chicken coops
by sandman slim
Two top six finishes, a play off semi and then a Wembley final – it’s fair to say that Steve Cooper came close to leading the Swans to promotion and back to the Premier League. So would it be third time lucky this season? We’ll never know as Cooper walked away before the season started. Sandman Slim wanted to give his thoughts on why Cooper did that, and who are we to deny him?
Question: how do you turn a swan into a chicken?
Answer: name it Steve Cooper.
From the moment our non event of a Play Off Final came to an end, before the sweat had even cooled on the victorious Brentford players (those that even needed to break sweat, that is), Cooper was making clucking noises.
There’d have been a ‘buck buck here and a buck buck there’ crowing out loudly all summer too – if Cooper hadn’t decided to use his “inside his head voice” while all around him spoke openly about him leaving the club for pastures new.
Yep, before the illegitimate son of Steve McMannaman and a crack heroin addict, the odious Thomas Frank, had even swaggered down the Wembley tunnel to guzzle champagne and laugh at just how easy it had been to claim a place in the Premier League, Cooper was planning how to join him but WITHOUT the beaten side he was responsible for.
You’re a chicken, Coops, a coward who was too scared of the challenge in front of him.
As the Sky mics were shoved under his nose to get his reaction to the defeat, Cooper was already talking in the past tense about his time at Swansea.
To be fair to him I’m sure he realised that there were a great many Swans fans that were grateful for him doing just that after they’d watched the lamest performance in a Championship Play Off Final EVER, one that was over as a contest long before Jay Fulton got his marching orders for an unfortunate slip.
No, it was over as a contest the moment Brentford plundered their second goal in just the 20th minute. Given the fact that it was a rare occasion for Cooper’s Swans to register two shots on target, the prospect of scoring three times to overturn a two goal deficit was more remote than a Tibetan temple.
I suspect Stevie Boy was already making the mental calculations as he stood there powerless and impotent on the sidelines: Swans squad – Ayew – Guehi – Woodman – Grimes – Roberts – parachute payments + American hedge funders = STRUGGLE.
I think the man realised that the two players critical to make his game plan – such as it was – work, Ayew and Guehi, were gone without the financial injection that promotion would have brought. He would have realised that his captain, Grimes, and his star wingback, Connor Robs, were both in the last year of their contracts and both saleable assets the club would actively look to offload.
And I think he doubted his own ability to absorb those blows and reshape the squad to challenge for a third year.
Rightly or wrongly Cooper’s star was high by merit of getting the Swans to the play offs twice despite the cost cutting that had bitten deep already.
And he didn’t want to risk that reputation by overseeing a Swans side that he believed would struggle this season and that he didn’t have the bottle or belief to prevent that struggle and properly earn that reputation.
And it’s very likely that he thought that someone would come straight in for him and he’d be able to walk into another job, thus hiding his cowardice and excusing his departure from the fight ahead
Rumour has it he’d actually been interviewed for the Crystal Palace job BEFORE that Play Off Final, in which case he might have thought he was Premier League bound irrespective of the result that day (if it’s true, how did that work out for you, Stevie Boy? Eh??).
Equally though I think Julian Winter and the owners had made up their minds as soon as the final whistle blew at Wembley that they wanted a new man in the dugout.
Clearly there was tension between Cooper and the ruling hierarchy from the moment Trevor Birch packed his case and was replaced with Winter. And I think there was an acknowledgement that many fans were fed up of the limited and restricted way Cooper set his side up – with fans starting to be allowed back into stadiums again that was always going to be a problem if Cooper couldn’t at least stifle the complaints by delivering results.
Sadly for all concerned Palace never made their move for Cooper – so instead of an immediate clean break we all endured an agonising prolonged Mexican Stand-Off with Palace trying to find a better candidate for their vacancy, Cooper waiting for a new job to walk into and the Swans waiting to cash in with a fat compensation fee.
When Palace finally appointed Patrick Viera and the other stalking horse, Fulham, appointed Marco Silva there were no other options on the immediate horizon, leaving the Swans to re-enact that famous Christmas Day Eastenders scene where Dirty Den served up divorce papers on his missus Angie.
Only this time it was Squeaky Clean Jules publicly calling an end to the relationship with some wholly unconvincing bunkum about both parties feeling things had come to a “natural end”.
You’re fooling no-one folks, Cooper knew he had no advantages left with the last of the parachute payments gone and he wanted to walk into another job with better resources whilst the club desperately wanted rid but wanted a big pay day too.
The irony in all of this is that Cooper’s disappeared off the face of the Earth since his departure only to suddenly pop up in despatches again due to the sacking of Chris Hughton this week.
Cooper’s been installed as one of the early favourites to succeed Hughton at Nottingham Forest – where he’ll have a lot more money to throw around for sure, but he’ll be doing it for a club that is rooted at the bottom of the table and spits out managers the same way Rudi Voeller gobs out saliva at anyone wearing an orange Dutch shirt.
Forest fans are already recoiling at the thought of Cooper taking charge but they needn’t worry…
Coops is too much of a chicken to take the job on!
