There were already rumors circulating on Saturday that a crisis meeting would come. That finally happened on Monday evening. This resulted in the decision to get rid of both Grim and Mathijsen, whose contracts still run until mid-2025.
The 0-0 draw against SC Heerenveen, the first of two matches that had to be won to get some air in the relegation battle, proved fatal for Grim and with it his boss Mathijsen. Willem II has only taken four points from the last fifteen games. For the relegation cracker against Fortuna Sittard in Limburg, the club management has now intervened hard.
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Grim was appointed by Willem II last summer, after the club managed to avert relegation with the heels over the ditch. That had happened under Zeljko Petrovic, who had taken over from the dismissed trainer Adrie Koster in the meantime to create a shock effect. Grim got off to a great start in Tilburg and scored no fewer than sixteen points in the first seven rounds, but then things got worse. In the following eighteen games, only six points were taken, as a result of which Willem II has dropped from the top regions to the current fifteenth place.
Sporting malaise
It is not surprising that the current sporting malaise has also cost director Mathijsen the head. After the handsome fifth place in the prematurely interrupted corona season, as a result of which Willem II entered Europe, it has been ailing in Tilburg for a year and a half. Willem II had three disappointing transfer windows with many bad buys.
In the last window, Willem II missed the intended defensive reinforcement Melle Meulensteen and top scorer Kwasi Wriedt (as well as Ché Nunnely four goals) was sold, but the arrival of his intended successor Federico Girotti, an Argentine goal thief from River Plate, failed. Hopes are now pinned on Jizz Hornkamp, who only scored five goals in the first half of the season for low-flyer FC Den Bosch in the Kitchen Champion Division and is visibly struggling to pick up at the higher level.
Relegation panic
This further eroded Willem II’s scoring ability, which was already not very great. The match against SC Heerenveen was the fourth in a row in which the Tilburg team did not score. There were only five players in the starting line-up who managed to score a goal for Willem II this season. That quintet had a total production of seven goals in the 24 previous rounds (Köhlert 3, Saddiki, Svensson, Hornkamp and Saglam all 1).
What further fuels the relegation panic in Tilburg is that after the duel with Fortuna, Willem II is presented with a program that gives a horse the hiccups with AZ-home, Feyenoord-away, Go Ahead Eagles-away, Vitesse-home and PSV-home. and that the competitors in the fight against relegation have recently been taking a lot of points. For example, PEC Zwolle won against Fortuna Sittard last Sunday, as a result of which the Zwolle residents have left last place and Sparta still has three points from the game against Vitesse, which was stopped with a 1-0 lead in injury time, which means that the Rotterdam team is also two points from Willem II. come.