#3 Sporting Gijon holding onto Abelardo Fernandez for too long
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During his three-year spell at El Molinón, Fernandez may have overseen Sporting Gijon’s promotion from the Segunda Division to the top tier of Spanish football, but, as we’ve seen from Ranieri’s dismissal this week, loyalty sometimes takes a back seat in football to the needs of a club.
Ordinarily, a club would sack their manager if they had a season like Abelardo did in the 2015/16 campaign; Gijon survived relegation by the skin of their teeth, finishing 17th, one point off the bottom three.
Nonetheless, the board opted to give Abelardo another bite at the cherry this term. Their decision looked a good one after the club picked up seven points from their opening three games but it was all downhill from then on.
The club went on a dismal run of ten games without a win from mid-September to the end of November in a spell which should’ve seen Fernandez dismissed before it got too late. Gijon may have won the following game but it would be Abelardo’s last as a manager and just their third of the season.
It took another four defeats for Fernandez before he left the club by mutual consent. Since his departure, the club have picked up as many points in their last five games as they had done in their previous nine matches, so the form has improved ever-so-slightly since then.
Ultimately, when a manager has such a poor campaign as Gijon’s 2015/16 term was, they shouldn’t be given anywhere near as much time as Gijon supplied Abelardo with. Now in 18th in the division, is it too late for Gijon to appease Fernandez’s poor stint?
