It's all over for Scott

I’m not happy to have to admit that I was one of the 300 or so mugs who made the tortuous journey to Dagenham a couple of night’s ago and it’s an experience that will haunt my dreams for a long time to come.

A trip to the arse-end of London, via a twelve-hour stint on the District Line, is depressing enough at the best of times, but to be rewarded with one of the most gutless, clueless and downright embarrassing performances I have ever seen from a Brentford team, not only extracts the urine but throws it back in the faces of everyone that travelled.

While the players deserve plenty of stick for the way they played, and the way they have been playing over the last few weeks, the buck (whatever that is) had to stop with the gaffer and on Tuesday night a tipping point was well and truly reached as an ever-increasing minority of doubters become a fully-fledged vocal majority.

After the performance and the reaction from the Brentford supporters there was simply no way back for Scotty.

It’s never nice to see someone take the kind of abuse that was dished out to him at Dagenham, particularly bearing in mind the fantastic job he did in saving us from Terry Butcher and taking us back to League One as champions, but the truth is his time at our club has run out.

Scotty gave us some great memories, from Darlington away to the Everton giant killing, and I wish him well for the future, but despite the odd bright spot this season, we have been going appalling in the majority of games during the last six months and, with the threat of relegation looming, the plug had to be pulled.

Before Christmas I argued he deserved time to try and turn things around - he was given that time but it just hasn’t worked out.

Scott’s team selections and signings became increasingly desperate, the players have been utterly demoralised and he has even had the temerity to slag off the supporters – an example of a prickly PR style that even Alistair Campbell would deem unnecessarily severe.

Over and above all of these issues, the primary problem was that our opponents long ago worked out how to negate the hideous brand of boom ball that Scotty clung too.

He insisted after the Daggers game that he wasn’t about to start changing this approach, and if it wasn’t already, once he said that his position became completely untenable.

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