If any job in football needs a government health warning, it is the role of coach-turned-manager. For Sammy Lee and Chris Hutchings, the reward for years spent toiling in the background was a few months in the hot seat followed by dismissal. They are the latest examples of men who failed to make one of the toughest transitions in sport.

The late Ray Harford, who coached Blackburn Rovers to the Premier League title in 1995 while Kenny Dalglish was in charge, once described the step up from No 2 to No 1 at the same club as the toughest in football. “I warned the chairman [Jack Walker] before he appointed me that it never worked,” Harford said. “He persuaded me - but I was always aware what could happen.”

When David Batty and Graeme Le Saux started fighting during a Champions League match, his worst fears were realised and one of football’s great coaches watched as the team he helped to build began to implode with him as the manager.

“The main problem for a coach when he becomes manager is his relationship with the players,” Graham Taylor, the former England and Aston Villa manager, said yesterday. “One week the players see you as someone they can approach with ease.

“When a coach moves into the manager’s role, that relationship changes dramatically. And it’s not just the relationship between the manager and the players, there are all the other relationships in the club, from dealing with the chairman to the supporters, which alter significantly.”

Bryan Robson, the Sheffield United manager who worked for England under Terry Venables in the mid-1990s, believes that coaches who are brave enough to take on the challenge of management underestimate the level of pressure and demands on their time that they will face.

“Coaching is the best job in football,” Robson said. “You are out every day, working with the players, running sessions, developing their skills and helping get the best out of them. But as a manager you are facing endless demands on your time, more than you ever imagine when you are coaching. Whatever happens on the pitch, whatever the result, as the manager you are responsible.”

Dr Chris Harwood, senior lecturer in sports psychology at Loughborough University, insists that the problem facing coaches who are promoted to managers is “power perception”.

He said: “Due to the culture which exists in football clubs, coaches are often seen as lesser figures in the power hierarchy while the manager is seen to have a superior role. That can cause a barrier when the coach assumes the role of manager, he has to alter that perception while the players view him as not having the skill set to do the job.

“The coach might be very gifted, but the players’ initial reaction can be, ‘well, he only had the skills to be a coach yesterday, so why is he the manager today?’ ”

Chairmen undoubtedly view ambitious deputies as a cheap option. Promoting a devoted servant proves a lot less expensive than scouring Europe for high-profile replacements, but it will not have helped Hutchings and Lee that they followed very successful managers in Paul Jewell and Sam Allardyce, who had overachieved at Wigan and Bolton.

Frank Clark, of the League Managers Association, said: “Whoever took over from them would have faced a very tough time trying to match the success they enjoyed. But it was even harder for Chris and Sammy moving up from their coaching roles. It can take years to make an impact at a club – these two guys were given a few months.”

Maybe Hutchings should have known better. He moved from the training ground to the manager’s office once before, at Bradford City in 2000 when, once again, he took over from Jewell. That experience ended after a similarly short period of time.