Here is why fans should brace themselves for more dismissals

The current instalment of the Uganda Premier League (UPL) has managed to squeeze in slightly above half a dozen matchdays.

A handful they might be, but there is something mesmerisingly consequential about the storylines that have been stitched together thus far. 

For one, the sheer glut of coaching dismissals—seven or thereabouts at last count—is indicative of how club owners put much stock into coming up with a winning formula.

The matter of patience—who attracts it, who gives it, what action it inspires—can be cruelly fickle. Even for a seemingly small footballing project like that of Lugazi FC. 

The very embodiment of an unknown quantity, the league debutants were widely expected to make up the numbers in the top flight. And maybe they still are.

While claiming that Sadick Ssempigi was unbelievably popular would be a stretch, his dismissal inside the opening five matchdays suggests that he had a debt to the club owner that went beyond the professional.

How else would you explain what we were confronted with?! Perhaps, as some high priests of Ugandan club football have offered, the club owner is the type that wants to be pleased but not challenged.

The stories of newly promoted clubs in the UPL tend to be small miracles of humane understanding. This usually gives them the truth of innocence.

Their owners are not known to suffer from serious procedural lapses. If anything, they usually adopt a wait-and-see stance. Not anymore.

Lugazi FC is not the only newly promoted club that has handed a coach the dreaded pink slip this early.

Mbale Heroes also had the effect of numbing their fans' empathy when they broke ranks with Richard Malinga.

While the Mbale-based club has cultivated an aura of total opacity, which makes it hard to establish even the most mundane details of the dismissal, untenable contradictions have been laid bare in the court of public opinion.

Just as vexing is how Asaph Mwebaze, who supposedly left the club on such bad terms, managed to bury the hatchet to return for a second bite at the cherry.

Try as they may, Lugazi FC and Mbale Heroes are nowhere close to beating Vipers SC at its game.

After making yet another catastrophic miscalculation by hiring a foreign coach who can best be described as a journeyman, the Venoms' top brass, through ruthlessness and political guile, wielded the axe.

The cruel, and correspondingly clandestine, process that culminated in the sacking of Nikola Kavazovic appears to be paying off. For now. The club and Kavazovic's replacement—John ‘Ayala' Luyinda—have gone hand in glove over the past few matches. 

The attacking trio of Yunus Sentamu, Milton Karisa and Allan Okello is sending shivers down the spines of many.

If the rich vein of form is maintained when Vipers host eternal rivals KCCA FC next weekend, Luyinda will succeed in making himself broadly popular. At least in and around St Mary’s Stadium.

Yet it is less likely that such a dramatic change in fortunes will make Vipers owner, Lawrence Mulindwa, more attuned to the virtuous aesthetics of local coaches.

Mulindwa has over the past countless years gained renown as someone who is roundly dismissive of most Ugandan coaches. You can count on the fingers of one hand the local coaches he holds in high esteem.

Luyinda must be mindful that he has a target on his back despite getting the venoms back on the rails. His odds of staying the long haul, judging by past records, are rather long.

The rumour mill will be rife with unsavoury stories about his impending dismissal in the event that he hits a rough patch. If small clubs in Najjembe show an astonishing disregard for the virtue of patience, worse is to be expected from the Venoms. The fangs will be bared. Sadly.