Were Swansea right to sack Michael Laudrup?

Garry Monk’s first game in charge of Swansea ended in a resounding 3-0 win for the team with which he’s spent ten years as a player. Less than three days later, his team will walk on to the turf at the Britannia Stadium as Monk attempts to string back-to-back Premier League wins for the Swans for the first time this season. Under Michael Laudrup, the Liberty Stadium outfit won just one game a month from October to January. They won two in September, but started their season with consecutive defeats in August. That amounts to an average of one league win per month since the start of August 2013. The Denmark legend was the 12th casualty of the very sharp Premier League axe that has not hesitated to set managers’ heads rolling. Since the season began, seven managers have been sacked. With the exception of Andre Villas-Boas, the remaining six were sacked because their clubs were hurtling towards relegation. But was Laudrup at fault for Swansea’s poor results in the league this season? In 2002, Swansea were at the bottom of the Football League pyramid. Twelve years later, they find themselves playing in Europe. But while a European campaign was surely a welcome addition for the club’s fans, it proved to be a bridge too far for Laudrup and Swansea’s back room staff. The Europa League has often been critcised by clubs that qualify for the tournament, because those clubs are normally equipped with small squads that are not ready for the twin challenges of European and domestic football. The reality is that clubs take part in the Europa League are sometimes those that find themselves in a relegation battle. Newcastle United boss Alan Pardew is a manager who is only too familiar with this scenario: In 2012, the Magpies secured a place in Europe when they finished fifth in the league. The toll the European fixtures took on the St. James’ Park outfit saw them battle relegation throughout the 2012-13 season. Newcastle ultimately finished 16th. “The Europa League is a massive problem to Premier League teams,” Pardew said earlier this year. “We want to be back in Europe but I think clubs are thinking twice. “I think it’s different for us than other European nations. The impact of what we do in the Premier League is far different to their football. If they insist we play Thursday, then we have to play games on a Monday - I think that would be fair.” These clubs do not have the means to invest in a large squad to make sure they’re able to emerge unscathed from their lengthened fixture list. There is also little financial incentive for such teams. Finishing between fifth and seventh in the league nets a team around £1.5 million. Clearing the group stages of the Europa League gives them £2.5 million, which is about as far as mid-table English clubs have gotten to in the tournament, according to Dan Altman, a writer for Bloomberg Sports. He seems to concur with what Pardew’s said. In his analytical column, he writes: “The effect associated with playing in the Europa League was very significant: a drop of 1.9 league places, on average, with a 95% confidence interval stretching from 0.5 to 3.3 places.” “This result seemed to imply that playing in the Europa League was a bad idea for teams that cared a lot about their positions in the Premier League,” he adds. In addition, teams that make it to Europe’s second tier are often from the continent’s less hallowed leagues: 24 out of the competition’s 48 teams were either from Eastern Europe or Scandinavia. Such trips are often punishing on players and to ask of them to deliver match-winning performances when they have precious little time to rest and recover is a little too much to ask. On the 7 November, Swansea travelled to Russia to take on Kuban Krasnodar in the Europa League. Barely three days later, they were entertaining Stoke in South Wales. It is because of these gruelling trips which see footballers play once every three or four days that so many of Swansea’s key players picked up injuries which side lined them during crucial parts of the season. what has hurt Swansea most this season was the loss of two of their key players at both ends of the pitch. Netherlands international Michel Vorm has been a rock in the Swansea goal since his move from Utrecht and Michu was Swansea’s top scorer last season. This time around, Vorm’s knee injury meant Swansea lost him during the crucial Christmas fixtures and the New Year period, when the league’s fixtures are most congested. It was also during that time that the Swans lost Michu, who’d scored 22 times last season. In fact, because Swansea’s squad was so stretched, he asked to be fielded despite his injuries. “Michu is one of our most important players and was our top scorer last season, but he has been struggling, is not 100 per cent and unfortunately he is out for three or four weeks,” Laudrup said last year. “He has not been at his best but that is because he has been struggling with both his knees for many weeks, but he wanted to play.” The tabloids speak of Laudrup giving his players two days off training and taking a flight to Paris when his team were struggling to stay afloat. It would seem that Laudrup not caring about the team at the time was one that was made at face value. It was actually a move that showed how much he cared about the team: Laudrup probably gave his team time off in an attempt to get away from the immense pressures they were under. He jetted off to Paris to clear his head. The papers have also said that Laudrup passed on loan signings club Chairman Huw Jenkins thought could’ve helped the club. Lewis Holtby, Nacer Chadli and Thomas Ince were some of the names thrown around. While they are indeed talented, Holtby and Chadli have struggled for game time this season and Ince has precious little top-flight football experience. Laudrup would need someone who could come in straight away and turn things around, and he was never going to get anyone like that in January. If one were to look at all the Premier League managers sacked, most of them were victims of their own success. It was the same at Swansea, where Laudrup won the League Cup. “He leaves a Swansea side that are in mid-table and still in the FA Cup and Europa League,” says former Swansea striker John Hartson to the BBC. “It was not a disastrous performance, and you have to remember that the club were in the fourth division and playing at Vetch Field 10 years ago. “But when you win a trophy and spend £12m on a striker - which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago - you raise expectations among the fans, the media and the boardroom.” [caption id=“attachment_1390765” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Michael Laudrup. Getty Images[/caption] It is for this exact reason that sacking Laudrup was a mistake. Had it not been for him, Swansea would not be where they are today. He just needed time to steady the ship, and he would have, given what he did with extremely limited resources at Real Betis when he was in Spain. The average lifespan of a manager at a club now is only a year, and with this short-termism, clubs will get nowhere. “Almost half of the managers sacked so far have been given less than one year in the job,” League Managers Association Chairman Richard Bevan told the Daily Express. “This highlights the short-term pressures in the game when managers have months rather than years to make an impact at a football club. The volatility in management and coaching continues to undermine the profession at a time when the game needs to continue to encourage players towards the end of their career to stay in football.”