Dilly-ding dilly-dong time again
HORNETS EYEING RANIERI
CLAUDIO RANIERI will go from the magician who procured a title miracle to overseeing football’s unsafest seat when he becomes Watford’s sixth manager in 25 months.
If the conductor of Leicester’s 2016 fairytale could hear the distant chimes ringing dillyding, dilly-dong last night, they were probably the alarm bells that come with the job at Vicarage Road.
Ranieri, 69, is understood to be in advanced talks about taking over from Xisco Munoz after the Spaniard’s brutal sacking just seven games into his maiden top-flight voyage.
Munoz’s fate extends the cast to 13 bosses since 2012 under owner Gino Pozzo’s regime.
Here we go again at the club where the chamber is never empty of bullets.
Sean Dyche, Gianfranco Zola, Beppe Sannino, Oscar Garcia, Billy McKinlay, Slavisa Jokanovic, Quique Sanchez Flores, Walter Mazzarri, Marco Silva, Javi Gracia, Nigel Pearson and Vladmir Ivic were also ushered through the exit doors before Munoz.
McKinlay’s reign was the shortest at two games and Garcia left on health grounds.
Zola jumped before he was pushed while Jokanovic could not agree terms to extend his nine-month contract after winning promotion.
But, significantly, while social media ‘experts’ recycled tired jokes about revolving doors, there were rarely protests from the fans over the departures.
Pozzo’s hire-and-fire model works. In the last eight seasons, the Hornets have won promotion twice, spent six seasons in the top flight and reached an FA Cup final.
Executive chairman Scott Duxbury and Pozzo decided to act with the next eight games suggesting they are heading for the bottom three.
In an open letter to Watford fans, the classy Munoz said: “It’s been a wonderful journey and it concluded in a way that I neither expected nor wished for.
“My thanks to the players who put blind faith in me and my staff from the first moment so we could achieve the dream of promotion to the Premier League.
“I’ve got nothing but words of gratitude for the club that gave me the opportunity to start my first adventure in this exciting country.”
Munoz’s demise does
not remove his place in history as one of only four men – Graham Taylor (twice), Aidy Boothroyd and Jokanovic are the other three – who steered the Hornets into the top flight.