The Western Sydney Wanderers have sacked manager Carl Robinson after an awful start to the 2021/22 A-League season that left the club in 11th place with only a solitary win.
Western Sydney's 3-0 loss to the Brisbane Roar has proven fatal for Robinson, who was poached from the Newcastle Jets & appointed as the club manager in October 2020.
After being appointed following the internal review that resulted in Jean-Paul de Marigny being sacked just 9 months after he took over from Markus Babbel, Robinson has walked out the door of the Wanderers Centre of Football for the last time. Having been given a full pre-season, a raft of high-profile signings like Jack Rodwell, Tomer Hemed and Rhys Williams and a 3 week opportunity to reset the team direction, the loss to the Roar made it clear he did not have what it takes to bring the club back to where the ownership and supporters expect.
Performances during Robinson's time at the helm were marked by awful football filled with backward passing, a refusal to take on markers one on one and an inability to defend at set pieces. Another low point of the season was being dumped out of the FFA Cup by NPL team APIA Leichhardt, a competition that the club & Robinson claimed to be taking seriously and yet resulted in a wholesale change to a second 11 that were embarrassed by the part timers of the NPL club. His strategy of signing former players, poaching multiple players from the Newcastle Jets was a clearly failed strategy and will leave the new manager to pick up the pieces of his shattered recruitment.
Enough was enough for the club leadership who have burned through yet another manager, adding the fast talking Robinson to the scrap heap along with Markus Babbel, Josep Gombau, Jean Paul de Maringy and Hayden Foxe. The cavalcade of failures also puts the jobs of CEO John Tsatsimas and Football Operations Manager Gavin Costello in the firing line.
No successor has been named at this time although the usual rumours of former a-League coaches are swirling. Graham Arnold has also been whispered, but is unlikely to leave his role as National team coach until at least the end of the 2022 World Cup qualification campaign and only then if Australia fails to make it to Qatar. Alen Stajcic will soon be finishing up with the Philippines Women's team at the end of the Women's Asian Cup 2022 and he will be seen as a favourite to return to the A-League. Applications from overseas managers will flood in as usual.
The experienced Gary van Egmond is a likely candidate to take over as interim manager.
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