Monday Morning Sack Watch

By: chris | September 27th, 2009

As we head towards October, at the end of the week at hand, the weather in the northern hemisphere gets cooler but the coaching seats hotter. No longer can underperforming look to early season disconnects, jitters, weakened legs and evolving squads as substitutes for results. So while we head towards firing season, a look at the coaches who are hottest on the hot seat – those who may not even make it to tomorrow afternoon, much less October.

Leonardo (Milan): Milan is not a debut job – not when your off-field CV centers around the technical boxes rather than the training pitch. Sure, some will hit lightning in a bottle, but more often than not, you’ll get a few Leonardo-like debuts. And a ‘Leonardo-like’ debut right now looks like this:

2-2-2 3 gf 6 ga -3

The killer is that scoring column, which leads you to believe it might be more that Kaka is in blanco and Ronaldinho is toast as an elite footballer. But January is still far off and Milan cannot afford a second UEFA Cup/Europa League campaign within three years. Not quite fair, but fairness has never reigned in football.

Lucien Favre (Hertha Berlin): Remember all of six months ago when Hertha were the heroic table toppers from the capital? Now they’re the league’s biggest disappoint and worst team. In fact they’ve won precisely one game against non-fourth tier opposition, and even that against Danes Brondy in the Europa League qualifiers. Last year was nice, but what have you done for me lately? Not enough, clearly.

Juan Angel Ziganda (Xerez): There’s no way his predecessor, Esteban Vigo, pulling a Derby and making it to the top flight with a team which has no business being there is his fault but…oh dear…

No matter how weak the team, scoring a solitary goal – just one, by any means – is something of a job requirement in top flight football.

Now while we’re here…

Erneste Valverde (Villarreal): Perhaps one of the more unlikely names on the list given the stellar start to his coaching career – Athletic Bilbao to the UEFA Cup and Espanyol to the UEFA Cup final – but sometimes a good coach and good team just don’t match. ‘Villarreal’ and ‘relegation zone’ in the same sentence might be an indicator.

Abel Resino (Atletico Madrid): After Javier Aguirre was sacked, Abel ’steered’ his side to a Champions League spot. And by ’steered’ I mean he rode Diego Forlan’s blazing inferno to a one year contract. A solitary year isn’t the grandest vote of confidence in the first place, and now that Diego Forlan is back to earth, the inability to beat even the most toothless of opponents – Almeria & APOEL at home to name a couple – is not a recipe for employment.

Phil Brown (Hull City): Let’s see, he’s…

i. Thrown his own players under the bus.
ii. Received the dreaded vote of confidence from the suits upstairs.
iii. Captained a Premiership team which has played like a Championship one since late 2008.

All that awaits is the announcement on the official website.

Roberto Donadoni (Napoli):

“Often when we make decisions, we get caught up in the moment and that’s what happened to me when I called Donadoni. I had to sign a new Coach to shake up the locker room and send a signal to the squad, but in doing so I pushed aside a great friend like Edy Reja.

“Would I take that route again? It was a decision I had to make, but with the benefit of hindsight and the experience I have now, I’d say no. I would not do that again.”

– Aurelio De Laurentiis, Napoli owner, on Saturday.

They managed a 2-1 win on Sunday over Siena, which earned Napoli’s sporting director the axe instead, but Donadoni is not far behind – not with a ringing endorsement like the one Aurelio provided Saturday. Donadoni just has no luck in any type of azzurro.

Paul Hart (Portsmouth): Seven losses in a row to start a season with a poor, poor team is enough to elicit sympathy; sympathy is not normally enough to maintain employment.

Any more that are missing or are flying under the radar?