Brentford Sack Marinus Dijkhuizen. Some Thoughts
News emerged a few hours ago that Brentford had sacked Marinus Dijkhuizen after only 8 games in charge. The reasons may be fairly clear. Not only poor results ( for which he cannot be soleley to blame), but the insipid manner of the performances with a lower work rate and tempo than under Mark Warburton gave cause for concern very early on. Visually Marinus failed to motivate from the touchline, often giving the impression he was simply a spectator at the game rather than an active component to what was going on on the field. Any coaching that was done,and their was precious little evidence of it, came from his coaching assistant. His failure to bond at all with the fans was also notable.
in hindsight at the Bees forum last week, not only was the atmosphere flat, suspiciously so, but the lack of obvious communication between Marinus and Rasmus Andersen, Phil Giles, Cliff Crown , was obvious to the watching eye. they hardly spoke to each other and some of the questions that were addressed to others normally might have gone to Marinus. This was both before the forum, during and after. The bond I hoped and expected to see between coaching staff was absent. Again in hindsight, a dead man walking. Crowds were also falling, and after 3 sustained seasons of increased crowds with incredible support for the players, this was starting to vanish. Numbers of away fans were frankly minimal compared to last season. Atmosphere at home games was nothing like last year. Put simply we have gone backwards. Where we have exciting talent on the bench, Sergi Canos, there were reasons/excuses why he did not start a game. The interaction between players and coaching staff at games looked poor and minimal. A few tweets from senior players also caught my eye, sometimes what they did not say as much as what they did.
There will be debate over this, and already comment has been made that we do not want to be ” another Leeds” but if something is wrong then it needs to be changed. Marinus seemed an intelligent and likeable man, but did he motivate me or inspire me, not at all, and one wonders if that at the end is the simple aspect that was wrong. Brentford fans demand clear high work rate on the pitch, they forgive mistakes, but will not forgive insipid performances. I wish Marinus well, but do imagine that the Football League is not the right place for his talents and maybe a return to Netherlands might be the best option.