"Toxic" - Swansea City fan pundit issues honest verdict on Michael Duff decision | OneFootball

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

The Championship managerial merry go round started up once more on Monday evening with two significant departures.

The most surprising one was Tony Mowbray's exit from Sunderland, but just an hour before that came Michael Duff leaving his job at Swansea City after just five months in charge.

City headhunted Duff from Barnsley over the summer after Russell Martin departed for Southampton, and despite not exactly having the style of football that the regular 'Swansea DNA' entailed, a chance was given to the ex-Burnley centre-back.

Aside from four league wins in a row earlier in the season though, Duff has had a pretty torrid time at the club, and what did not help were his comments ahead of the first South Wales Derby of the season against Cardiff.

Duff played down the significance of September's match by saying he'd rather lose to the Bluebirds twice and win promotion, and whilst he ended up retracting the claim, he ended up losing the match and then nearly three months later has lost his job, winning just six of his 21 matches in charge, with his final game being a 1-1 home draw to Huddersfield Town.

Swansea City fan pundit reacts to Michael Duff sacking

James Millar, FLW's Swans fan pundit, believes that the writing was on the wall for Duff due to the general discontent over his playing style and his occasional attitude in press conferences, and it was no surprise to see him depart.

"I remember when Duff was appointed or the rumours were going round that he was the likely candidate to be appointed - the majority of fans were quite pleased with him coming in due to how well he'd done with Cheltenham and Barnsley," James told Football League World.

"Granted, it was in divisions below the Championship, but he did have an extremely decent win ratio with them both, getting into promotion play-off finals etc.

"So, I think the majority of fans were quite pleased with someone coming in at the time who had a winning sort of mentality or win at all costs mentality - of course there were bits and bobs about the DNA of Swansea and how our style of play could be affected by this approach, and obviously now you look at it and results haven't come and the style of football has been pretty poor.

"So, the fans quickly turned sour due to lack of results and poor football to watch - his abrasive approach in interviews I don't think helped his cause and probably made the process a little bit quicker in terms of his sacking.

"I'm surprised the board acted as quick as they did, but I think it's one of those ones where I don't think I've ever seen our fanbase as toxic or as against or disliking of a manager or against a style of play for a while, or at least a massive disconnection with the club.