Portland, OR - An angry Merritt Paulson called the Sporting Kansas City front office after they fired Gavin Wilkinson, this morning, as he demanded that they try to turn fans against each other before firing Wilkinson.

“You haven’t even suffered a scandal yet,” stated Paulson to the SKC Front Office. “This is really just a previous scandal. You have to go through your own scandal in order to even consider firing him and then you double down and blame the fans.”

Sources say that Paulson laid out a blueprint to keeping Wilkinson in his position as he stated, “First you claim his family was accosted at a grocery store. Don’t be specific about the situation but put enough into it to make more moderate fans not want to be involved. Then you really try to foster dissent by blaming long term fans and calling them whiny and stupid and entitled. That’ll make the fans that just started following the team turn on the long term fans because they don’t understand the situation. Then maybe you have a few alternate accounts on Reddit or Twitter that will stir up some debate about whether fans are, ‘making too big a deal,’ and, ‘I just want to watch soccer,’ and then let it all simmer for 10 or 11 years.”

The Nutmeg News will have more on this as other MLS teams debate using this strategy to hire Wilkinson in the future.