Sometimes you can just tell, right?
Certain teams have that look about them. Certain managers too. That doomed look. That look that tells you it’s all going wrong. Three seasons ago, I knew in mid-season that Hibs were going down, that they wouldn’t survive, that it could only end one way. Newcastle had the same look for most of last season, a side that just seemed to have the Mark of Cain.
I am pleased that I saw Mark Warburton’s unravelling last season, when I said, in the final throes of Ronny Deila’s tenure, that the Sevco manager would be right where Ronny was a year down the line. I knew it would go that way; I watched many of their games last season (you couldn’t help but to, they were always on the bloody telly) and I saw none of what the media was raving about; the fast, clinical, brilliant football.
Even against us in the cup, which the press thought was some kind of highlight … a more adventurous Celtic team would have taken them, easily.
Mark Warburton is already finished.
It’s now just a matter of time.
The game is up, and you can smell it on him, like death. He doesn’t have the first clue how to turn it around and their fans know it and the players know it and the opposition knows it too. Fans have mourned the lack of a Plan B, but I don’t even see a Plan A. It’s simply not there.
He will be gone by January.
I am no longer convinced he’ll even get to the match against us, but if he does that’s his Waterloo. He won’t survive that one. His team building plans have been like a bad joke. Garner for £1.8 million is a deal no neutral observer can work out. Senderos? Clint Hill?
My God, there might never have been a worse signing in the history of the top flight than Clint Hill.
The Barton situation has cast a dark shadow over the whole club, and that’s going to turn into another fiasco when he’s allowed to stay and his “apology” is accepted, although it wasn’t really an apology at all. The financial cost of severing his contract is going to be far too high for the club to manage, especially when you consider that there’ll have to be a gagging order in it if the club’s dirty laundry isn’t to be all over TalkSport.
Warburton was made manager of the year last season, a result nearly every neutral said was a travesty. I thought his approach looked limited, I thought he got very lucky with the collapse in Hibs’ form at the right time, but by Cup Final Day you could tell the luck was running out. In the aftermath of that defeat he didn’t give the media or the fans the respect of an interview and he didn’t show up in Glasgow for months.
Today he walked out of the post-match interview after being asked about Barton.
So for the first time this season, Sevco wants to play the “we’re keeping matters internal” game.
What happened to statements? Informing the fans?
He is clearly not handling the pressure well; at the press conference in midweek he was “depressed.”
Four wins in fourteen league games. On the end of a 5-1 tanking from us. Lost the cup final. The guy’s record is a shocker. It won’t be long before the media turns – some of the uber-Sevconites in the press already know the game is up. When that happens, he’s toast.
What’s most amazing, of course, is that this was a guy who came here free of all the baggage and the paranoia which is rampant at the club.
The longer he stays there the more into it all he gets.
He really is morphing into the perfect Sevco boss … at just the moment it all starts to come apart.