2025/6 Sack Race
- Thread starter dee
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Don't be such a killjoy cunt, I don't need moral high ground to take the piss
Ya because it’s not like our last two appointments won us our first league titles in 30 years and put us back on our perch while Utd have had nothing but relative failure since Ferguson.
Under Klopp it was never a problem, right now isn’t the time to be turning our nose up at others, we’re a shambles and it smacks of Everton’s syndrome.
What a pile of @rse. For all our problems we're still fourth. The blueslime aren't anywhere near good enough to be comparable.
View: https://x.com/TheAthleticFC/status/2013168632331718759
Why are managers talking themselves out of jobs?
Should we be shocked at Crystal Palace manager Oliver Glasner’s attempted self-immolation? After all, the uber-intense Austrian has done exactly the same thing, at almost the same point, in his last two jobs. Fail to match his ambitions at your peril, employers.
Should we be cross at him for distracting the team with his all-about-me antics on Friday, refusing to use substitutes on Saturday in what looked like an attempt to make a point about the club’s recruitment efforts, before claiming to feel “abandoned” by the club in his post-match interviews? Or, indeed, at failing to prepare his side properly for Macclesfield’s challenge? There were certainly some Palace fans who felt that way at the final whistle in Sunderland on Saturday.
Or should we, like a parent reading a poor school report, be more disappointed than angry? Far be it from this column to tell Palace watchers how to feel, but that seems like the more rational response to something that looks, to this neutral, like a massive shame. Not shame in the sense that anyone has done anything wrong, as such; instead, it just feels a pity it is ending this way, given it was only in May that Glasner helped to deliver the greatest day in Palace’s history, that FA Cup triumph over Manchester City.
Chairman Steve Parish seems to be willing to put his foot on the ball and take a breath. It seems unlikely that any manager could survive another week after the things Glasner said, let alone another four months, but maybe the board will decide to let him see out his contract, knowing they will have a much deeper pool of potential replacements in the summer. Maybe.
The question this briefing wants to address now, though, is why so many managers have decided to dare their bosses to sack them this season?
We were only a month into it when Nuno Espirito Santo, another in the “shame it had to end this way” camp, took on Nottingham Forest owner
Evangelos Marinakis and came second, and then we had the one-two punch (in their own faces) of Chelsea’s Enzo Maresca and Manchester United’s Ruben Amorim pulling their ejector seat handles.
OK, the individual circumstances of these bust-ups were different but they all have something in common: they were protests at the unfairness of it all.
For Nuno and Glasner, it was frustration over recruitment decisions that they were held accountable for but felt they had limited control over. For Maresca, it was being told by thousands of fans that he did not know what he was doing when he was forced to substitute players on playing-time limits set by physios. And for Amorim, it was being asked to change the tactical approach that had made his name and got him the job in the first place.
Now, some of you will be thinking “diddums” for these divas. Why could they not be more flexible, grateful and professional? Don’t we all have to make the best of our situations? And you would be right but this writer has a little more sympathy for the dying breed that is the classic English football manager.
The real issue here is the gap between the power we think a Premier League manager wields and the power most of them actually have. There are still a few old-school bosses out there but they are in the minority now and even they have to at least pretend to consult with higher-ups and guys with laptops.
This is the era of analytics experts, sports scientists, recruitment committees and squad-cost specialists, which is absolutely fine but those guys do not have to speak to the press at the training ground every week, do post-match interviews or stand in the technical area while fans loudly critique their organisations’ work
There is an accountability gap and managers are fed up with having to straddle it.
What is it with managers self combusting this season, is it just a cheap way to get a nice little pay off knowing full well in the back of their minds the next job is awaiting just round the corner?
First it was Nuno, then Maresca, then Amorim, now it's Emery and Glasner.
First it was Nuno, then Maresca, then Amorim, now it's Emery and Glasner.
Partly - calling out the ownership is probably the most effective means of getting out, but let's not exclude the stress of having shitty owners/DOFs who make (poor) decisions that the manager has to answer to publicly every 48 hours. Case in point, look at Nuno's case, the Forrest owner lost his shit in the middle of the pitch, in front of a full stadium, but here we are talking about a manager self-combusting for calmly delivering some home truths.
There comes a point at which a manager also needs to distance themselves from the 'regime' for their own reputation and sanity.
There comes a point at which a manager also needs to distance themselves from the 'regime' for their own reputation and sanity.
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