Kaizer Chiefs has officially announced the sacking of head coach Englishman Stuart Baxter in a short statement released via the club’s website on Thursday night.
Chiefs finally put to rest the rumours surrounding Baxter’s departure with seven games remaining before the end of the 2021/22 Premiership season and the team perched in fourth spot in the DStv Premiership log standings.
Baxter, who was in his second stint with the club, the first was from 2012 to 2015, leaves with a record of having been knocked out in the early rounds of the MTN8, the Nedbank Cup, and having won only nine matches, drawing six, and losing eight league games.
The Englishman’s chief mandate was to finish second and take the Glamour Boys to Africa’s elite inter-club competition, the CAF Champions League, but that has since slipped through his fingers.
Chiefs said assistant coaches Arthur Zwane and Dillon Sheppard would be in charge until the end of the current season, but the influential Amakhos 4 Life supporters believe Zwane should be appointed on a permanent basis.
Zwane produced outstanding results as caretaker coach, but some are of the view that the former AmaZulu and Cape Town City coach Benni McCarthy, who is jobless at the moment, is the right man to take over the reins.
In the same CAF competition last season, Chiefs finished as runners-up to Egypt’s Al Ahly, coached by South African Pitso Mosimane, and their campaign gave the Naturena-based outfit huge exposure on the continent, as well as one of their biggest paydays in the form of prize money for ending up as finalists.
It is an open secret that Baxter has been having running battles with the club’s management and the Chiefs supporters, at one stage telling all who cared to know that he was ready to quit if management was unhappy with his performance.
Last week, he told the Chiefs faithful that he would not listen to their criticism because their views were ill-informed, as the fan base complained, in the main, about his sidelining of players with the potential to turn things around for the team.
“After a series of meetings, Kaizer Chiefs and coach Stuart Baxter have come to a mutual agreement of an early termination of his contract with immediate effect,” reads the Chiefs statement.
“In his second spell with Kaizer Chiefs, Baxter has led the team in 23 matches [excluding three league matches in December 2021]. He managed to win nine matches, draw six, and lost eight of the games. The team managed to score 25 goals and concede 23 during that time.
“Assistant coaches Arthur Zwane and Dillon Sheppard will take charge of the senior team for the remainder of the season, starting with the next match against Stellenbosch FC on Saturday, 23 April 2022. We wish him well in the future.
“The club will make further announcements in due course.”
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