The whole thing is just one monumental disaster after another.
But given the way things have gone in the past, like sacking Gary Rowett when we were 7th in the table I don’t think many of us should be surprised with it at this stage.
So yesterday the club announced that Steve Spooner and Gary Gardner will be taking charge of the team for this weekend’s game against Stoke City. Nothing sounds really wrong with that on the face of it, someone from the coaching staff replacing the head coach leaves, in fact that’s how Pep Clotet got the job in the first place.
But it’s the details around it that make the whole thing weird.
The club must have known that they were looking to move on from Clotet before the loss to Swansea, that’s why they were so quick to get rid of him once the final whistle went. We saw the report from We Are Birmingham, who said that the club were looking to bring in a caretaker from outside the club rather than promote from within, and yet here we are. It’s also important to note that the club stated they’ll be in charge for Sunday, rather than ‘for the immediate future’ or ‘until further notice’, which to me reads that they’re still looking for someone for the remainder of the season.
This to me says that they sacked Clotet and then started the search for a caretaker (perhaps in addition to their search for a permanent head coach, perhaps instead of, I don’t know), rather than going the other way around.
And now we find ourselves in a position where we can go in the space of a few weeks from head coach, to temporary caretakers, to caretakers, to permanent head coach. That’s four different sets of people leading the team in a matter of weeks that’s more than we had from the mid-1990s until 2007 from Trevor Francis to Steve Bruce.
But as I said, should any of us really be surprised by all this?
What about you? Do you think they got the timing of the decision correct?