After much speculation, Mike Mulvey has “stepped down” as Brisbane Road coach. Deposed would be a better term, but I’m not here to talk about that.
The fact that this has happened a mere 6 weeks into the season after convincingly winning the double last year is causing heart palpitations all around the country. The most common thought seems to be that it lacks respect to treat a double-winning coach in this manner. Maybe it does.
But if you step back from the emotion of it all, you might be able to piece together a logical decision that has been made here.
Immediately after the debacles against Sydney FC and Melbourne City, a very public shot was fired by the club when instead of claiming the coach “had the full support of the board” (usually a terminal statement anyway), it was let known that a review was being conducted and a search was started for an international coach although it was supposedly for a Sporting Director role.
So ask yourself this question: If the “review” was announced on November 12, and not even 2 weeks later, Mulvey has been disposed of, that would signify something quite remarkable has been uncovered and the club feel he is incapable of repairing it, or is the sole cause of it.
Right now we don’t know if Mulvey is the only person who will leave the club. He might have been the head coach, but there is a whole team of staff who assist him in his duties. It will be interesting to see if Mulvey is the sole redundancy.
The person tasked with taking over Mulvey’s role is Frans Thijssen. As a former Dutch international you’d think he’d be the perfect candidate to continue the Roar’s style of possession football that has stagnated this season. But his coaching/managerial CV isn’t quite as impressive as one would hope. Since 2002 he has only been coaching youth teams in the middle east.
Not as inspiring an appointment as you’d expect. So what could this mean? He is a temporary installment brought in the clean out the club and repair structures. Anyone or anything that is an impediment to future development will be placed on the scrapheap. That is why the club haven’t let this drag on until the new year before taking action.
The more time Thijssen has to rebuild, the better chance the club will have next season. As a comparison, Ange Postecoglou was installed as Roar manager on 16 October (season began in August that year as opposed to October this year). It isn’t too early to begin, in fact, in my opinion it doesn’t really matter if it was 6 games into the season. “A stitch in time” and all those sayings…
There are some very good reasons why this has happened, and lots of supporters have been calling for transparency about WHY it happened so suddenly. Be careful what you wish for. It is not ideal for the reasons to be made public. Both parties to this event have already taken a hit and airing dirty laundry in public to reclaim the high moral ground will just damage both sides.
There have already been the fainest trickles of news about training, recruitment and philosophies emerging.
Everyone take a deep breath and relax. This season has just been written off.
The road is long and winding, let’s find out where it actually leads to next.
goodluckpunters 