Football News: The Sack Race Is Under Way.....

Image from: snakford.com

Sometimes it is hard to know what is best in football, there are so many sides to every story, how do the clubs know it is the right time to sack a manager?

Even when a manager is clearly out of his depth, as Moyes was at Manchester United, who is to say he doesn't just need a few more months to adjust. Perhaps that defeat is the moment when it will hit home with the players that they need to pick up their game, rather than the moment when it is time to try a new manager.

There is Sam Allardyce with the crowd against him last season, no one wanting to see him continue on with the job in hand, even though the West Ham United fans themselves acknowledged he was getting good results. They just didn't like how those results were achieved.

Fast forward to this season and Allardyce is changing perceptions, no longer would people laugh in his face when he tells you how he would win everything with a decent team. Though they would still snigger behind their hands as soon as his back is turned.

Then there is Pardew, who has split the Newcastle United fans in their support. Not just because he seems to have turned it around, but because they don't know whether to blame him or owner Mike Ashley for the club's poor form before it. Even now they still aren't sure if it is just the players or the manager that is achieving the results.

Arsene Wenger is now teetering on the brink, his reputation at Arsenal on the verge of being destroyed, even though the years of trophy famine were ended last year with the FA Cup win. With his team still showing the same weaknesses as they did last year and the year before and the year before that too, it is getting more and more difficult for the Gooners to stay loyal to him.

The worst case of how it all changes has to be Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool, who had the world at his feet last season, only to destroy it all in just a few short months of this season. Bizarre team choices, tactics that make no sense and a team with an inability to defend despite the multi-millions spent on defenders has left Rodgers all but gone already.

Is it possible he could also perform a miracle turnaround similar to Pardew and Allardyce? You would have to say no, the clear signs of a man who has lost the dressing room are there for all to see week in and week out. Plus his inane comments to the media have got more and more idiotic by the week, there is little hope of him doing any more than looking for a new job in the coming months.

There are two other managers who stand out as likely candidates for early removal, but one of them, Paul Lambert, who has been consistently poor in his time at Aston Villa, has only just been awarded a new contract. Add to that the lack of interest from their owner, who just doesn't want to spend money on the club, then you have a man who only has to ensure relegation survival to hang on to his job.

The real number one candidate for sacking though is another one, similar to Rodgers, who has fallen from grace suddenly after being lauded last season. Not for him the mediocrity that has marked Lambert's time with Villa, Nigel Pearson led Leicester City to promotion from the Championship with the title in their bag.

This season saw the club start off well, with the highlight a stunning 5-3 win over Manchester United, which had the media fawning over Pearson and his habit of watching from the stands, rather than the touchline. Fast forward to now though and Pearson is a dead man walking, the team have stopped performing since that day and his main contribution to the game has been to verbally abuse fans of his own club.

Like Rodgers, he is just marking time before he is signing on at his local job centre. You have to wonder where he could go next, with fans unlikely to want him, it would seem Wigan Athletic, when Malky Mackay inevitably gets forced out, might well be his only refuge. At least there he would find it difficult to find fans of the club to abuse! After Malky, he might even seem like a step up.

That just leaves one other that is a current candidate for removal, surprisingly so considering his team's impressive form in recent weeks, Louis van Gaal. The Dutch manager is getting results at Man Utd, but the team is shambolic defensively and their attacking play is ominously patchy at its best.

The massive reliance on the form of David de Gea can only take the club so far before it begins to fall down round his ears. It doesn't help that only favourites like Robin van Persie can stand him, his tendency to fall out with players has become almost unbearable in the short time he has been with the club.

Local favourite Danny Welbeck was forced out of the club, big summer buy Ander Herrera is being left out because his face doesn't fit, record buy Luke Shaw was ridiculed publicly, then forced to agree with that ridicule to the press. Then there is the training, Moyes was seen as a dinosaur with out of touch training methods causing injury, but LVG's training methods have decimated the squad with needless injuries as he fails to understand how hard to push players.

That is even when you overlook the bizarre decision to spend all pre-season training the players to play one way, buying players to fit the intended system, then abandoning it almost immediately. Results are all that are keeping him in place, but how much longer can they continue to allow so many more shots on goal than they are creating before a team takes advantage?

Written by Tris Burke December 15 2014 16:03:01