Whenever there's a club stuck in a prolonged period of underachievement and attention turns towards the latest manager failing to get a tune out of the players on the park, inevitably you'll see or hear these words: "the manager isn't the biggest problem at the club."

Cycling through managers every season is far from ideal. With each one typically comes new ideas on how to play the game, which leads to a turnover of the squad, which can lead to further instability, results failing to pick up, the manager coming under pressure, and ultimately a change being required before the cycle starts over again.

Whenever this happens, ire from the stands will soon diverted from the dugout towards those in the director's box. After all, a succession of underachieving head coaches is a sign of a poorly run club. It then becomes easy to forgive the flaws of the manager, with supporters becoming split on whether an under-pressure boss should be kept in his job or jettisoned because, regardless of what's happening upstairs, he doesn't appear to be up to the task.

The best two examples in this season's Scottish Premiership are Philippe Clement and David Gray.
Clement has been in the job at Ibrox a little over a year and initially enjoyed some success, winning the League Cup final and getting Rangers back into last season's title race, but things eventually fell apart. He's not won any of his games against Celtic, including the Scottish Cup final, and they've suffered through an abject beginning to the current league season, already looking well short of the quality it will take to make Celtic sweat for another Premiership trophy.

Gray, meanwhile, is in his first job in management and has struggled to turn performances into results, throwing away points with a staggering consistency. It was hoped a lynchpin of the most successful Hibs side of the last 15 years would be able to bring those tangibles into management, but thus far Hibs have been more of a soft touch than ever, conceding eight times and scoring none in the last 15 minutes of league games. That would be a bad enough record across an entire season, nevermind in October.

Now, neither are in the best of situations. Above Clement at boardroom level, Rangers have regressed into something of a basket-case, with plenty of upheaval and the club failing to bring in the required expertise in order to make them succeed. Directors don't pick the team or set out the tactics, but the better a club is structured then there is greater potential for success and problems upstairs can easily bleed down to the team.

As for Gray, he's in charge of a team who have been floundering for a few years now as pressure continues to increase, deservedly so, on owner Ian Gordon and CEO Ben Kensell.

The case to stick with these managers is that it's not fair to judge them when you consider what they have to put up with.

The argument makes sense. Football clubs are businesses and businesses will fail if those at the top don't know what they're doing. But the problem is that a football club may literally be a business, but they very often don't operate like one.

The most important person at any football club, the vast majority of the time, is the manager. A good manager can improve  players, bring results and unite the fanbase. And this happens regardless of whether those who employ the manager can be trusted to run a piss-up in a brewery. This is true now, before and forever.

You'll often see disgruntled supporters of an underachieving club enviably extolling the virtues of another team who are overachieving. They'll loudly complain they wished their team was run as well as that. But in so many cases, instead of providing a blueprint to follow, those same clubs are just as disorganised off the park and sometimes even more so.

The best example from recent years has to be St Johnstone. Perennial top-six finishers despite relative minnow status across most of their existence, their success eventually culminated in the most unexpected cup-double in Scottish football history. So they must have been immaculately run off the park, right? For a club with an average attendance around 4,000 to have so much success, surely they'd have to be? Well, not exactly.

It's since been revealed that St Johnstone lacked many people in important positions off the park, most notably in their scouting network. Earlier this year they didn't even have a goalkeeping coach for several weeks. Former boss Tommy Wright throughout his tenure was frustrated with the lack of investment in infrastructure and eventually the chickens came home to roost with the struggles of the last three seasons. (And, to further prove the point, Simo Valakari looks like an inspired hire as new manager at the time of writing.)

They were able to achieve so much because of one simple recipe for success: hire a good manager who picks good players. They had that in Wright. Callum Davidson was able to continue that fine work for a hugely successful but relatively short period, and then it all went to pot.

Obviously, proper structure and expertise throughout every facet of the club will help, but if you have a manager doing a good job then ultimately the team will succeed. Take a look at Aberdeen. They themselves were stuck in the sacking-cycle during Dave Cormack's stewardship: Derek McInnes to Stephen Glass to Jim Goodwin to Barry Robson in a short space of time. They've pulled themselves out of it by hiring Jimmy Thelin, who has transformed the club overnight.

And this is the problem for managers like Clement and Gray. Yes, they haven't been dealt the best of hands, but there is a undoubtedly another manager out there who could come into the situation and make a success of it.

A manager may not be the biggest problem at a football club, but it's often the easiest one to fix.