Vladimir Ivic - Sacked

First half of my prediction - tick.
Second half - fwd to March 2021 - tick (probably)

 

I assume you support this way of doing things? That you're happy with the appointment?

 

Ki is never an easy place to go.

 

Ecstatic.

 

With all of the travel sanctions and restrictions hurriedly being put in place upon Britain by just about every other country on this planet, it'll soon be impossible to get there!

 

Get there? I'd never even ******* heard of it 5 minutes ago.

 

Nothing makes sense to me

if it’s Deeney with too much power, how come Gino wanted to sell him in the summer , doesn’t sound like someone who is calling the shots.

If Gino sacked Ivic because he didn’t think we would get promotion , fair enough it’s his club and his decision , but surely you would bring in somebody with a proven track record who would get you promoted.

I don’t actually mind changing manager if they are not meeting the objectives agreed (staying up / getting promotion) but you have to have a succession plan

 

Did Gino want to sell him?

Troy issued a couple of come and get me interviews and was seemingly angling for a premier league move. It just seems that nobody wanted a fat, slow turd on 75k a week, who doesn't move and only scores penalties.

 

As I said earlier, we don’t know the owner did want to sell Deeney. Could well have been there was slight interest and Ivic wanted him gone. For all we know, Gino wanted to keep him. Could equally work both ways.

As for the rest - no idea. I’ve been trying to justify it. I genuinely believe Gino has just sent a blanket text out last week to all his agents/scouts and said ‘text me back with names of available attacking coaches, don’t really care who...’

The statement is very pointed in telling us he’s an attacking coach.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...Xisco-new-boss.html?__twitter_impression=true

More background from Daily Mail.

Ivic tried to ban mobile phones, made players ask before they could play music and dismissed staff from changing room at HT’s. (So what to all that really? I wanted him gone but you’re at work, grow up and put your phone down and fu*k the music)

Staff and players found him ‘cold’ and ‘arrogant’.

Players obviously not blameless given how many times this has happened. But Ivic clearly wasn’t liked and sounds like it was pretty universal throughout the club, not just the players.

 

Daily Mail so it could be the polar opposite of the truth. Who knows?

 

Very true. Although the guy that wrote it does generally seem to be pretty on the ball when it comes to us - surprising given his employer.

 

Poor luvvies upset about not being able to use phones at work... Just pathetic

As for throwing people out of dressing room wonder if that was Giraldi... If so don't blame him

Difficult to like anything about the club right now

 

The sports section is quite different to the news/opinion section. Sami Mokbel in particular has a good track record with Watford related stories.

 

If that's all they could come up with, it's pretty pathetic. He's not the first manager to ban mobile phones at the training ground, I remember Guardiola did it at City. He didn't even stop them playing music, just made them ask for permission to do so. As for the fines system, didn't Javi have a tough one (£100/minute late) that was praised as improving discipline when we were doing well that season?

They obviously didn't buy into him at all but these criticisms seem pretty weak and don't reflect at all well on the players.

 

Is it true that in his career "The Kid" has only managed a professional football team for a total of ELEVEN MATCHES!!!

Please tell me this is some kind of sick joke

 

It’s the Daily Mail. It’s not surprising that its story sounds like the last story. Your defence of its sports section simply doesn’t wash. It’s tissue paper and you won’t understand what is going on from its tittle tattle.

It’s all far more simple. We were crap for various reasons, players overrated, unavailable or on the wane and we recruited poorly in a very competitive league. The selection of a new coach hasn’t worked (another failure of recruitment) we know that and this is the Pozzo’s usual roll of the dice. No tittle tattle from the Mail about training methods or phones (and **** knows haven’t we heard this crap for nearly 30 years now) brings us any closer to understanding it.

 

Thanks, I hadn’t realised he was that experienced.

 

I get that you hate The Mail but they have some good journalists in the sports section. It's a bit weird to let your hatred of the paper's politics cloud your judgement. As mentioned before, Mokbel obviously has sources at the club as has been ahead of the curve numerous times with Watford stories that have proven correct.

You obviously think this journalist has just pretended to speak to people in the dressing room and concocted a story out of nothing. I'm inclined to believe that he has spoken to members of the squad and this is what they told him.

You also seem to have misunderstood the gist of my post. I'm not saying those are the reasons we are crap, I agree with your list and have made similar points at length elsewhere. But this gives us an insight into why the players didn't like Ivic and frankly, the specific rules mentioned that they didn't like are pretty pathetic to get that upset about.

 

Deeney now airing what happened on TalkSport.

Embarrassing. We are a joke. We're actually letting our club captain do this. The club has turned into ******* TOWIE or something.

 

I dunno Steve. We never really looked like a happy team on the pitch under Ivic and little things like this must feed into that. I think most of us assumed the whole dour personality thing was just a media front but no, it appears Ivic was at it all the time. That might work in some situations but it was never going to work with our squad.

 

And that's why the club released a statement defending Deeney yesterday. They had to get ahead of this otherwise they'd have every football journo banging down the door this morning asking for the same statement.

I find the whole thing completely baffling. It's one thing letting him go on there every week aiming for notoriety by airing contrarian views about concussion subs or whatever, but letting him go on and air internal club stuff within hours of it happening is crazy.

 

Yep. Don't think he realises how bad this makes him sound. Told his boss to wait until he was ready to see him, then saw him in a communal area and just ignored him, making no effort to go and speak to him, also didn't speak to him on the bus or the hotel.

A total lack of respect here, just because he was being rested for a game.

 

Troy just said why would I want the Watford managers job when they get sacked so quickly, referred to himself in the third person and then brought up the thing he did the other day when he gave someone his tickets to try and offset this story. A horrific human.

 

Deeney's saying on the radio that he never had any problems with Ivic, says he got called in during the week to see the manager whilst in the gym, said he'd be ten mins so when he turned up Ivic wasn't there and in the canteen instead, thought nothing of it so they didn't speak. Could be crossed wires if Ivic thinks he was snubbed and thought Deeney was being deliberately late, only Deeney would know that. Maybe Ivic, when he wants to see a player expects them to show up pronto who knows.

Even if Ivic was a strict taskmaster sacking him before Xmas during a lockdown is poor form from the Pozzos, I really hope the guy isn't stuck in a hotel somewhere without his family, pay off or not.

 

If the club hadn't said what they did yesterday I'm not sure it would have been asked. The statement yesterday from Duxbury was car crash stuff for me. TD then gets asked about it this morning which leaves two options;

1 - "I'm not talking about it" or bland words to that effect from the footballer media manual - everyone would jump to the conclusion something big has gone on, rumours start and before you know it Ivic has been scrapping with Deeney in the chippy. Can you imagine the Deeney haters on here if he refused to comment, they'd be beside themselves with conspiracy theories.

2 - "This is what happened, not a big deal" - but it makes the club look like the circus it seems to be at the moment.

The statement yesterday was peculiar, unnecessary and na*ve.

 

There are clearly two sides to this. Ivic comes across as a control freak. He wants everyone subservient to him, this is clear and he is old school in that respect. He may have got away with it 40 years ago, but you cannot treat grown men like school kids and expect to get respect.

Ok, sure, there was probably a bit of Deeney being a d1ck and making him wait a bit longer than he should have. But if he was having a massage, oiled up etc, you're not going to get off the table and go running to the boss. He said he went to his office and he wasn't there, so went to the canteen and saw him, but didn't approach him. This is probably where the issue arose.

Ivic is sulking and Deeney is ignoring him. If Ivic is the boss, then why doesn't he call Deeney over? Sounds like they are both as bad as each other. Ignoring each other is childish, but at the end of the day Ivic is the boss and sets the tone. His method is, get one of his minions to ask Deeney to meet him. When he doesn't arrive, then just ignore him and sulk about it. He does nothing to confront Deeney. If that was me, I'd pull him to one side and ask him why didn't he turn up when requested....something like that. Nip it in the bud. It's just common sense. You need good communication between the captain and head coach.

They never spoke to each other since Thursday. Ok, Deeney was annoyed and probably sulking himself for being dropped, but Ivic has to be the bigger man here and control the situation far better.

This was probably just another incident of growing issues that went against Ivic. You can tell in his press conferences what type of coach he is. You are either with him or you are on the outside. I can well believe all the stories that he is quiet, aloof and distant. These are not qualities that will endear you to a group of footballers. This approach might work in Eastern Europe or China, where people's attitudes are different, but you have to be far more approachable and get respect a different way in countries like England. People are far more free spirited here.

From the outside, I did like Ivic and what he said, but I'm sure I wouldn't have liked to work for him. You could tell his tone was getting more frustrated and message more repetitive as the weeks went by. Stating that mentally the team has to switch from a different way of thinking from being counter attacking to possession based. Ok, I get that, it makes a lot of sense in the beginning....but 20 games into a season and he's still saying it? He was obsessed with putting players in cotton wool, again this is admirable, but he really went too far with this holding players back until he felt they were 100%.

He was far too cautious, stubborn and inflexible in his approach. His personality just did not fit this club and for me, he could well become a very good coach, but he needs a lot of tweaking before he gets to that level.

 

The club really should have kept him off the radio this morning. Shambolic.

 

I don't think Ivic comes out smelling of roses either to be fair. He also had the opportunity to pull him aside to speak to him but clearly didn't. It became a impromptu power struggle of which Ivic was never going to win. To ignore a player all day and still put them on the bench is pretty ******* childish.

I assume his comments went on longer than 3 minutes on Talksport? I'll wait for the listen again if so.

 

The ground is pretty cool, oh we are locked out of that!