At Catania, Rolando Maran has just been sacked for the second time this season. His first esonero came eight games into the season even though he had led them to their highest ever points total the previous year. Maran was brought back in January, replacing his own successor, Luigi De Canio, and now he is gone again. His second spell lasted 13 games.

Gianluca Vialli summed up the culture a couple of months ago: "David Moyes, in Italy, would have been sacked three times now." Gian Piero Gasperini managed it twice in five weeks at Palermo last season. The first time was on 4 February. His replacement, Alberto Malesani, lasted 19 days and so did the reinstated Gasperini, sacked again on 11 March when the president, Maurizio Zamparini, decided to bring back Giuseppe Sannino, who he had already fired three games into the season.

Palermo changed managers five times that season and nobody really has to explain why Zamparini is known in Sicily as il mangiallenatori, the "manager-eater", when it has happened 28 times in total during his 12 years at Stadio Renzo Barbera. One was devoured after three days, another lasted two days and another did not even get a game. Not that Zamparini sees the fuss. "We need our players to act as if they are men rather than baby-food," he explained to Corriere dello Sport, having escorted Gasperini off the premises the second time.

If nothing else, at least it shows that English football still has some way to go before it is quite as potty as maybe we imagine. It can just feel that way sometimes when we are now at the stage where there are only five managers in the Premier League who have overseen 50 games and, across the four divisions, there have been 77 sackings since the start of last season. Or 78 if we count Brian McDermott, dismissed and reinstated in Massimo Cellino's first day at Leeds United. Plus, of course, Tim Sherwood now it is abundantly clear he is another statistic-in-waiting at Tottenham Hotspur, without his employers even bothering with the usual routine of pretence.

Sherwood has already been informed by the relevant people about what to expect, followed by an immediate leak to Sky Sports, and when the process is that undignified it really ought to be no surprise that there are informed 24-7 football obsessives such as Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher who have taken a long, hard look at management and decided it is not for them.

It is certainly not easy trying to decipher what goes on inside Daniel Levy's head sometimes but, then again, I would be pretty sure the Spurs chairman could put up a reasonable counter-argument that it is not actually a case of whether someone necessarily deserves to be sacked. It is about getting somebody better. And, fundamentally, when it is stripped down to that kind of basic logic, maybe it is not actually a bad way of looking at it after all.

It does not excuse the abandonment of decent human values but, equally, let's not forget some of the double standards that come into play when the League Managers Association complains about the system. Richard Bevan, the LMA's chief executive, blames the sackaholics for "embarrassing football". Yet what about the culture of back-stabbing among his own members? Managers routinely angle for jobs that are already filled and it is almost accepted these days that football clubs will have their new men lined up before the old ones have been told to collect their belongings.

In Tottenham's case, Levy's problem is the same one that afflicts a lot of people in his position, namely relying on their own judgment when they have only minimal knowledge of the relevant field. The kind of people, to put it bluntly, Brian Clough used to call "know-nowts". Levy, looking for the 10th manager of his 13-year tenure, has certainly got more wrong than right but there is also a body of evidence that the man who introduced Jacques Santini and Juande Ramos to English football would not be straying off-course again by turning to Louis van Gaal.

Van Gaal is 62 but that should not necessarily be an issue bearing in mind a 72-year-old won the Premier League last season. The Champions League trophy flutters with Bavarian ribbons because of the 68-year-old Jupp Heynckes and the Spain team that won the last World Cup and European Championship was managed by Vicente del Bosque, eight months Van Gaal's senior.

Old is gold at the moment and Van Gaal certainly comes with some impressive character references to go with his compelling list of achievements at Ajax, Barcelona, AZ Alkmaar and Bayern Munich. Ask José Mourinho about the manager of Holland and he will describe him as the most thorough and rounded football man he has come across, enthusing with a reverence he reserves for only a select few.

Mourinho is biased, naturally, because it was Van Gaal who gave him his break at Barcelona. Van Gaal, in turn, regards the Chelsea manager as his protege judging by the outpouring of emotion from the top table when it was Mourinho's turn to be honoured at the Football Writers' Association annual tribute dinner in January. Van Gaal had flown in with his wife, Truus, and it probably gives you an idea of the man that he described Mourinho as "modest" and "shy", and actually seemed to mean it.

His speech that night explained how he had grown accustomed to being referred to in the Dutch media as "the arrogant Louis van Gaal". Now, he wanted it to be known, with Mourinho sitting alongside him, that he no longer regarded himself as the best in the business. "Now, he is better than me." Though he did add later on that second-best was not too shabby. The more you are in Van Gaal's company, the more it becomes apparent he and Mourinho have a lot in common. He likes to let off esteem.

Van Gaal is certainly fond of one story, covered at length in the book The Coaching Philosophies of Louis van Gaal and the Ajax Coaches, going back to the night before their Uefa Cup quarter-final against Gent in 1992, and a conversation with John van Loen that says much about his ability to foster a spirit of togetherness among his players.

Van Loen was one of the Ajax strikers and Van Gaal asked his player to give an honest opinion about what would be the best system to reach the semi-finals. Van Loen replied that 4-3-3 was the most effective formation. "John knew very well that he would not be picked if we played this system," Van Gaal recalls, "but he was still willing to put the interests of the team first." Ajax won 3-0 and went on to win the competition.

None of this is going to make Sherwood feel any better but it does feel like Spurs would be getting a clear upgrade. Van Gaal has a history of achievement that backs up his words. He is both a forward thinker and an old-school disciplinarian and he has the force of personality to effect immediate improvement.

Unpleasant for Sherwood, of course. What has happened to him creates the impression that Spurs are flaky and inconsistent, untrustworthy even, and it does devalue the sport when the default setting at so many clubs is to press the button as soon as anything goes slightly wrong. This, unfortunately, is just the way of modern football and we are probably obliged to live with it, and be grateful there are still a few places where managers are treated with even less care.

Take a break from baseball's bad habits

Apparently this habit that various football people have picked up of speaking from behind their hands has its origins in baseball. As the story goes, it became common practice in 1989 when the San Francisco slugger Will Clark caught the Chicago Cubs pitcher Greg Maddux mouthing "fast-ball in" to one of his colleagues. Clark read his lips and knocked the ball for a grand slam. Though there are old-timers who remember other pitchers covering their mouths as long ago as the 1960s.

"What is said now on pitcher's mound stays on pitcher's mound," according to the US sports writer Bill Lubinger. "It's a conference room where lips are not to be shown, where sounds are not to be made, unless it's behind the muffled wall of a baseball mitt."

In football, it is not quite so easy establishing who picked it up first but clearly the memo has reached all the Premier League clubs that there is a small army of lip-reading experts out there who are intent on bringing them down.

At least José Mourinho might have legitimate reasons for keeping his dugout views among his inner circle every time, say, a referee upsets him or Fernando Torres has one of his bad days. Others are just making themselves look plain daft. When Harry Kane has banged heads with Wes Brown and a Tottenham physio is whispering, Goodfellas-style, through the gaps in his fingers you know it has gone too far.

Hull's success is their real reason to roar

The great shame about all this Hull City business is that it has taken so much emphasis away from everything good that has been happening at the club. The real story of Hull's season should be the way Steve Bruce's side are on course to confound public opinion and stay in the Premier League with something to spare.

Throw in the possibility of an FA Cup final, if they can avoid losing to Sheffield United of League One, and it is shaping up to be the outstanding season in the club's history. The pity is that their owner, Assem Allam, should be riding on the back of it rather than this self-inflicted position whereby all he needs to complete the caricature is a monocle and a white Persian cat.

The rich are used to getting their own way and Allam, true to form, is threatening a legal challenge now the FA has blocked his plan to rename the club Hull Tigers. At the very least, could he just postpone all this nonsense until the summer?