TIM Fisher has insisted that Andy Thorn was sacked because the board did not believe he was getting the best out of the squad he had hand-picked.
When the decision was confirmed on Sunday morning, the official club statement included the phrase “there are several other factors in this decision, not just three disappointing results.” That prompted a rash of internet speculation about what those other reasons might be.
But chief executive Fisher – who this season is based at Ryton rather than the Ricoh Arena– told the Telegraph: “Let me be very clear, this was a football decision, not some dark-side innuendo or whatever. Andy has gone because he failed on the football side.
“To me the second half against Bury, abjectly losing two points from a position of strength, was a symptom of an underlying problem that we had aimed to correct during the summer and that progression hadn’t happened.
“It was another data point suggesting
we’d gone from a pattern to a deep-set trend. And we had to break that trend – insanity, as defined by Einstein, is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.
“We employ a manager, a head coach, whatever you want to call him, who puts out the players who he thinks are in the right state of mind, the right state of fitness.
“At the end of last season we sat down and Andy made a presentation along the lines of ‘if I get what I want then this will change.’ “He told us that he needed Richard Shaw and thought we should bring Lee Carsley up. He gave us a list of players which Steve Waggott delivered.
“You’ve changed nine resources – not one, not two,
and Andy made a presentation along the lines of `if I get what I want then this will change.' “He told us that he needed Richard Shaw and thought we should bring Lee Carsley up. He gave us a list of players which Steve Waggott delivered.
“You've changed nine resources * not one, not two, not seven but nine – and you get the same result! You’re given all the tools and we don’t see any change. “With a trend you’ve got to extrapolate.
We did that and we felt as a management team, as a board and as an owner that we didn’t have the confidence Andy would be able to take on all the resources that he had chosen and be able to actually get it over the line.
“You’ve got the tip of the iceberg which is the 90 minutes on the pitch – the rest of the iceberg is Ryton, all the practices, all the training that is going on there, all the discussions between manager, development director, assistant managers.
”It's about translating from the training pitch to the Ricoh and we're based at Ryton. I'm there, Steve * who's the football expert * is there for many weeks, watching and observing. Under scrutiny is the phrase I’d use.”” Fisher denied that Coventry City approached Dave Jones about replacing Thorn last season when the former Sky Blues defender was between managerial jobs.
“We didn’t offer the job to Dave Jones,” he said. “Andy was in full employment with us so we couldn’t have done that; it would not have been a legal process.” As to the qualities he expects from Thorn’s replacement, he said: “It’s about getting somebody who can deliver what they promise. Ron Atkinson said, ‘I promise you results, not promises’ and we have to start to see results.
“We’ve managed to divorce ourselves from success and divorce ourselves from the community.
“We have got a generation of fans who have lived with mediocrity and we need to change that.”
When the decision was confirmed on Sunday morning, the official club statement included the phrase “there are several other factors in this decision, not just three disappointing results.” That prompted a rash of internet speculation about what those other reasons might be.
But chief executive Fisher – who this season is based at Ryton rather than the Ricoh Arena– told the Telegraph: “Let me be very clear, this was a football decision, not some dark-side innuendo or whatever. Andy has gone because he failed on the football side.
“To me the second half against Bury, abjectly losing two points from a position of strength, was a symptom of an underlying problem that we had aimed to correct during the summer and that progression hadn’t happened.
“It was another data point suggesting
we’d gone from a pattern to a deep-set trend. And we had to break that trend – insanity, as defined by Einstein, is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.
“We employ a manager, a head coach, whatever you want to call him, who puts out the players who he thinks are in the right state of mind, the right state of fitness.
“At the end of last season we sat down and Andy made a presentation along the lines of ‘if I get what I want then this will change.’ “He told us that he needed Richard Shaw and thought we should bring Lee Carsley up. He gave us a list of players which Steve Waggott delivered.
“You’ve changed nine resources – not one, not two,
and Andy made a presentation along the lines of `if I get what I want then this will change.' “He told us that he needed Richard Shaw and thought we should bring Lee Carsley up. He gave us a list of players which Steve Waggott delivered.
“You've changed nine resources * not one, not two, not seven but nine – and you get the same result! You’re given all the tools and we don’t see any change. “With a trend you’ve got to extrapolate.
We did that and we felt as a management team, as a board and as an owner that we didn’t have the confidence Andy would be able to take on all the resources that he had chosen and be able to actually get it over the line.
“You’ve got the tip of the iceberg which is the 90 minutes on the pitch – the rest of the iceberg is Ryton, all the practices, all the training that is going on there, all the discussions between manager, development director, assistant managers.
”It's about translating from the training pitch to the Ricoh and we're based at Ryton. I'm there, Steve * who's the football expert * is there for many weeks, watching and observing. Under scrutiny is the phrase I’d use.”” Fisher denied that Coventry City approached Dave Jones about replacing Thorn last season when the former Sky Blues defender was between managerial jobs.
“We didn’t offer the job to Dave Jones,” he said. “Andy was in full employment with us so we couldn’t have done that; it would not have been a legal process.” As to the qualities he expects from Thorn’s replacement, he said: “It’s about getting somebody who can deliver what they promise. Ron Atkinson said, ‘I promise you results, not promises’ and we have to start to see results.
“We’ve managed to divorce ourselves from success and divorce ourselves from the community.
“We have got a generation of fans who have lived with mediocrity and we need to change that.”
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