There’s plenty more for Emma Hayes to do at Chelsea. There’s a Champions League to win, something she’s never done.
There’s the FA Cup and the Super League double to aim at this season. It’s not like the pay’s bad at Chelsea and she’s on the board of trustees at the club, which indicates just how integrated she is to their identity.
So Hayes isn’t going to drop everything and gratefully come running the minute another job comes her way. She would likely be current England manager if that were the case.
And certainly the idea that she would give up all of the above up for Wimbledon, as was mooted two years ago, was a revelation of quite how deluded men’s football can be in its self importance.
But there is a level which might tempt Hayes away from what must be one of the best jobs in women’s football. And there is a part of her that must wonder what might she achieve in the men’s game.
Emma Hayes has an outstanding track record of success with the Chelsea women’s team
Hayes has been linked in recent days with the vacant manager’s job at Queens Park Rangers
QPR are close to appointing long-serving Wycombe Wanderers boss Gareth Ainsworth
Not because it is some kind of step up. But, to be frank, the money’s better and the profile is higher and the challenge would be unique. And she likes a challenge.
If there is anyone who can make this transition, it is Hayes. She is one of England’s top coaches. When she talks about the game, she is one of TV’s best pundits.
She is shrewd, doesn’t suffer fools and would not tolerate anything other than a winning culture.
As such she is better qualified for the QPR job, currently vacant, than most of the male candidates.
Understandably for QPR CEO Lee Hoos and Director of Football Les Ferdinand, there’s a tricky calculation to be made here.
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With the club hurtling towards relegation having topped the table in October under Michael Beale, whose abrupt and painful departure to Rangers precipitated this alarming decline, it probably isn’t the time to be bold.
They were in appointing Beale – no one knew last summer how he would fare as a No 1 – and they looked like they had one of the best coaches of a generation.
They thought in Neil Critchley they might have Beale-lite but that hasn’t proved the case, the mitigation being that morale is on the floor.
Hayes has delivered five Women’s Super League titles to Chelsea, including last season
The Blues have also won the Women’s FA Cup four times during her 11-year tenure
Hayes has also proven herself an exceptional pundit on ITV’s international football coverage
So maybe now isn’t the ideal moment to launch an experiment that would ensure global media descends on Loftus Road.
Or as Ted Kessler, QPR fan, former Q Magazine editor and founder of The New Cue, told me yesterday when I mooted Hayes or Anthony Barry as preferred choices: ‘QPR have made their two jazz albums this season. Now they’re in a relegation battle, they need someone to play the hits, loudly. Ex-Chelsea coaches who’ve never managed at Championship level would be suicidal.’
It’s a great analogy and possibly right. Certainly the Chelsea affiliation will make life harder at Loftus Road.
And yet clubs like QPR don’t get on by playing safe in their appointments. Their budget will be in the bottom half of the Championship.
You need a special personality or elevated football intelligence (preferably both) to subvert the rule that promotion belongs to clubs with parachute payments.
And I’m not so sure Hayes is a gamble, even though she hasn’t worked in men’s football. There is a body of work to observe and draw on, just as there was when Brighton appointed Roberto De Zerbi.
Chelsea’s co-owners Todd Boehly (far left) and Behdad Eghbali (second left) sat down for a healthy lunch with first-team managers Graham Potter (second right) and Hayes (right) earlier this month
The managers tucked into a healthy meal of broccoli, asparagus, tomatoes, potatoes and eggs
He had never managed in the Premier League and the club was in a very difficult moment (albeit with a very good infrastructure behind it). He might have been seen as a risky choice.
Hayes will stay with Chelsea for now but it’s a matter of time before a men’s club moves to appoint her
Yet Brighton were confident his work at Shakhtar Donetsk and Sassuolo could be translated into the Premier League. The same is likely true of Hayes. The only difference is her gender. But someone has to make the first move to appoint our most-talented female coach.
In reality, she is likely better than all the Championship coaches and a good few Premier League coaches.
Why would the ability, personality and intelligence to coach a football team be exclusively reserved for males? Only culture and history have dictated that thus far.
As the women’s game develops, more women will have opportunities to coach. And many will be better than the average man.
As such, by bucking the trend of conservatism, a club like QPR can get ahead of the game and steal an advantage before it becomes common place.
The real question is whether she would even want to throw in a Champions League campaign for a club that looks like it’s heading towards League One?
But if she backs herself, she will know that can be turned around. And that she’s the woman for the job.