7th-placed Brentford sack Warburton, Weir & McPartland

[catcherintherye]

That Guardian piece is annoying. The fawning over what are - as you rightly highlight - methods that have ben applied to football for years.

It's the genuflection to men from business that grates though - that they can come in and quantify and streamline and add some sort of added value to the whole process of running a club. Or so they'd have you believe. Even worse than the owner in question are the the pair manager-spivs he's given employment to. Both from the world of business themselves and prepared to go along with stuff like agreeing to work through to the end of their contracts even though they've been effectively shuffled out of the door. What sort of passionless, bloodless freak of a manager is that - that they'd agree to carry on with an owner who's already planning ahead of them? I think it was that mentality that came to bear on Moyes staying on like a bad smell after he announced he'd be off. Little wonder it didn't go down well amongst many of us. It's just not right. Managers are not CEOs, they're the standard bearer. The corporate world and its values making more inroads into our culture. It should be castigated, not celebrated.

Yes, this is true of wider society though. The worshipping of business, particularly the financialisation that has occurred is ridiculous. Much like in wider society though, they are very quick to come forward and present themselves as people who have changed the dynamic. They haven’t, they have taken what already exists and sold it back to people. I think only those from the finance industry could come into “our” game and start proclaiming new innovations as if they had never been thought of at all. It is an insult.

On the Moyes issue well yes I agree. I think by the end he had overstayed his welcome. Having said that it’s hard to blame Moyes for that, I doubt I’d have walked out on the job. The blame should lie firmly with Kenwright. At no point did he ever try to force the issue with Moyes. Kenwrights behaviour was like a pathetic teenager whose first ever girlfriend had given him the slip. He knew for weeks in advance she wasn’t that interested, she’d avoid meeting him, be seen around with other guys. Then one day she tells him that she is leaving him for the most cocky boy in the year who’s ex (a stunner) had just jibbed him off to go to uni. At this point with very little dignity left he begged her to keep going out until her future boyfriends ex went to uni. He showed her off to his parents and would even drive her over to the new mans house and wait outside to pick her up. No dignity whatsoever. That’s the equivalent of what he did. Of course Moyes should shoulder some blame. But in life, if you let people take you for a ride then they will. A top club would have moved Moyes on when he said he wanted to leave. Let Stubbs and Weir take over until the end of the season.

 

[davek]

Yes, this is true of wider society though. The worshipping of business, particularly the financialisation that has occurred is ridiculous. Much like in wider society though, they are very quick to come forward and present themselves as people who have changed the dynamic. They haven’t, they have taken what already exists and sold it back to people. I think only those from the finance industry could come into “our” game and start proclaiming new innovations as if they had never been thought of at all. It is an insult.

On the Moyes issue well yes I agree. I think by the end he had overstayed his welcome. Having said that it’s hard to blame Moyes for that, I doubt I’d have walked out on the job. The blame should lie firmly with Kenwright. At no point did he ever try to force the issue with Moyes. Kenwrights behaviour was like a pathetic teenager whose first ever girlfriend had given him the slip. He knew for weeks in advance she wasn’t that interested, she’d avoid meeting him, be seen around with other guys. Then one day she tells him that she is leaving him for the most cocky boy in the year who’s ex (a stunner) had just jibbed him off to go to uni. At this point with very little dignity left he begged her to keep going out until her future boyfriends ex went to uni. He showed her off to his parents and would even drive her over to the new mans house and wait outside to pick her up. No dignity whatsoever. That’s the equivalent of what he did. Of course Moyes should shoulder some blame. But in life, if you let people take you for a ride then they will. A top club would have moved Moyes on when he said he wanted to leave. Let Stubbs and Weir take over until the end of the season.

The script is that they came along and dragged football away from the barbarism of hooliganism, crumbling stadiums, fatalities etc and civilised the game. The truth is those changes to the environment and social order were to come in any case and it needn't have taken us down the route of the extreme monetization of the game it did. The Football Task Force - which provided the blueprint for football in this country back in the 90s - were split on which way football should go: free market or a much less reformed, more socially responsible route favouring democratic governance. It went the former direction and we missed out on the possibility of our top league looking something more reasonable like the Bundesliga. It's that defeat we all live with today...and that type of yellow dog journalism that hails it all as a triumph rather than the disaster it was is symptomatic.