In heavy news on Tuesday (30th), Ponemouth Football Club announced the termination of leader Berger's contract. The young coach quickly became the first manager to be sacked in the Premier League, outpacing favorites such as Chassin Houdy, Lambert and Rogers. The immediate trigger for Berger's sacking was the 9-0 defeat by Liverpool in the last round of fixtures. The interim manager will be Garry O'Neill when the Portsmouth side meet Wolves in the early hours of Thursday morning in the Premier League fast-breaking fixture.
Berger began his coaching career after retiring from the game and coached at Fulham, but was sacked last season after being relegated with the team. He then joined Championship side Fennymouth and helped them return to the Premier League last season. In their first game of the new season, they beat Aston Villa 2-0, but then suffered a tough run of fixtures against Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool, and were unlucky to lose three games in a row. Despite conceding a total of 16 goals in the three matches, Berger was unable to escape his dismissal.
However, Berger seemed to have had a premonition of something untoward after the 0-9 defeat to Liverpool. In a press conference, he reluctantly said that the team had not added more players after the promotion, which might have angered the top brass. He confessed, "Our players need help and they can only fight the air. There are a million reasons why we didn't go for reinforcements and a lot of the problems were caused by circumstances. We couldn't get anyone or some players didn't want to come."
Berger's departure makes him the sixth coach since Gopp took charge of Liverpool to lose his job after a match against the Reds. The previous five were Swansea Gudaurian, Westham Bielik, Fulham Zukunovic, Man Utd Moleno and Ewarton Marco Schwarz. Kopp seems to be the "leader killer".
