Time’s Up, Laudrup: The reasons behind the Laudrup sacking

‘Another club looking for a short-term fix’. I may be paraphrasing slightly, but this seemed to be the general, quite patronising reaction of the average football fan on Twitter to the news that Swansea City had sacked Michael Laudrup. The verdicts of football fans from all over the country and the world did nothing less than infuriate me. Who were these football ‘know-hows’ to question the workings of a club who they clearly have no understanding of? If there is any club who are a million miles away from searching for a ‘short term fix’ it is Swansea City. If there is any chairman in the country who does not react on a whim it is Swansea chairman Huw Jenkins. Unsurprisingly, the dumbfounded and outraged reactions of such people was merely confined to football fans outside of the Swansea City family. It was safe to say that the general feeling amongst the Swansea supporting community was one of acceptance, relief and, in some fans’ cases, joy.

To the average football fan, all may have appeared fairly rosy on the South West Wales coast, but those more attached to the club had caught the scent of something rotten simmering behind the scenes at SA1 quite some time ago. Perhaps the biggest clue to the discomfort at the Welsh club was in the most obvious of places: on the football pitch.

Many still laud the Swans for their fluent passing game, which has been evident for the majority of the past 7 years, but some voices in football still place the extravagant ‘Swanselona’ tag on the team, when in fact the football played for the past 8 or 9 months has been rather lukewarm at best and just downright boring at times.

I think back to the first 6 months under Laudrup: the bombarding, fast paced counterattacking football; the spearhead at the top of the attack in the form of Michu supported by cutthroat wingers like Dyer and Routledge darting inside to devastating effect; and not forgetting the lightning fast, short passing – the trademark of ‘The Swansea Way’. It was exciting. But where the hell did it disappear to? What exactly happened that the style of play denigrated so suddenly and so dramatically? Watching Swansea attempt to play football at Upton Park on Saturday was not only excruciatingly painful to watch but also rather embarrassing. The sexy football was now replaced with slow passing, usually backwards and quite often wayward, with little pace offered out wide (although admittedly our pace outlet Dyer has suffered injuries this season) and absolutely no form of pressing – a form of defending up top that was especially drilled into us under Brendan Rodgers. Also, the strange use of record signing Wilfried Bony, a clearly exceptional player, has been infuriating. For large chunks of games the Ivorian striker has nothing played ahead of him, leading him to come hunting the ball further down the pitch where he is predictably less lethal with his back to goal near the halfway line. Laudrup could just never seem to suss out a way to get us to be more incisive and to generate that missing killer pass – or get anywhere near making one in the cases of recent games.

The worst and most scathing remark I can make about the football that was starting to form and to be consistently played under Laudrup over the past 6 months is that it was becoming Paulo Sousa-esque – a manager synonymous with dull, soulless, defensive football during his one year stint at Swansea. The Liberty Stadium over the past 8-9 months has become a soundless, grey structure with little for fans to sing about.

Some have argued over recent years, especially with some of Spain’s recent tournament excursions in mind, that ‘tiki-taka’ is a defensive art of purely retaining the ball so the opposition cannot have it. However, Swansea’s attempts at ball hogging was proving far less successful on the pitch than the World Cup winning Spain’s passing game. In fact, Swansea’s success rate since their historical League Cup win over Bradford in February 2013 has been nothing short of dire – and more worryingly relegation form. 36 points from 38 games since the cup final is simply not good enough. and there was little evidence that the club was going to turn it around anytime soon. Laudrup’s final game, a 2-0 loss at Upton Park, was as bad as it got and Laudrup did not help himself with his bizarre decision to head off to Paris for two days after the Upton Park horror show. But Laudrup’s nonchalant and laissez-faire nature has always been a bugbear of some fans: his supposedly relaxed attitude around the training ground could obviously spread to laid-back players and training sessions, hardly ideal preparations for the harsh environs of the Premier League, whilst the Swansea Twitter community has turned into a maelstrom at times over the topic of “Why doesn’t Laudrup ever stand up on the touchline and shout at our players?”

There have been whispers of unrest behind the scenes for a while. There was the strange debacle and stand-off between the club and Laudrup’s obnoxious agent, Bayram Tumultu, last summer, which reportedly almost spelled the end of Laudrup’s reign according to some areas of the press, as the Dane hardly distanced himself from Tumultu’s provocation of the club. More recently there has been talk of rifts forging amongst the players, so much so that the police were called to the training ground last month after a call about a certain pony-tailed Spanish defender wielding a brick towards a senior player (the brick part of the story was extensively denied by the club and both players, but not the alleged bust-up). And whilst we are speaking of Laudrup’s handling of players, there is still that strange decision by the manager to send Ki Sung-Yeung out on loan to Sunderland and instead stick with the frustratingly average Jonathan De Guzman. Truly baffling.

Whilst De Guzman was clearly a favourite of Laudrup’s, there were murmurs that many others in the squad were unhappy with the way he dealt with the players in general with his man management skills being a particular weak point; something that was further emphasised when compared to the  man management-centric regime of Swansea’s previous boss, Brendan Rodgers.

These opening points are merely to paint a picture to those football supporters who are maybe less well-versed in all things Laudrup/Swansea related that the club was far from a harmonious camp and that the sacking of Laudrup should not really be seen as that shocking. However, I’m going to stop now. A quick read back over all that makes it seem as if I spit in the face of Laudrup and his attempts to manage our football club. Far from it in fact. Juxtaposing the views I’ve offered so far, (a large portion of) our time under Laudrup has led to some of my happiest memories of being a Swansea fan.

To start with that 5-0 win at Loftus Road at the start of the 2012/13 season when Laudrup and Michu revealed themselves to the Premier League in devastating fashion; as the Swans’ scored their 5th goal that day and as I stood in the away end at QPR’s home, I knew we were in for a special season right then. That 3-1 win over WBA at the Liberty, which many Swans fans will profess to being the greatest, most beautiful and most mercurial 45 minutes of football produced by Swansea City – ever. A personal favourite memory of mine came 3 days after that WBA game, when I recall going absolutely mental in the away end at the Emirates Stadium as Michu scored a late double to record a famous win after we had ‘out-Arsenaled’ Arsenal on their home patch. However, I think most of the Jack Army will agree on Laudrup’s greatest moment: winning the League Cup and placing the first ever major trophy in the Swansea City trophy cabinet. Fairy tale stuff that will see Laudrup etched into our history books forever. Don’t forget we also won at Anfield and Stamford Bridge en route to that final.

In August 2013, I found myself drinking and dancing in the streets of Malmo, Sweden. Why was I there? Because Michael Laudrup had led little old Swansea City into the Europa League that’s why (try telling our fans it’s a meaningless cup). Throw in the famous away cup wins at Valencia’s Mestalla and at Old Trafford, at a time when Laudrup’s star was well on the way to fading out, and there is a hefty amount for us Jacks to look back on and say ‘Cheers Michael Laudrup’. It’s just now come to the right time for ‘Cheers Michael Laudrup and thanks for everything, but it’s time for you to go now’.

Out of his shadow and into the managerial chair steps a person who as a footballer hasn’t even had an inch of the career that the Great Dane has had in football, but is one who is adored by the Jack Army as a club legend: Garry Monk. The new man in the hot seat has taken on the role (for how long, we’re not sure) at the age of 34 – a year older than Roberto Martinez when he became Swansea manager in 2007. The similarities between Monk and Martinez are very noticeable with both being former Swansea captains who were popular amongst the fans, both stepping straight into their first managerial jobs from playing careers and both promising an exciting brand of football. The only difference is that the new man is directly influenced by Martinez himself, as well as hailing the influence of Brendan Rodgers on his football and coaching career.

Monk suffered a serious injury in 2006, which some suggested could possibly have finished his playing career. However, the impact of the injury on Monk led to the former Southampton product turning his attentions to post-playing career pursuits and from then on he began studying coaching and management to prepare for the future.

Fortunately for Swansea, Monk recovered over time and led the team through the leagues, as skipper, all the way to the Premier League. You could even argue that it is thanks to Monk that Swansea are even in the Premier League in the first place; his last-ditch tackle/block in the playoff final against Reading to deny Noel Hunt scoring into an empty net is now part of Swansea folklore and something that’ll be remembered as fondly as any wonder goal – the “£90 million pound tackle” as some dubbed it. Monk dived in to save us then and all the Jacks are well behind him in his new role and hoping that he can help save us again.

Many from the outside will look at the dismissal of Laudrup and the subsequent appointment of Monk as a backward step, but if there is one thing you must always remember about Swansea is that we have perhaps the most canny chairman in the business. Not only that, unlike the onrush of foreign owners into our league and world football in general, our chairman is a fan who bleeds black and white like the rest of us. His only interest is to benefit and help the club. In Jenkins and Monk we trust.

Do you think Swansea City were right to move on from the Great Dane or do you think the Laudrup sacking is yet another example of short term thinking in modern football? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

You can follow Matt on Twitter at @mophead_88. Matt also hosts a Swansea City podcast, which can be found on Twitter at @TheJackCast, on The JackCast website here and you can also subscribe on ITunes here.