…I’d sack Sam Allardyce. Not for the crappy football, not for the league position, but simply for spending over £5m of the club’s money on Joey Barton.
Seriously, the lad is just trouble and the baggage he brings is not made up for by what he does on the pitch. How anyone in their right mind could possibly think he’s worth the effort is beyond me.
Update: You know your situation is bad when Stan Collymore is offering to help you.
Third in the Sack Race this season is Chris Hutchings; but any team that voluntarily buys Titus Bramble is going to be onto a loser from the start (although that said, Newcastle seem to have done just as badly recently without him). There is talent at Wigan, Sibierski and Koumas for example, but there are too many middle of the road journeymen like Michael Brown and Heskey.
Hutchings also replaced Jewell at Bradford City and only won one of twelve games there; his Wigan record was two wins, two draws and eight losses – worth noting that these losses include games against Liverpool, Chelsea, Man United and Portsmouth, all teams who will be top six at least. This is something that I think is overlooked. They did beat Sunderland and Boro, who are likely to be in the same part of the League come May. All managers and chairmen must realise that unless there is some sort of freak result, or superhuman performance, it is unlikely that three points (although maybe a draw is not out of the question) will be garnered from this level of opposition. It’s a sad fact, and it highlights the gulf between the top six or so teams and the rest of the Premiership – never mind the other divisions.
Speaking of Boro, Southgate must be getting the paper on a Wednesday just in case he gets the “vote of confidence”. Personally, I don’t think he’s got long in the job unless results start improving. His record this season is almost identical to that of Hutchings, only Wigan actually managed to beat Boro. Draws against local rivals (two-all against both Sunderland and Newcastle) aren’t enough for even the most staunch Boro fan. Chairman Steve Gibson has been extremely patient with Gareth, given him his chance when he didn’t have the qualifications and given him money. His overall League record isn’t up to much, 14 wins out of 50 games (to date) with 23 defeats. More experienced managers have been given less of a chance than that. Either Gibson has an unwavering faith in Gareth or sees something a lot of us don’t. Either that or he realises the only way to maintain Premiership status is to get the results against the similarly-rated teams?
No idea on who should replace him, but someone with experience of a relegation battle would have to be top of any list; but I wonder if Jose likes pies?
Martin Jol takes over, gets Spurs to a creditable 5th in the table. Their highest ever Premiership finish.
The very next season he consolidates them in that position which is no small achievement with the established strength of United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool ahead of him.
This summer they spend an absolute fortune on players but due to the board’s idiocy completely undermine the manager, causing him to lose the dressing room. The players know he’s a dead man walking, they respond accordingly.
Some of Spurs players should hang their heads. They should realise they don’t play for the manager, but for the club. Martin Jol has been treated appallingly by the Spurs board and by some of his more senior players. Berbatov in particular will have done nothing to enhance his reputation as a top player with his sulking and antics. And let’s remember all Berbatov’s goals come against lesser teams, he hasn’t once scored in the league against any of the top 4.
Juande Ramos will come in, perhaps, but there’s nothing like the expectation surrounding a new coach at White Hart Lane. All he’ll hear is about the glory days and the stylish football but Spurs fans are living in the past. They haven’t won the league since 1961 and haven’t come close between then and now.
Today’s newspapers are hailing Ramos as a cross between Wenger, Ferguson and Mourinho. Nothing like building him up to knock him down again. Spurs fans will get all excited but those with any sense at all should be embarrassed about the way their club has behaved. They just sacked the most successful league manager they’ve had in years.
Let’s not overlook that Daniel Levy’s only ambitions for Spurs are to get them into the Champions League - so he can sell the club! Not so he can make them a major force in the long term but because he wants to sell at the highest possible price. That kind of short term thinking is what has them, deservedly, in the relegation zone.
The only way is down, with any luck.
Well, it’s got to be Martin Jol, hasn’t it? Watching an embarrassed Paul Robinson squirm uncomfortably while Macca and Tim Sherwood pull the Spurs team apart made me think he knows something - and not how much a Wispa is.
Martin says;
Even against Newcastle we tried to come back but we concede goals at the wrong moment all the time.
Sorry - “Even against Newcastle“?! What does that mean? There is never a good time to concede a goal, but what the result showed is that it’s not ALL Robinson’s fault - I’d say it was Dawson (for two goals) and Kaboul (for the other). I didn’t think Newcastle were brilliant, Owen was anonymous for most of the time he was on, but they did manage to keep the ball for more than three passes at a time.
Spurs will stay up, but it’ll be a long season for them - when Ledley King gets back it will make an improvement, but it’s not going to be the end of their problems - for example, Berbatov doesn’t look bothered any more, Bent is crap, Jenas is lazy and Robbie Keane is the only one that appears to give half a shit. The return of one player does not mean a turnaround in a team’s fortunes, especially one who is quite so injury prone, no matter how influential. Would another manager be able to pull this team together? They’ve spent a lot of money, just like Liverpool and Man Yoo have done, but have not yielded the same results. The board will only be so patient, especially when they look down the road and see what their neighbours have done without spunking so much money.
Who could replace him in the Spurs hot seat? I did read that Steve Staunton will be available soon.
I suppose you’d have gotten long odds at the start of the season for Jose Mourinho to be the first Premier League manager to lose his job. It’s all a bit ant-climactic now that it has happened though.
We know the relationship between the manager and Abramovich has been non-existent for quite some time now and Chelsea’s relatively stuttering start to the season did nothing to help it. You wonder did Abramovich blame the manager’s style of football for the 24,000 crowd the other night. Hard to take when you see an Arsenal side assembled for a small percentage of what you spent playing great football and packing in 60,000 each time.
Some people will miss Mourinho and his character. Not me. I’ve always thought he was an arrogant, offensive man who lacked the basic manners to be able to treat anything he said in a tongue in cheek fashion.
What’s sure though is that Chelsea are much worse off. He might not have been a very nice man but he was a very good football manager and Abramovich will do extremely well to find someone half as good. Avram Grant? Not a hope.
Carlisle manager Neil McDonald has been sacked after just one game of the season. They drew 1-1 away at Walsall and on Friday gave the manager £140,000 (a club record) to spend on Joe Garner from Blackburn Rovers.
Apparently sometime between giving him that money, achieving a good result away from home and this morning the Carlisle board ‘lost confidence’ in McDonald.
Imagine if they’d lost. They’d have hung, drawn and quartered him.
Last September, when the BBC aired its Panorama program about bungs in football, Newcastle relieved Kevin Bond, one of Glenn Roeder’s coaches, from his duties at the club.
Now Newcastle have just appointed Sam Allardyce, a man implicated in far more serious offences than Bond, as its manager. Bond, as you might expect, is not happy. He says:
Morals and integrity are things people stand on when it suits them and they go right out of the window when it doesn’t. It is the biggest U-turn in someone’s stance on a matter that I have ever come across. The hypocrisy of Freddy appointing Sam is staggering.
It’s not difficult to see his point. On the other hand it won’t do his legal action for wrongful dismissal against Newcastle any harm at all, will it?
And the other difference between Bond and Allardyce? Despite his bluster and threats the former Bolton manager is yet to proceed with his legal action against the BBC (although he’s still petty enough to refuse to answer their questions at press conferences) while Bond is suing for them libel.
Make of that what you will.
“It took Coleman two years to realise how physical preparation in pre-season is vital. The work ethic was different when Tigana was in charge, it was more intense. But under Coleman the training sessions were shorter and we were given more days off.”
The former Fulham man Sylvain Legwinski speaking after Chris Coleman had been sacked as Fulham manager. Obviously he has his own angle on things but you have to wonder why Fulham sold established, quality players like Legwinski, Malbranque and Boa Morte. With Al Fayed in charge it’s not as if they needed the money.
Would Fulham have done better with those players in their squad this season? Absolutely.
The whispers about the drinking culture at the club don’t go away either so why the public face of Chris Coleman was always genial we can’t alwasys judge a book by it’s cover. There certainly seems to be more to this sacking than just a relatively poor league position.
Chris Coleman has been sacked and Lawrie Sanchez will take over on a caretaker basis between now and the end of the season.
Not a huge shock in terms of the event itself but the timing is odd. I thought they’d wait until the end of the season. Sanchez is a strange one as well.
No Premiership management experience although he has done well, eventually, with Northern Ireland. Five games to go, four points clear of the relegation places, it’s quite a risk to change the manager now.