The dismissal of Wouter Vrancken is a shock for La Gantoise. Management wanted to continue with him.
Just before the New Year, the board of directors – led by Sam Baro – decided not to give in to public discontent. The fans certainly demanded the dismissal of the coach, but internally they wanted to continue with Vrancken in the long term.
The board had already done everything at the end of last season to ensure they could work with him and believed that he was still the man for the job. What happened to achieve this turnaround?
Avoid a return to Playoffs 2…at any cost
Two draws against opponents against whom it was absolutely necessary to win (Dender and Charleroi) gave an entire club a start to the year under pressure. The top six is thus in danger, especially if Standard starts to start winning away. For the Buffalos, missing Playoffs 1 would be a big sporting and financial loss.
The board of directors has also realized this. The fickle Ghent crowd has never really embraced Playoffs 2 in the past. Against Charleroijust over 10,000 people attended the match. This is a little more than half of the stadium’s capacity. Only against Antwerp, Genk, Anderlecht, Standard and Union was the bar of 15,000 supporters exceeded. Only once did the Planet Group Arena sell out: against Anderlecht.
-The calculation is quickly done. Ghent’s finances can no longer afford such gaps. The fact that Wouter Vrancken insisted on reinforcements that were too expensive for the club’s budget also played a role.
Vrancken is a demanding coach, Ghent already knew that when he arrived. This is what allowed him to redo Genk a well-oiled collective, this is also what was at the origin of his hasty departure from Limburg. Vrancken wanted to quickly recruit a striker after Max Dean’s injury, but this was still not resolved.
This created tensions with sporting director Arnar Vidarsson, who had been instructed not to spend too much. We must therefore wait until the end of the transfer window to recruit reinforcements, once prices have fallen.
With the current group of players, Wouter Vrancken failed to improve the level of play, even though the board of directors believed that there was still room to do better. The fact remains that at the time of writing these lines, it is very difficult to say who will be able to do better. Given the situation and the pressure of the coming weeks, we should undoubtedly expect a coach capable of quickly raising the bar. But like a fast and cheap attacker, he doesn’t run the streets.
Related News :