County football team management is a precarious occupation.

You can be flavour of the month one day and an outcast the next.

And the past few days have served to accentuate the pressures, intensity and indeed controversy under which some, if not all, bosses are expected to operate within what is, in essence, an amateur sport.

Already Colm Coyle (Meath), Donal Keogan (Cavan) and Luke Dempsey (Longford) have stepped down from their posts following first round All Ireland Qualifier defeats by Limerick and Laois respectively.

The price of failure can be high - very high.

Indeed, two Ulster managers found themselves under immense scrutiny last Saturday when Monaghan met Derry in Clones.

In the end, Seamus McEnaney prevailed as his side edged home by a point leaving Derry’s Paddy Crozier to face mounting criticism within his own county.

Yet Seamus, so devoted to Monaghan and absolutely dedicated to bringing them meaningful success, is aware that the knives were out for him, too, had his side slipped up.

Indeed, he can’t rest easy as his team face a mammoth task against Donegal next Saturday in Ballybofey and Seamus is fortunate that Paul Finlay and Gary McQuaid, will be back.

For Paddy Crozier, forced to try and prepare the Derry team against a backcloth of an ongoing heavy diary of club league and championship games, must be particularly frustrating.

Quite why the Derry board persist in arranging internal fixtures that clearly impede on their county team’s championship preparations and itinerary is a question only they can answer. The fact that Derry have so many injuries and selection worries is surely not unrelated to this situation.

My old adversary, Tyrone manager Mickey Harte, also shipped some barbs when his side lost their Ulster semi-final replay against Down. But Mickey got his boys back on track against Louth last weekend and he will certainly have them fired up for Westmeath in the Qualifiers on Saturday.