Swansea City have sacked their manager Michael Laudrup. Garry Monk, the 34-year-old veteran defender, will take over as head coach alongside the current first-team coach Alan Curtis “for the foreseeable future”.
Laudrup had been under increasing pressure at the Liberty Stadium with the club winning just one of their last 10 matches and sitting just two points clear of the relegation zone.
“It is a decision we have taken reluctantly,’’ said the Swansea City chairman, Huw Jenkins. “But it’s a decision made in the best interests of Swansea City Football Club and our supporters.
“It is the first time in nearly 10 years that the club has parted with a manager in this way, but we had to remove the constant uncertainty surrounding the club and Michael’s long-term future with us.
"I had a meeting with Michael today in a final attempt to support him and establish a way to improve the work of the backroom team to secure the results we need over the final 14 Premier League games.
Back to basics
"However, after thinking long and hard about the best way forward, I felt it was unlikely we would achieve a stable environment at the club to allow us to get back to basics and produce the performance levels that have served Swansea City so well over the last few years.
“Now we need to put that uncertainty behind us and move forward as a united football club on all fronts, while placing on record our gratitude to Michael for the work he has done over the last 18 months and wish him well for the future.’’
Laudrup took over at Swansea in 2012, succeeding Brendan Rodgers who departed to take charge of Liverpool. The former Danish international had previously managed at Brondby, Getafe, Spartak Moscow and Real Mallorca
He is the fifth Premier League manage to leave his job this season. Jenkins added: “I hope all our supporters can fully understand how difficult this period has been for us and I would urge everyone connected to the football club to get behind Garry Monk, the staff and players.”
The former Swansea and Wales winger Leighton James said he felt the warning signs had been there.
“Having been heavily involved in football for most of my life, I have seen this coming. It doesn’t surprise me a great deal,” James told BBC Radio Wales. “I am disappointed, but I am not surprised.”
Asked if suggestions of a possible rejig to Laudrup’s coaching staff might have been a factor, James added: “I wouldn’t be surprised. Once you start trying to interfere in coaching staffs, you are undermining the manager. That has to be his domain, whether people like it or not.
“If you start getting non-football people involved in the football side of the game, as we saw up the road in recent months, then you start creating divides, and that is exactly what I feel.
"If that's the case that Michael has been offered, not of his own volition, a change to the coaching staff, then obviously he feels his authority has been undermined. I can understand totally his discontent and dislike of that.
Recipe for disaster
"He has to be given total control of who he appoints on his coaching staff, because they are the football people that he wishes to work with day in, day out. So for anybody to try to impose somebody on the manager, I think that is wrong and is a recipe for disaster."
Laudrup’s departure comes four days before the club take on arch-rivals and fellow strugglers Cardiff in a crucial derby at the Liberty Stadium.
