New Western Sydney coach Mark Rudan got the phone call to take charge of the Wanderers while he was on the golf course. Now he must steer a struggling club out of some considerable rough.
Local product Rudan was unveiled as the replacement for Carl Robinson on Monday after the Welshman was given the sack following an A-League Men season start yielding just one win from their opening seven games.
The former Western United and Wellington Phoenix boss was at a loss to identify where the Wanderers have been going wrong, but will be given until the end of the season to convince the club hierarchy he is the man to turn them around in the long run.
“From the outside it’s tough (to say),” Rudan said of a club that hasn’t made the finals since 2017.
“I can only comment from what I’ve seen. The personnel are there but only until I get to work will I find out what those answers are.
“You don’t win games on paper. Names are just that. It’s important to understand each individual and get the most out of them.
“We want to make sure we create a team with values that pertain to the area that the club represents.”
Rudan will become the club’s fifth permanent coach in five years when he takes charge of Wednesday’s home game against Perth before facing his old club Western United on Saturday.
“We need to improve our standing, plain and simple,” Wanderers Chairman Paul Lederer said.
“This appointment was made to bring back a formidable mentality to our team, to stand up for our region and play with absolute determination to succeed.
“Mark understands the domestic football landscape at all levels and breeds a winning culture. Not only is Mark a Western Sydney local but he has coached at all levels and understands what it takes to represent our community.
The 46-year-old saw the Wanderers lift A-League and AFC Champions League titles under inaugural coach Tony Popovic and welcomed the challenge of restoring the club to its past glory.
“It’s a club from afar that I have seen do some extraordinary things,” he said.
“It would be nice to try and find our way back up the mountain.
“I’m extremely privileged and honoured because this is one of the big four clubs in the league, irrespective of where we are at right now as a football club and over the last few years.
“There’s pressure that’s associated with all of that and I’m very pleased to be here.”
Western Sydney chief executive John Tsatsimas rejected the suggestion the troubled club’s football operations need to be subjected to a review after the coaching announcement.
Even as one of the well-resourced, best-supported outfits in the league – with a state-of-the-art stadium to boot – the Wanderers look like a shell of the club that won the A-League premiership and the AFC Champions League in their foundation years.
Not since inaugural head coach Tony Popovic left the club in 2017 have they made finals and those past glories must feel all the more distant to a supporter base which is feeling more jaded with every new appointment.
Adding to those on-field issues were comments from recently-departed A-League Women coach Dean Heffernan who said the Wanderers’ set-up was “the most toxic environment I’ve seen in 20 years of football”.
Former assistant coach Patrick Zwaanswijk also claimed the club had “no identity” but Tsatsimas, who has overseen all of the coaching changes since Popovic left, played down talk of a review and said everything was in place for the club to succeed.
“We talk about culture and the environment in the club – I’ve got over 100 players, staff and administrators who can regularly attest to all that here,” he said.
“There will be a day that I won’t be the CEO of the club, but today is not that day.
“The buck stops with me, but having said that the infrastructure here is second to none. This is the most professional place for a player to play, we just need someone to translate that into results.”
One of the biggest criticisms of Robinson’s tenure was that he was handed complete control of the club’s football department with no strings attached.
Rudan won’t be given as much leeway in the short term but has until the end of the year to press his case for a longer-term role.
After cycling through Josep Gombau, Markus Babbel, Jean Paul de Marigny and Robinson since Popovic’s exit, Tsatsimas claimed the appointment of Rudan was not an example of the club repeating the same mistakes.
“The narrative out there is certainly the case,” he said.
“I appreciate what’s being said out there. Notwithstanding all of that we’ve made some mistakes along the way.
“We just need success on the pitch and we believe Mark will be the one who brings it along and we believe that come April or May that it’ll be happy days at the Wanderers.”
Former player Ante Covic said the issues at the club go much deeper than the coach.
“If some hard truths aren’t aired, then you’re masking things and almost putting the next coach (currently assistant Gary Van Egmond) in a position of failure,” Covid told FTBL
“There’s something fundamentally wrong – it seems like the club has lost its soul. It’s not the club I remember. The identity and culture I recall aren’t there any more.”
© AAP
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