Ange Postecoglou insists it’s ‘kind of sad’ that Dundee United caved into the mob by sacking Jack Ross yesterday.
The Celtic manager left Ross hanging by a thread on Sunday when his rampant side romped to a devastating nine goal win at Tannadice. And with the Tayside club then facing a furious backlash from their own fans the decision was made to bullet Ross at breakfast time yesterday and begin the search for his replacement.
But Postecoglou believes United’s board should have had the courage to show their manager more patience - after appointing him to the position just ten weeks earlier. The Australian said: “It’s not that I’m not sympathetic, it’s more of an empathy of understanding that we’re all in the sort of business at the moment that if results don’t go your way – even in the short term – there’s just less inclination for people to be patient and allow people to find solutions.
“It seems that in football today the solution to bad results is just change, and nothing else. That puts every manager under that sort of scrutiny and pressure.
“There’s no doubt that the result has probably bruised his pride at the weekend, and the unfortunate thing for Jack was that we played very well on the day and that has added to the pressure.
“From my perspective, I think all of us in the role understand there’s just not too much patience or the willingness there from people to find solutions within an existing structure, they just seem to think that change is the only way forward.
“It’s kind of sad, because even for people going into a role now, there’s just an immediacy of people wanting fortunes changed. We all know that’s often a difficult task.”
But Postecoglou believes United’s knee jerk reaction is a sign of changing times. He went on: “When I first started I could wait to the Monday papers or the Monday review shows before the scrutiny started, now it’s full-time.
“There’s so many platforms of opinion and pressure that comes upon football clubs and the people that make these decisions. It’s so much bigger and broader than just the media now, and it seems to be that irrespective of where the opinion is coming from, if there seems to be some sort of overwhelming buzz towards the view then people just take it as credible, and it’s often not the case.
“Results have always been up and down for clubs, even in the past, but some clubs in the past were able to chart the course they needed to, even the most successful clubs.
“Look at Liverpool and Man City today. Liverpool weren’t successful the day that Jurgen Klopp walked in the building, it took a bit of time.”
Postecoglou, meanwhile, takes his side to face Ross County tonight as they close in on a place in the quarter finals of the Premier Sports Cup. Striker Giorgios Giakoumakis will make the trip after missing out at Tannadice, while new boy Sead Haksabanovic could make a debut from the bench.
The manager said: “Sead has just come in and will need a little bit of time to get up to full speed. He’s obviously been training on his own throughout the summer, but it’s now about getting him integrated into the group and getting him to full fitness.
“We aren’t in a position where we need to throw players in the way we had to last season, where sometimes it was a case of signing someone and they were straight into the team because we had no other option.
“We can afford to bleed the new players in now with a little more patience, so it will be the same with Sead. So, he certainly won’t start the game, but it would be good to maybe get a bit of a look at him at some point in the match.”
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