When Watford announced the decision to relieve manager Quique Sanchez Flores of his duties at Vicarage Road, football fans everywhere had one question... Why?
Having brought the hornets up from the Championship, he managed to assemble a team that comfortably secured their Premier League status with weeks to spare, and made it to an FA Cup semi-final in Wembley to go along with it, but that apparently wasn't enough to keep his job.
You have to wonder what the hell Watford's season objectives must have been in the summer, because while the team most definitely did slow down in the second half of the season as Odion Ighalo's goals dried up, the main objective was achieved, or so we thought.
One man who is not happy with the decision is West Ham boss Slaven Bilic, who said what we are all thinking when asked in his weekly press conference.
It's crazy.
I'm sorry for Quique and I said it a couple of weeks ago before game [vs Watford] that this was already a little bit in the papers, Ok, people are saying "it's that kind of a job" or "it's quite common", but it's not right.
It's completely wrong. He did fantastic, it's not a good season, it's fantastic. When I came here it was like Watford are one of the teams likely to go down, like every other team that comes up. They were never in danger. Especially in January, February, like were like top eight. Then if you add to that, that they play good football, and that they were in a semi-final of the FA Cup by beating Arsenal away... They had a great season.
What it shows is that it's more important how you finish rather than how you start, but it's absolutely nonsense for me. I can't accept it.
It's completely wrong. It's sick.
There have been a number of warranted sackings of managers this season, but that was absolutely not one of them. We've seen outrage before when managers such as Nigel Adkins at Southampton got the chop, but Flores may be one of the most unfair dismissals in recent times.
Bilic was spot on, and it's good to hear him be so critical over the treatment of one of his rivals.
