5 What-the-Heck Dismissals in World Sport

Top level sport is a vicious creature with players, managers and coaches all under pressure from sharebrokers, owners and fans to get results. But it seems even winning is now not good enough to keep your job as it was in the old days.

No where is this evident than in the world of football. And this morning, we were treated to what could possibly be the most bizarre dismissal yet seen in English football.

Nigel Adkins, Southampton manager, has been dismissed despite the South coast club being 3 points clear of the drop zone and having just drawn 2-2  with high flyers, Chelsea - it appears that Southampton may have got the crazy bug from Chelsea's notoriously sack-happy owner, Roman Abramovich. What is even more bizarre is who Southampton have brought in as replacement - Mauricio Pochettino, the former Argentine defender turned manager whose last job was at Espanyol last year - he was sacked when the club were bottom of La Liga.

Pochettino

So from a club that appeared very stable and with bright prospects, the dark clouds have quickly come in. One must wonder if there must have been surely more than Adkins walking into the room and being told that he wasn't good enough for the Premier League - which is surely not the case.

This nature of dismissal sadly isn't the first one we've seen this season though.

Only a month ago, Sean O'Driscoll was given his marching orders by Nottingham Forest's new Kuwaiti owners less than half a year after he took over at the City Ground. His last result before his unceremonious sack - a 4-2 win over Leeds United. It appeared that like Adkins, O'Driscoll wasn't the right man for Forest's new ambitious owners, and wasn't good enough to take them to the Premier League.

But unlike Southampton, at least, Forest hired a man who has managed in the Premier League - albeit with mixed sucess. Alex McLeish may have the right CV thanks to his success north of the border and I think he will probably take Nottingham Forest back into the top flight but I'm not sure if he is the right man to get them back into the Champions League as I assume the owners want Forest to be in in the long run.

Of course, we all know the king of what-the-heck dismissals in recent times is none other than Chelsea. Patience is obviously not a factor for Roman Abramovich and it appears that if your name isn't Pep Guardiola, then you don't have a hope of lasting very long at Stamford Bridge even if you did win the club's first ever European Cup, the one prize that Roman wanted.

Funny thing is now that Pep Guardiola has thankfully said no to Roman Abramovich and taken on the Bayern Munich job, where does it leave him? Roberto di Matteo and Rafa Benitez must be laughing now.

Venky's - Blackburn's owners

Finally, we go to Blackburn who have shown in recent times to have not a clue about what they're doing - or at least that's their chicken farm owners from India are giving us the impression of. Firstly, they sack Sam Allardyce, a manager with proven Premier League pedigree firstly with Bolton and now with West Ham, just as the club were safely in midtable and replaced him with the inexperienced and out-of-depth Steve Kean.

Steve Kean

The once proud and stable Lancashire club rapidly descended into a laughing stock and relegation fodder - staving off relegation one season but going down easily the next. Their descent has continued in the Championship with the appointment of Malaysian football pundit, Shebby Singh as football director probably one to shake heads over.

Shebby Singh: pundit turned football director

Now being a Malaysian myself, I naturally tend to want to protect Shebby plus I quite like him as a football pundit. However, Blackburn have clearly hired a truck driver to run the kitchen of a Michelin restaurant here and it has been quite evident in the way Kean was dismissed, in the way Henning Berg was hired then fired, and I still have my doubts over whether Michael Appleton is actually the right man to lead Blackburn.

Watch for more what-the-heck stories from Ewood Park sadly.

But it's not just football that has seen its fair share of bizarre dismissals as New Zealand Cricket has appeared to want aspirations to be the basket case of world cricket in recent times.

David White appears to be cricket's version of the Venky's -Blackburn's chicken farm owners. He has no clue what on earth he is doing - he may be hiring the right personnel in name like John Buchanan and John Wright but he has hired far too many captains to lead the ship and not enough men to steer the ship.

The dismissal of John Wright from the New Zealand cricket coach job therefore ranks as one of the most bizarre and most tragic in New Zealand sporting history, just as his initial appointment was a dream come true for most.

Wright had clearly proven to be a coach of great pedigree with his success with the often mercurial and star-studded India side and Wright had shown to be the man to turn the Blackcaps back into a respectable cricket team. But alas, New Zealand cricket's management had to muck it up, install Buchanan as Wright's boss - wtf? - and when things didn't work out, Wright had to go.

And as a result, Mike Hesson got into the New Zealand coaching job too early - he is a great coach as he did wonderful things with the Otago Volts side but one still too inexperienced to be a coach of an international side, and it's clear he hasn't developed his diplomacy skills yet as we've now seen a Blackcaps camp clearly divided into two.

Any more bizzare dismissals you can think of in world sport? Let me know!