Obviously just a feeling but got bad "Martin Jol meets Brendan Rodgers" vibes about this guy. Respectful tact and diplomacy is a prerequisite for such a high profile role, and unfortunately he's stereotypically Dutch in this regard.
If we're comparing him to bald Dutch managers, he definitely seems to be more Martin Jol than Erik Ten Hag. But that's not a bad thing at all in my book - Jol did well at Spurs. OK he didn't actually win anything there (they're Spurs, not winning anything is their MO) but he brought them up from mid-table mediocrities to consistently challenging for European places in the league. He was ultimately undone by a combination of Daniel Levy and dodgy lasagne, rather than by bad results.
In the case of both Rodgers and Jol, a lot of their problems were down to bad relationships with senior people at the club. Damien Comolli being a common factor.
Our current situation is very different. I'm optimistic we won't have similar problems this time round.
Van Dijk's shrugged opinion says it all "seems like one of the better Dutch coaches at the moment", talk about damning with faint praise.
To be honest, I'm surprised Virg even said that much given the circumstances in which he was asked the question.
Did I miss it, or has there been anything concrete (not baseless rumours from random sources regurgitated by Samie) as to why Amorim suddenly got dumped after a month of being the obvious media-briefed preferred candidate?
I thought the general view on this was that it was Portuguese sources who were pushing his name rather than anyone from our end, and in fact he was never a leading candidate.
...this eleventh-hour pivot...
This is speculation. The media being briefed about Slot has only started happening at the point when it seems to be close to a done deal. We don't know how long they've been looking at him behind the scenes. The fact that his name didn't come up sooner in this thread is more a sign that none of us know what we're talking about than evidence of desperation on the club's part.
Clearly he has been on the radar of a lot of big clubs for some time.
Timing is everything, as in life.
The timing of Jurgen announcing his departure couldn't have been much worse, considering we were still focusing on the hunt for a new DoF at the time. It feels to me that things are working out an awful lot better than they could have done.
Recent Posts