It being a week of comings and goings in sport with an outgoing Davis Cup captain and a several football managers among those to be packing up their belongings in their cardboard boxes.

John Lloyd fell on his sword and departed as GB Davis Cup captain, Phil Brown ended his hell at Hull, and Bristol City manager Gary Johnson departed by the face-saving 'mutual consent'. God, even Jonny Wilkinson has been relegated to the bench by Martin Johnson, so in the words of Thunderclap Newman, there really must be something in the air.

At times like these you have to ask the question, are the men in charge really to blame for the poor showing by their teams. Could John Lloyd really have extracted much more from a piss poor pool of players? Could Phil Brown really continue the miracle that was Hull City actually being in the Premiership, and was there really much chance that Gary Johnson could get his side anywhere near the Premiership? Remember this was the guy who led them to within 90 minutes of the Premiership before they were beaten by Brown's Hull in the 2008 play-offs.

At times, the words 'polish' and 'turd' spring to mind. Simply put, there are teams with better players at their disposal (and quite often more money - though not in the case of British tennis), so to expect these men to work miracles when the raw materials they have to work with are well... raw, is akin to asking Beckham to rise Lazurus-like from his injury bed and run 100 metres against Benny Hill chasing a slaphead.

Time for a change some might say, and in the case of Britain's Davis Cup debacle, you'd have to say Lloyd's resignation is probably the honorable thing to do. In the case of Brown, who led Hull to the cherished land, and Johnson who led them perilously close to it, you'd have to say that it seems as if people have very short memories, and if you happen to oversucceed or come very close to success initially, then the expectation bar becomes raised far too much. Poor old John Lloyd neither met nor raised any expectations.