Saturday 21 October 2006

Sturrock Sacked

Less than a month after signing a three year extension to his contract at Hillsborough, Paul Sturrock has been sacked as Sheffield Wednesday manager having been in charge for just over two years.
In his first season he got the team promoted, winning the playoffs at Cardiff, and surpassed the expectations of what the team he inherited should have achieved that season.
In his second season, he kept the team punching above their weight, surviving what was always going to be a tough year back in the Championship.
This season has seen a poor start. The first few games saw reasonable performance fail to merit a decent return of points, but the last couple of games saw pretty dire standards from the Owls, and the 4-0 drubbing by Colchester looks to have been the last straw.

Two reasons why I'm pissed off about this:
I really think that given time, Sturrock would have sorted the situation out. He's got a decent track record as a manager, with (effectively) back to back promotions at Plymouth, and an impressive record in Scotland before then. Yet again the manager at Hillsborough has not been given chance to do his job.
Sturrock always struck me as honest and hardworking. It was refreshing to have a manager who'd say that the team were rubbish. I particularly enjoyed "we can't defend like that and expect to win football matches".

Bizarrely, this makes Sturrock the longest serving Wednesday manager this millennium. That's six managers in six years. I can't see the club going forwards long term unless the board have the guts to stick with a manager through a poor spell.


Links

A sensible article from the BBC about the decision
Interviews with the chairman, ex-manager, and others

Burnley have rejected an official approach to speak to their manager Steve Cotterill, and Nigel Worthington has ruled himself out of the running.