9. The Sack Race

Jermain Defoe: Outside The Box

In the ninth episode of Outside the Box, Jermain talks to current and former managers about the stress of the job, finding out about the pressures of running a football club, and discovering what it means to be sacked.

His journey begins closer to home as his club, Tottenham, announce the departure of their manager, Antonio Conte. That leads to questions about his possible replacements which are taken up by 5 live's Monday Night Club show, including one listener who believes Jermain should be given an opportunity.

One of the recurring themes of the series has been the undercurrent of pressure that the managers he's speaking to are facing up to. He wants to dig deeper into the stress of the job, so travels back to the south coast to speak to his former manager, Harry Redknapp, who tells him how difficult it can be, talking about the strain he felt and the knock-on effect for his family, especially his wife Sandra.

For Jermain to really understand the problems he might face, he needs to talk to someone for whom the game became too much. So he joins the former Reading and Leeds manager Brian McDermott at a talk he's giving to the Brentford Academy players about the pitfalls of the modern game.

As more footballers and their managers open up about their mental health struggles, Jermain finds out about the number of players who've talked about suicide, and hears from one manager who was having suicidal thoughts.

Part of the pressure on managers is the fear of the sack, and so he talks to current and former managers Paul Warne, Brian McDermott, Harry Redknapp, Chris Hughton, Richie Barker and David Weir about what happens when you're sacked, before finding out from a chairman and a chief executive what it's like to actually do the firing.