ClaphamFox

In a nutshell.

King said on Saturday that the club hasn't asked him to take it until the end of the season and was pretty emphatic that he doesn't want to do it either. So if the club's plan is for King to take it on, it seems they're frit to tell him because they know he won't be happy about it.

Don’t do it to yourself, mate.

With other bookies he’s narrowed from 11/4 to 5/2. A speculative tenner could cause that in a very flat market.

Martin!

Did you hear who?

Dyche said in a TV interview that he’s good mates with him.

What on earth makes you think I’m defending it? I’m just describing what happened.

Top wasn’t planning to sack Cifuentes when he came in for the Oxford game. In fact he probably chose to visit that weekend because he was expecting a win. The sacking was a response to losing that game and because it was a sudden decision there was no succession plan.

In his recent interviews Top strongly hinted that he’d moved on from his obsession with Man City and possession football. And if he was lying and secretly still wants that kind of football, Russell Martin is the obvious candidate—but he hasn’t been given the job. I have no more idea than anybody else, but my best guess is that the manager they want is currently in work and has indicated he won’t leave his current club until the summer because he doesn’t want to leave them in the lurch during the season. And Top and Rudkin thought it would be a fairly simple matter to recruit a caretaker until the end of the season but have been struggling to find any takers, and for some reason don’t want Pearson to do it. They may also have looked at King’s four games and concluded that he’s been unlucky with red cards etc and that there have been signs of improvement since Marti left, and have concluded he might start delivering results with a bit more time—ignoring the fact that he’s said he doesn’t want to do the job.

I respect Dyche’s achievements but some of the mythology around him is a bit much. He was successful at getting a small club to punch above its weight for a number of years before they sacked him, and he’s been sacked from two bigger clubs since. Yet some people talk of him as if he’s Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Alternative theory (entirely baseless, but no more so than any other): it's not that Top is dithering, he's actually now mardy. Did he think the interviews he did the other week would placate the fans and is pissed off they didn't, so is now sulking in Thailand and refusing to pick up any calls from Seagrave? Probably not, but it makes as much sense as anything else.

Nature abhors a vacuum. We're almost three weeks without a manager and there is a complete vacuum of information about what is happening. Obviously the club is never going to provide a running commentary on the recruitment process, but we'd usually expect to at least have a sense of which candidates they're looking at by this stage. But the bookies aren't pricing anybody shorter than 11/4, with the next three favourites at 5/1, 11/2 and 7/1. That's the kind of market you get immediately after a manager leaves and there are no strong rumours about the replacement—not 19 days after a sacking. And since we sacked Marti several other clubs have sacked their managers and all of them look like appointing before us. Nobody has a clue what's happening. Hence all the speculation and guesswork.

WE RECRUIT NEXT SEASON. MAYBE.

It sounds like they really wanted Rowett but Rowett was dragging his heels amid interest from other clubs. Yet there are no credible rumours of him coming to us and he's still at 5/1—so if it isn't us, which job is he in line for?

It did indeed sound like Stowell knew that Pearson would come back if on a temporary basis if he was asked. It must have cropped up when he met him earlier this week. I wasn't as much of a diehard Pearson fan as some were, but I suspect Pearson alongside King until the end of the season may be our best option at the moment (better, in my view, than getting Dyche in). And it seems like Pearson has indicated he would accept it. Which of course means the club hasn't even spoken to him about it yet.

Dyche said he was good friends with Rudkin in an interview with the BBC. That's the only way I can see this might happen—if Rudkin begs his mate to help us out for few months, and Dyche does it as a favour.

Yes, I think Top will not sell up while we're in the shit because he won't want to dishonour his dad's memory. Unfortunately he shows no sign of being able to get us out of the shit. So we may be stuck in this deeply unhappy marriage for some time.

You've missed the point entirely. I think it's possible that they are trying to appoint somebody but are being turned down flat by everybody they approach. The problem may not be a lack or urgency, but rather that we are so unattractive that we just can't find anybody to do it.

Have you considered the possibility that the state of affairs explored in the 'Where's the money gone?' thread is well known within football and that nobody worth their salt will touch us with a bargepole?

No. That faulty component the tail rotor of the helicopter changed our history. We went from being run by a hard-headed, successful businessman to being run by his well-meaning but pampered and utterly clueless son. And we will be reaping the cost of it for many, many years.

Hopefully this will finally put an end to all those inane comments about wanting us to go down so that the owners sell up and we can start again. Bankruptcy is a far more likely scenario if we get relegated. This video also very much helps to explain why it's 18 days since we sacked Marti and there is still no sign of anybody coming in. Who would want to take us on?

After being sacked from two jobs in just over a year, Dyche needs to plan his next move carefully. If he goes somewhere else and doesn't succeed, it will begin to look like he's a busted flush whose methods worked at one club at a particular time, but can't be replicated elsewhere. Why would he want to risk what remains of his reputation on a basket case club like ours? A job at a more stable club with better prospects will come up eventually for him.

Yes he did with Stoke for a short while.

There’s talk of a job share.