FEBRUARY is both the best of times and the worst of times to be a football manager. While it is the time of year when the phones of unemployed members of this profession start ringing, it is also a period where a strange kind of madness can take hold in boardrooms around the country.

Sir Alex Ferguson once coined the phrase squeaky bum time in reference to an exciting part of a sporting event, particularly the final minutes of a close game or season, but when it comes down to boardroom politics, it is usually far earlier than that - round about now in fact - when supporters get most angst-ridden and trigger happy directors are at their most twitchy. This is last-chance saloon time when it comes to salvaging a season and it is a time for cool heads.

This time around the Chinese whispers all started with Philippe Montanier being sacked by Nottingham Forest in mid January. A court of law may yet decide the rights and wrongs of it all, but it was at least a plausible escape route for Mark Warburton from a Rangers scenario which wasn't unfolding in the way the manager or the club had hoped. Soon he too was without a club and Rangers were without a manager.

The short-term upheaval in Govan may yet prove crucial to secure some long-term stability but for now things are falling off badly at Ibrox, with just one win in seven league games seeing them lose valuable ground in the battle for second place. Their supporters now face the prospect of an Old Firm visit to Celtic Park on March 12 with dread.

Such upheaval is par for the course at some clubs. This is the third successive February where Kilmarnock have had a change of manager, but still they manage to keep their head above water as a Premiership club - even their supporters would surely desire a more stable long-term environment. Now Motherwell too have bitten the bullet with Mark McGhee, although it is hardly surprising if the board felt remedial action was required after four straight defeats, scoring three goals and conceding 17 in the process.

In most other businesses, a senior manager would be tasked with achieving certain aims and goals then appraised at the end of a season over his success or failure in achieving them. This doesn't wash in football, though, where directors feel, rightly or wrongly, that they can't take the risk. Instead they take in all available evidence before taking a punt on whether the club's chances are better with their man in place or not. The only conclusion that can be drawn from McGhee's departure is that the Motherwell felt more exposed to the risk of relegation with him in post than getting rid of him, even though they are not yet in the relegation places and still just six points away from the top six. The sudden burst of form at Inverness will hardly have helped his case.

At least McGhee can console himself with the thought that he fell victim to same kind of thought process which did for Claudio Ranieri, the champion manager of England and Fifa's manager of the year. But for every 'reaction' like Leicester got under Ranieri's old assistant manager Craig Shakespeare against Liverpool on Monday night - sometimes known in the trade as a 'dead cat bounce' - there are at least two cases of club's whose results continue in the same dispiriting vein as before or indeed deteriorate. Of the three clubs who were relegated from the Barclays Premier League last year, Newcastle United (Steve McLaren) and Aston Villa (Remi Garde) both sacked their managers last March to no avail.

It is a dog-eat-dog world, but managers too are perhaps starting to realise that they are their own enemies in situations like these. While plenty will still be queuing up for the vacant jobs at Rangers, Leicester or Motherwell - and Blackburn Rovers took just a matter of hours to replace Owen Coyle with Tony Mowbray - the more savvy, and less desperate, ones these days would rather plan their careers in a more orderly fashion, arriving at the start of a pre-season with their own recruitment plans rather than being fatally undermined before they begin. Sabbaticals such as those undergone by Pep Guardiola, Brendan Rodgers and now Frank de Boer are now de rigeur amongst the coaching fraternity.

That seems a more civilised way for everyone to do business, and perhaps in this regard football can learn a thing or two from certain other sports. Having taken a year to arrive while he fulfilled his contractual arrangements with Clermont Auvergne, Scotland rugby head coach Vern Cotter is now saying his long goodbye to the SRU with a successful final campaign, all the while Glasgow Warriors head coach Gregor Townsend casts one eye on his future existence in the Murrayfield hot seat. Witness too the dignified end to the Ronny Deila era. Succession planning and clever, joined-up, long-term thinking: that is how sports clubs, governing bodies and businesses thrive, by giving individuals a solid platform to develop their skills. Not by a knee-jerk revolving door policy which forces you to re-invent the wheel each February.