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Avram Grant - Sacking in 100 parts
In any part of life or human activity there is a decent way of doing things and there is the other way. By any standards the humiliating slow removal of Avram Grant at West Ham fits in to the latter. Grants life started in tragedy with the loss of close relatives in the Nazi camps, he must now think he is living in a lunatic asylum.I always hope for the best from people, but you are dealing with two men who are self confessed pornographers. Human dignity is not top of their list. On top of which you have a chief executive who thinks its a good idea to spell out each bit of Grants humiliation in a Sun column.
I know Grants on a lot of money, I know he will get a massive pay off. Some things however are just wrong.
Any one care to argue?
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I think it's up to Grant to
I think it's up to Grant to look after his own dignity. He could resign, thus putting dignity ahead of the payout. If he wants the payout, then he'll just have to put up. I think he knows exactly what he's doing (i.e. waiting for the cash) and I don't think it's a situation that calls for sympathy.
Relatively speaking
I don't think Grant is on a lot of money. Wasn't it commonly assumed that he got the job because he was cheap?
Presumably
that's the reason why his waiting to be sacked, to make all this ongoing humiliation worthwhile and get a much larger sum of money all at once when his fired. Good for him.
Relatively speaking?
Depends whose relatives you're talking about - none of mine get a fraction of what Grant gets.
I heard £4 million
Thats nearly £1m a year. He has a clause that means he gets more compensation if he is sacked after January as well. Probably not the worst paid manager in the Prem.
That's a decent wage by any standards
I just remember David Gold claiming that the other managers they interviewed had made ridiculous financial demands, and had been written off as a result.
Presumably
there would be win bonuses as well. Would be funny* if they won the Carling Cup, had to pay extra for that privilege and then had to give him compensation after sacking him for his dismal league performance and subsequent relegation.
*only if you're not a West Ham fan
david gold 'claiming'
anything is highly dubious. Grant was the only ticket in town
He's Doing Right
If he walks, they win. I think AG is a tougher cookie than his Droopy-style face lets on. He knows they will have to pay him A LOT to get rid of him. This will hurt them - and please him. I hope he takes them for every tanner.
It's all a bit grubby...
...but the Nazi death camp part of the storyline rather lets it down for me.
Do we *have* to mention it? Really?
Self-confessed pornographers?
Oooh, really. Is it 1910 or something?
Of course no one on the board has ever knowingly consumed or purchased pornography. We can safely hold the moral high ground here.
Well, I know diddly squat about football.
But I know when a post is trying to make a point about someone's attitude to human dignity, because I can read two sentences, one after the other, and infer something from their juxtaposition.
I don't particularly like a snide remark that has no other purpose than to deride the author of the original post, yet adds nothing to the debate.
So what is the point of your remark?
I'll admit it: I smiled
There is a certain irony in it being considered somehow relevant that the unprincipled villains of the piece are "self-confessed pornographers" when their alleged victim is the self-confessed client of a "Thai massage parlour" in Portsmouth.
That morsel of additional information
falls into the diddly-squat category of what I know about football, and makes the original implied taint somewhat less convincing.
I agree with most of the post
But 'Nazi camps' and 'self-confessed pornographers' is laying-it-on-a bit-thick to a degree that it's gone off the scale of the Daily Mail-ometer.
Fair enough, that's a reasonable observation.
I think I will refrain from commenting on any football related threads in future; I have the unfortunate habit of assuming that all involved parties are lacking in venality until I know otherwise, yet it seems that the more I learn about both players and managers, the more flawed they all seem to be.
Four million quid? I had no idea. No one can possibly 'earn' that much, they just get paid that much. I could easily retire on that, FFS.
Martin O'Neil...
... seems a sensible and straightforward type. Looks like he has formed a judgement along the lines of the OP - but I only know what's been in the press so I could be wrong.
O'Neill is
one of the few managers left from the old school who demands the right to run a club in the Clough / Shankly / Revie style whereby he genuinely runs the place, from choosing the players to choosing the laundry powder. That honestly isn't much of an exaggeration.
Given he was Villa manager for several years just over the road from Birmingham where Brady, Sullivan and the Golds were making it very clear that the manager did not run everything - or, indeed, anything - the idea that he would ever be West Ham manager was ludicrous.
And if he ever did take on that job, it's in the certain knowledge that within weeks, months at the outside, he and the board would have an explosive disagreement and he would be on his way with a large bag of money.
He'd probably...
also spend a fortune of his employers money on players he later decided he didn't rate after all...
"No one on the board has ever
knowingly consumed or purchased pornography".
Erm, in that case you'll have my resignation in the morning...
Of course
AG has the opportunity to act with dignity to his situation and to his immense credit seems to be doing so. But his employer's also have a moral obligation to behave with dignity, and by letting the whispers and innuendo persist, they aren't.
Without wishing to defend West Ham's owners in this particular case, I have to say that club owners generally find themselves in a "Can't do right anyway" position. If they fire the manager without a successor, they're criticised for a knee-jerk reaction and not having a plan. If they've spoken to someone, they're duplicitous schemers with no loyalty.
More interesting is how club's recruitment practices are so awful. It's interesting to hear top clubs talk about the dossiers they compile on players: their personality, habits, lifestyle, background etc as well as playing record. They're looking to ensure there's a fit before they splash out many millions in fees and salary. Hasn't anyone figured that it might be a good idea to be as, or more, careful about recruiting the manager?
the thing is
they did the same to Zola, the previous manager, then put Grant in.
I think...
...your cutting the noisy interfering West Ham board too much slack here. This situation is fairly common in football but rarely (never?) handled so crassly.
Karen "I Won't Be Gagged" Brady sat throughout last Saturday's game with The Sun's Dominic Mohan. Gold and Sullivan equally try to bully and intimidate and plain show off through their press contacts. Quite rightly after Saturday's fiasco of PR Martin O'Neil has run a mile.
They're going down. Something Mr Sullivan has already made a fortune out of actually....
Why is it that otherwise astute
and shrewd business folk turn into utter numpties when running a football club?
Speaking as a Hammer myself
I think it stinks.
Not that I'm a fan of Avram (I have been wanting to see Bilic as manager for a few years now) but this is pissing all over the traditions of the club.
We used to be proud of having so few managers but it has been downhill since about the time Billy Bonds went. Or maybe 'Arry. Time to send Julian Dicks in for 'a little chat' with the board I think.
I hear that Martin O'Neill got offered the job as President of Tunisia at the same time and decided to go for that because it had better long-term prospects.
The Owners Of West Ham
are really despicable people and lack any smidgin of class... and I am not going down the "porno merchants route" here.
All the Friday/Saturday papers were banging on about how it didn't matter how The Hammers fared against Arsenal, Avram Grant was history.
Now Messrs Gold & Sullivan could have came out and rebutted the stories, but chose not to... what message does that send to the manager and the players?
Also Karen Brady apparently cancelled the deal for Stewart Downing(?) without telling the manager of her Football Club. Grant phoned Downing to welcome him to the team and to inform when training was the next day, only to be told by the player that the transfer was cancelled. WTF?
I this the way to treat anyone?
Death by a thousand cuts.
steve sidwell.
went to fulham instead.
As is often the case in modern day football
No one comes out of this tale with any credit.
West Ham aside...
The BBC website has a headline at the moment: Villa confirm record Bent signing
well, i laughed a bit
And no doubt whatever happens
Avram will end up with a happy ending.
Bent signing?
I thought 'arry was at Spurs not Villa ?
There's a lot of self-confession on this thread
Calling Davids Gold and Sullivan 'self-confessed pornographers' is like describing Mark Ellen as a 'self-confessed magazine editor'. Or my brother-in-law as a 'self-confessed pub landlord'.
Avram Grant is hardly a 'self-confessed frequenter of Portsmouth massage parlours'; rather he's someone who got caught out by the News of the Screws.
Bet the press...
were pissed off that his wife was so cool about it.
As a Hammer of some 40 years standing
Its an appalling situation. We've scored some great "own goals" over the years but never more so than the handling of this situation. The board pretends to be West Ham through and through but the evidence suggests otherwise.
Quite what they saw in Avram Grant over and above Zola I do not know. (What has he done other than inherit a strong Chelsea team that were destined for European glory anyway?)
The big mistake was selling to the Icelandic consortium led by Egg Head who destroyed the finances of a club that always managed on a budget. Losing Curbishly (who was not the most dynamic manager around but was a safe pair of hands) was a blow from which we have yet to recover.
All that said, Avram Grant seems to be a wonderfully dignified man. I like dignity in a man, and my granddad was a great example but I wouldn't have let him anywhere near the managers chair of a football club.
The board's actions may well cost the club dearly when the keys to the Olympic stadium are snatched from them and handed to the bulldozers on route from White Hart Lane.
Mr's Moore, Greenwood and Lyle must be having some very frustrating debates from beyond the eternal touchline.
You and me both
Around 40 years of following this lot have left me with pretty low expectations, but every once in a while we manage to dip a little lower. The sacking of Zola set a new low, but recent events have taken things to a whole new, lower, level.
I think Gold is a real Hammers fan. Sullivan I'm far less sure about. Any credibility that Brady might have had has been blown for me by her endless self promotion. I wonder how she’d take Scott Parker having his own column in The Mirror, so he can add a little Upton Park colour
Increasingly club owners want profile and / or influence in return for their cash, and our owners are at the zenith of this. O’Neill knows his football for sure, but he’s quick to take offence and with the transfer window open (or ajar in our case). I think a falling out would be a matter of days not weeks.
I’m not sure how good or bad Grant is. In the first half against Birmingham we looked unplayable, but in the second half we were woeful. We carry dead weight like Kovac, McCarthy, Boa Morte and Dyer at great cost, and seem to struggle to find any new blood. Some players have fallen away under Grant – Cole in particular, Illunga maybe – but others like Sears have flourished. Zola was an untested gamble, and despite having the considerable back up of Steve Clarke, it didn’t look like it was really paying off.
Where next? Hodgson’s free…. Konchesky and Zamora could be ours again within the blink of an eye
barry silkman
now there's an odious individual running your club.
Not a Hammers fan
nor of Birmingham, but I suspect most Blues fans are glad to see the back of them.
The explicit slur/parting shot they made against Birmingham of "we're off to a big club" looks like errant nonsense at the moment. they really do seem to have lost the plot completely in how to run a business, which is what a football club is, allegedly.
washing dirty linen in public is never a good idea but they seem to do little else. Confidentiality seems to be an alien concept. Bad mouthing other clubs for approaching players through the media then doing the same themselves.....classless idiots.
As ever, the fans deserve better.
I'm only glad I'm a fan of a preper well run club with none of these issues, Liverpool............................................
..................................................................
only joking, I meant Newcastle....................................
...............................................................................still only joking (Crewe actually).
Topic Covered
I'm sorry that my comment about Grant and the loss of his relatives has irked some people. He did do a most heart felt tv program when he travelled back to one of the camps. It is an integral part of the man.
My wording as self confessed pornographers on the Gold/Sullivan axis may be a little incorrect. However they are certainly unapologetic, their spin being pornography is like any other buisness. I could go on, but we are discussing football not porn.
Not much difference...
In the premier league is there? Fair bit of prostituting one's talents going on.