

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"It begs the question, given the number that have gone in the Premier League now this season, do you need a manager? Or when you appoint one, on what grounds do you appoint him?"

Wilkinson warned stability was the only way to ensure success. "Statistics going back 20 years in our game and other countries show that changes of this nature made in the short-term have an effect for two to three months maximum," he said. "Then the club, the team, reverts back to norm. "What you've got to change in a club when you go in is the culture. At some clubs, that can be difficult because the changes you've got to bring about can be massive."

Wilkinson believes such a state of affairs only persists in football. "I can't see that in industry they would invest the amount of money we're talking about in position and then get rid of people two, three, four months later," he said. "You'd have to question the people who appointed them, wouldn't you?"