Eustace stays at QPR – are we in for a Winter of discontent?

Swansea City’s shambles of a summer took a turn for the worse this afternoon when Number 1 managerial target John Eustace elected to remain as assistant manager at QPR rather than taking the reigns at Swansea City which feels like a particularly damning assessment of where we sit at the moment.

This leaves the Swans in a position where the new season is just thirteen days away and we have no new manager and are effectively going to be forced to turn to at least a Plan B and that is on the assumption that those in charge of the club actually have one in their heads already.

From the moment Steve Cooper was clear that his future lay elsewhere we should have been planning not just our preferred outcome but our contingency plans as well on the basis that Plan A may not work out as we planned.

Cooper pretty much said on the Wembley turf that he was off and whilst there may have been a suggestion that he may stay after missing out on the Palace and Fulham jobs the reality was his time here was up, something officially confirmed this week after it was revealed via this site last Saturday.

But all seemed OK as the official club statement said when Cooper was confirmed as off that we had reached that decision two weeks back and expectations were that the appointment would be swift and clear in its intention.   John Eustace was revealed as the number one choice and all expectations were that he would be confirmed possibly before this weekend but certainly very soon after it.

The warning signs could have been yesterday when he took a seat on the bench as QPR faced Man Utd and today came the confirmation that he has decided to stay at Loftus Road and leaves us in the place of maybe not starting again but wondering where to turn next as we face the final two weeks of pre-season without a manager in charge.

This is incredibly poor management from the club as a whole who have played this out dreadfully.  We have discussed via these pages before the poor negotiating skills of our owners who really do not understand the workings of football in this country and have cost the club money before with the way they approach these discussions and I have little doubt that they have been heavily inputting into the negotiations with Cooper that have seen his exit dragged out unnecessarily.  And it may well be the case that part of the deal placed in front of John Eustace was enough to make him decide that it was just not sufficient to turn what is looking an increasingly weak squad into one that can make a decent fist of the Championship this season.

Of course whilst the interference from the majority owners will be there, it is the man in Swansea in Julian Winter who is overseeing the shambles of a summer and he has to take his share of the blame of where we are now.  This has been his first real footballing test of note since he took over and he has failed in the way it has been handled.   We have allowed a manager seven weeks to dictate his own future, dithered over two weeks over final negotiations and then failed miserably in landing first choice despite clearly telling those in the local media who that first choice is (we know that it will not be their investigative skills that allowed them all to pluck the name out simultaneously.)  This responsibility lands solely with the man tasked to make these things happen and now we are facing a very uncertain start to the season and (with no apologies for the pun) a winter of discontent.

With no manager in place it is difficult to see how we can conduct effective transfer business and – with no disrespect to a Swansea legend – facing the start of a new season with Alan Tate taking charge of first team affairs.  A position that neither club nor Tate should have been put in.

We should also not forget that last summer, Winter’s first football test was to let Joe Rodon go for less money than Spurs had available (Trevor Birch admitted this to people close to him.)  Worrying trends and ones that have to sit firmly at the feet of our CEO.

Julian Winter (and our majority owners) will be facing a worrying period now this week as they look to secure a new manager safe in the knowledge that they will be going for someone outside their first choice and, and possibly more worryingly, those that we do go for will be wondering what was it that caused Eustace to decide to stay at QPR and will it be a similar ‘red line’ for them as well.

Either way, Julian Winter is a well paid CEO and now needs to earn the money that we pay him every month otherwise the discontent could be of Winter rather than the other way around.