Hall on knife edge ahead of derby

It is now the worst kept secret in our football.
Coach Hall is under a huge amount of pressure ahead of weekend’s derby against defending Champions, Young Africans at the national Stadium in Dar es Salaam.

Ambitious Azam that has always managed to offload coaches almost at will, are unpredictable whether they can extend tolerance on Hall should the team lose this weekend’s derby. Should Azam lose confidence and part ways with the Englishman for the second time, then this will not be news at all, rather a regulation.

This kind of regulation might possibly be costly to Azam that has been a team with strong cohesion under Hall and likely to sparkle at international platform.

The Saturday derby is for sure tense and Hall is certainly spending sleepless nights ahead of the encounter.

City tycoons Azam are used to sack coaches even before enjoying the new contract at the most of it. Azam sacked Serbian coach Boris Bunjak and paid him his deeds just because they wanted instant good results.

Unconvincing 2-1 victory over First Division side, Panone in the Federation Cup means the Briton gaffer is now firm favourite coach to be next sacked by the Mainland premier league club.

It has been suggested that a negative result against Yanga next weekend will force the Chamazi-based club hierarchy into sacking Hall for the second time.

From the word go, Hall and Azam were always going to clash. What Azam board wants is not what coach Hall offers. While Hall offers results, he tends to do so by employing in what many sees as a boring style of play.

Azam want more, they need result but delivered in an exciting brand of football. Hall offers results, style and manner of victory is insignificant to him.

He was only brought back for the second time because the club was in dire need of results. It is no wonder eight months into second era at Chamazi, he appears to have lost the confidence of the board as well as some of the sidelined players.

Results have not been bad, it is just they have not been excellent. You look at the statistics and it is really hard to criticise Hall.

When results were excellent, no one could question Hall but now that the team seems struggling to pick maximum points, there is an increasing army of critics who are voicing against his defensive and sometimes boring style of play.

His 3-5-2 formation that deploys three central defenders has drawn negative press over his unattractive style of play. But to be fair, the same system brought result in the 2015 Kagame Cup campaign.

Hall deserves the time and the chance to at least see out the remainder of this season at a club that he helped put on the map. It was only six months ago that Azam won the Kagame Cup, their first major international silverware.

What he has done for Azam in two spells should offer him more grace with things getting tough at the moment. Let us not forget he was prematurely sacked in his first tenure when the team was actually at the top and unbeaten halfway into the season.

Unless if relationship are beyond repair and the situation is too dire for any working relationship, he should at least be allowed to navigate in the first round of the CAF Confederation Cup.

Sacking him at this time will only serve to disrupt the team ahead of their continental campaign. Lest we forget that Azam crashed out of the CAF competitions in the preliminary rounds in the last two editions because of chaos.

In 2014, they bowed out of the Confederation because they brought a new head coach a few weeks before kicking off the continental campaign. Hall was sacked in November, Cameroonian coach, Joseph Omog was brought in December, barely eight weeks before their first match.

It came as no surprise when they were knocked out of the Confederation Cup by Ferroviaria Beira. Last year they got knocked out of the CAF competition by El Merriekh.

The then coach, Omog future was in doubt few days before the first leg. In one way or another, the uncertainty surrounding Omog’s future contributed to another early exit from the continental stage.

With Hall’s future uncertain, they are heading into next week’s CAF tie against South Africa opponent, Bidvest Wits under the same circumstance. Will the results be different this time?
Hall will go at a certain stage, but this is a dangerous time to part ways with him.

It would mean another start at the middle of a league campaign that is promising to be a three-horse race.