Michael Laudrup sacked as manager of Swansea City

Laudrup's departure was announced after Huw Jenkins, the Swansea chairman, held crisis talks with the man who had led the club to the first major trophy in their history only 12 months ago, when they beat Bradford City 5-0 to win the League Cup at Wembley. Swansea have won only one of their last 10 Premier League matches, although the reasons for Laudrup's abrupt dismissal, which is expected to cost the club in excess of £3m in compensation, run much deeper than the results. Relations between Laudrup and the club have never been the same since ties were severed with the manager's agent in the summer, after Swansea became frustrated with Bayram Tutumlu's growing influence on outgoing as well as incoming transfers. Although Laudrup and Jenkins vowed to put that episode behind them, it was clear that the two men were no longer singing from the same hymn sheet. In an interview with the Observer in November Jenkins outlined how unhappy he was with the mentality among some staff and players, whom he accused of adopting a defeatist approach against the better teams in the league. Laudrup was never mentioned by name but it was clear, from the language Jenkins used, that he was referring in part to the manager. "We have to make sure that whoever comes in to manage, coach and play for us in the future, they can't be talking about different levels of leagues within a league. To me that is complete failure," Jenkins said. "I find that the hardest thing to take, that we have actually got staff and players that struggle at this point in time to see where we can compete, Kazinform quotes the Guardian. "And that's the biggest challenge I've got, to make sure that turns around and that everybody working with the club believes that, if we keep doing things differently, we can compete, irrespective of the size of the club or budgets." There was an increasing acceptance that, one way or another, Laudrup was almost certain to move on at the end of this season, a year before his contract was due to expire. Yet it is a measure of how concerned the Swansea board became with the team's performances in recent months, together with the doubts they harboured about Laudrup's laid-back approach and his ability to motivate the players to engineer a turnaround, that they felt compelled to intervene. Some of the issues with Laudrup have been longstanding but they have started to resonate more on the back of the team's travails this season. Questions have long been asked about how hard the players were working on the training ground under Laudrup and whether his regime was too relaxed -a point several members of the squad privately raised with the manager not long after he had taken over. This season fractures have started to appear on and off the pitch - last month Monk and Chico Flores clashed on the training ground. Ultimately, though, the 2-0 defeat against West Ham United on Saturday, which leaves Swansea 12th but only two points above the relegation zone, proved to be a tipping point. The listless performance at Upton Park reinforced the sense that the players had lost faith with Laudrup's methods - Ashley Williams described the West Ham display as "embarrassing" and admitted the plans Laudrup devised to deal with Andy Carroll "didn't work". Having gone to Paris to visit his daughter after losing at West Ham and having given the players a couple of days off - a decision that went down badly with members of the board - Laudrup returned to Swansea on Tuesday and was summoned to make-or-break talks. Full story