plenty of studies into rebound relationships etc

Generally speaking they are doomed to fail (and fail quickly) where the new [manager] is meant to be fixing the problems of the old one.

The whole narrative for the Farke/Smith change was "He's here to keep us up", and we all know how thing panned out, so Smith was scuppered (or set up to fail given the high benchmark set by Farke in terms of popularity and the low quality of the squad he had to work with).

By accident or design, the club has given Wagner a much wider 'purpose' beyond just getting us promoted and he has a much lower benchmark to be measured against (with a higher quality squad relative to peers).

Whether Smith could ever have been the right manager is a debate for another day, but it was certainly the wrong time for him here.

Hindsight is wonderful and it's easier said than done, but we'd have been so much better off running with an interim manager (or paying Smith as an interim) and re-assessing in the summer.

Posted By: CWC, Mar 6, 13:32:30