Andy Munro casts his eye over the continuing events at St Andrews.
We probably won’t know the real truth until well after Sir Garry gets his pay-off, as Chairman Ren seeks to justify his decision. However, the decision to appoint Pep Clotet as chief coach could be seen to be yet another cost-cutting measure.
In fairness, Pep has been through hard times, stuck in there and appears to love the city – in that respect he’s a bit like Blues fans. However, when Garry Monk gets a job, probably sooner rather than later, he’s bound to come knocking for his backroom team. Okay, Blues will get some compensation, which will please the money conscious Ren, but we will then be back to square one.
Meanwhile, the transfer window will be passing us by, probably with the only major deal being the departure of Che Adams. No doubt he will be given away for something like £14 million, tat least £6 million below his true valuation.
Ren has said that he wants to see more expansive football, so why allow Jota to go given his skill set, even if that doesn’t include the ability to centre a decent ball or regularly hit the onion bag? The chairman has also said he wants to see more of our youngsters coming through into the first team, which again smacks of cheapskating, although to be fair to him, we were apparently the only Championship club not to play any of our under 23 squad in the first team last year- strange, given their highly successful season.
Where I do side with Ren, if the story is true, is that Garry reputedly insisted on using just one agent, which seems a dodgy practice to say the least. He also makes the point about our former manager’s short tenure at his last couple of clubs and, in fairness ,there were rumours circulating at the time about certain indiscretions.
However, we need to wait for some unfettered comments from Monk to be able to take a balanced view on what appears to be a shocking and destabilising decision by the Chinese owners.