Cousins’ dismissal seems premature

The decision to relieve Tony Cousins of his duties as manager of Galway United reeks of panic from the eircom Premier Division club.

With only four games played since the new season kicked off, it is far too early to judge the form of any teams so the fact that The Tribesmen have yet to win shouldn’t be the main reason why a change of manager was brought about.

If there is a huge amount of pressure to win games so early on, then Paul Doolin, Alan Matthews, Pete Mahon, Eddie Gormley, and Paul Cook should all be plotting escape routes from their respective clubs before they face a similar fate.

One draw from four games is not an ideal start, yet there is an entire season still to play and Galway has not entered any of their games thus far with a fully fit squad. So Cousins’ exit must be more deep-rooted than it appears to be from an outsider’s perspective.

Something to note from the brief statement that the club released on the issue is that it was a unanimous decision from the board to not only relieve Cousins but let his management team go too. That surely indicates that there is more to this than just a failure to win one game from four attempts.

The Galway board must have known going into the season that this would be a difficult year for the team with three sides set to be relegated from the top flight. Teething problems would have been expected, or did the board have far greater ambitions for their club in the opening weeks of the campaign?

Losing to Bohemians, St Patrick’s Athletic, and Shamrock Rovers is not as bad as it might seem considering those three teams will be contenders for this year’s title, and Cousins struggled to have a settled side with injuries, suspensions, and a lack of match fitness restricting his options.

Perhaps the board members were worried that last year’s dreadful home form was going to creep up on them again with two games lost at home this season already. It might have been in their minds that the strong attendances that the club have attracted to Terryland Park would rapidly dwindle if the team could not win at home.

The stadium was given a modern facelift recently and the club have been working hard to bring new supporters in, so the departure of Cousins could simply be for business reasons rather than footballing ones. It still seems a premature move by the club though, because if they didn’t have faith in their manager to help drive them forward then surely a pre-season exit would have made more sense.

It will be interesting to see what the club do next as they had looked like a club that was making steady progress (on and off the pitch), but are now facing some tough decisions to save their season at such an early stage. Damien Richardson is already the frontrunner to get the job.

Gareth will be providing his views on the league on a weekly basis for Extratime.ie