Had to be done. It's a 2 horse race up there and whoever is in second is under the cosh, nevermind being 8th or whatever position he's got them in.
That will be one delighted man, straight into the car and back down to another job here, given by another gullible chairman. Got some front that lad, you have to admire him for it.
Yes, the irony that every single pundit is an unemployed manager telling the other managers where they're going wrong "And we're lucky to have Graham Potter on the couch today ..."
I always think that managers and coaches can be unlucky, go to the wrong club at the wrong time, be victims of politics. They can burn out or get worn down by it, so I can be a bit generous to some if they go into punditry as a break or a change. I came give a bit more slack if a manager has been fairly successful and just has a blip or two on their record. I can even forgive those that have it a try but it didn't work out so long as they don't try to come across as trying to tell someone what to do, management isn't for everyone. I know most will do a bit of punditry as a way of keeping themselves in the public eye, letting clubs know they're available because otherwise you can be very quickly forgotten about. It still doesn't mean I accept what they say as gospel, though. But for me it's the serial failures, who achieved nothing of note in their career, or the ones who never tried that boil my piss. I go back to Mark Lawrenson, a serial failure of a coach. A coach employed by the mags to tighten up their defence and actually made it worse, sacked by every club that employed him as they were worse when he left than they were when he arrived. Yet for years he pontificated as an "expert" on MOTD telling other coaches what they were doing wrong. I'm sure he was only employed because he was Hansen's mate. I think he was genuinely the first, but there's others that have followed since then. As a kid in the 80s, pundits were generally managers or ex players that had achieved something and gave their opinion on a game or an incident, they didn't go around claiming to be right on everything and knowing what the manager did wrong. (Ok, Clough did, but that was more of an act playing up to his media image than anything else, I've heard stories of him being much more thoughtful when he wasn't on camera, but even then he could back up his opinions with what he achieved as a manager compared to some of the numbnuts today).
Otherwise known as Boardroom panic! " Oh,hang on,we've appointed someone who's ****e.....we need to get rid before the fans turn on us!"
Yep. In my view, the only ones who ever really add anything are managers or ex managers. The older often the better. Bobby Robson, El Tel, MON, Redknapp and others. They often say something that would never have occured to you, and clearly would never have occured to Lineker and the likes. By the way, when Klopp had said he was leaving, and before they had announced Slot, Lawrenson's pick for the job? Big Ange!
Lawrenson once came out with something so stupid about how to improve English football I actually wondered if it was a joke that backfired. It was about 1995 and most English club sides had gone out of Europe early and after England had failed to qualify for USA 94 and not pulled any trees in the games since then before Euro 96, there was a discussion on 5 Live before on match on how to improve English football. His suggestion was to stop promotion and relegation, especially to the premier league for 5 years. He said it would take the pressure off teams threatened with relegation, so they could just concentrate on getting better and raise standards. The other bloke on the discussion came out and said, no you'll end up with lazy premier league clubs who'll just get richer from the TV money and bring in more foreign players, while clubs outside the premier would end up knackered because their better players will be raided by premier clubs while others won't get a chance to develop by putting themselves against better teams either coming down to that level or being promoted to a harder league. At the time we were in Division One as the championship was known as then, along with Derby, Leicester, Palace, Ipswich, Norwich, Birmingham, Sheffield United, West Brom, Stoke and Wolves. So, he was happy to throw clubs like that under the bus, teams with decent histories and fan bases and reputations for developing players just to keep the Premier League a closed shop. In our case we'd have had the likes of Micky Gray, Martin Smith and Micky Bridges picked off for next to nothing, what would we have been able to offer them career wise if they wanted to progress? The same for the others mentioned. Five years is a long time and lower down the leagues some of the clubs might as well have turned semi pro if it had happened, so it wouldn't have improved the leagues at all. I remember listening to it and him doubling down even as the other presenter agreed with the other bloke. I think that was the first time that I realised he was thick, he'd obviously not given any thought to it properly and couldn't put up any arguments against what the others said, but wouldn't back down and admit it was rubbish. But when he initially said it, it sounded like a joke until he started to explain it. Then when you add in his failure as the mags defensive coach (making a suspect defence more suspect is a helluva achievement!) and other bollocks he's come out with you really wonder how he made it so long. I'm sure it's only because he was Hansen's mate and he seemed to get on well with that prick, Alan Green, that they kept him around so long.
Yep. That's it. The bloke is just thick, but got to know the right people. Still though, he was mightily affronted when he got the push!
