Phil Miles gives honest reaction to sacking as Faversham Town joint-manager
Published: 06:00, 24 October 2019
Phil Miles admits he has been left disappointed with the manner in which he and Danny Chapman were sacked as Faversham Town managers.
The pair were removed from their posts on Wednesday despite there being no prior suggestion they had been under pressure nor any discussions with the club's board over their job security.
Miles was away in Dublin celebrating his birthday with his family when he received a phone call from chairman Paul Bennett informing him of the board members' decision to move on from the pair.
He said: "It is out of the blue, I've got to be honest.
"We haven't even been pulled in or had the vote of confidence from the chairman, the decision has been made just like that and that disappoints us most, we haven't had the chance to speak to anyone.
"There are more clubs with more money below us but we've still been competing.
"I told the chairman, I'm not going to say thanks to Faversham, for the reasons they've given me I don't feel we should have been sacked.
"I'm disappointed because it's my home town, it's my home club.
"I'm shocked as well, we had no inkling, nobody came up to us to say 'can we have a meeting to say the board isn't happy?', there wasn't even a meeting between us, the chairman and the board.
"You'd like to think if the chairman has got concerns and the board is chirping in his ear that he'd come to us and say 'the board members don't like this, this or this, here's what we want to happen.'
"I'm just disappointed we didn't get the chance to sit down and have a chat, nobody had put pressure on us to get results.
"I'm bitterly disappointed with the way it's been done, we should have had the courtesy of a sit down meeting and the chairman could have told us his concerns and then seen how we would respond.
"If then in November we're at the same position then so be it, but there's still loads of time to go."
Miles added that Bennett cited a lack of incomings as a contributing reason for the duo's departure, despite Faversham's budget having been cut last season.
He added: "The main reason was they felt it was not going where they wanted it to on the pitch but I'm not sure about that.
"When we joined Faversham the chairman was saying it was nearly broke because of last year and with everyone being on contracts.
"He massively cut the budget and we accepted it would be tough, they were talking like a club that was going under last year because of the money being paid out to players.
"We knew it would be tough and when they cut the money it was tough to get a squad together, but we did it and it has competed most of the time.
"He said about us not getting enough quality players into the squad, I said it's because we haven't got the money to do that.
"We have tried the last few weeks, we've been talking to players and put seven days in on some but for whatever reason they haven't come.
"When a player is talking to six clubs in the league, you know you won't sign him because at least four clubs can offer more money."
The pair were just shy of a year into their four year plan at Salters Lane, with their youthful side currently sitting in 13th in the league and just five points behind fourth-placed Ashford.
"We're disappointed with some of the games we've lost, there are no blokes more disappointed than us with the games we haven't won when we should have," said Miles.
"The plan set to us was to stay in the league and finish as high as we can, then make a couple of signings and rebuild for next year.
"All the games have been tight, we haven't buckled in games. The squad we've got is the squad that beat Hythe 7-1 and beat Whitehawk the other week when we had two missing."
"I'm confused this morning."
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Cameron Hogwood