UPDATE 8.20am: SHELL-SHOCKED Matthew Knights says he is "disappointed" with the way his time at Essendon ended, but will take his time to consider his options.

Knights said he didn't want to be pressured into speaking further or making any decisions before he had time to think about yesterday's events.

"Obviously there is a share of disappointment in this whole scenario but I won't be making any further comment until later in the week, until the dust settles," Knights said.

"At this point, as I said, there is obviously disappointment but we will look at things as the week goes on and then at some stage I will come out and speak to the media and do that in due course.

"But I certainly won't be rushig that situation and I don't feel there is any real need to do that under the circumstance."

Essendon moved swiftly to cut its losses yesterday afternoon, as if it were just waiting for the season to end.

As embarrassing as it is, the Bombers have bitten the bullet and dispensed with coach Matthew Knights. Gone less than 12 hours after the siren sounded on the club's final game.

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It is a decision that will expose the club to a severance payment in the order of $1 million, yet, as odd as it sounds, the settlement might be less than the cost of keeping Knights.

For a combination of reasons, Essendon supporters blame Knights entirely for their wretched season.

After playing finals in 2009, the Bombers have finished 14th with seven wins. Crowds slipped to alarming levels, supporter discontent rose to extraordinary levels, and there was an implied threat of a massive negative impact on next year's membership numbers, marketing income and corporate support.

Knights had been drowning for a month. If he wasn't "gone" after 18 rounds - Essendon was 7-11 - the last four rounds destroyed any lingering hope of him hanging on.

The Bombers were humiliated on successive Friday nights by Carlton by 76 points and Collingwood by 98, before losing to the Brisbane Lions by 27 and the Western Bulldogs by 29. There was no coming back from there.

First-year chairman David Evans had the melancholy duty of advising Knights he was redundant.

It would have been a traumatic moment for Evans, a gentle man who also happened to be a member of the board that made the inexplicable decision in September last year to extend the coach's contract to the end of the 2012 season.

Apart from the human element of the sacking, Evans also was well aware there will be a payout of two years' salary, and Knights is believed to have been upgraded to $550,000 a year when his contract was extended. Strange, strange decision, that one.

The rationale was simple - tie him up past 2010 and avoid all the speculation if the team were to perform poorly this year. The team did perform poorly, yet the speculation hardly was stifled.

The Essendon faithful never took to the man who replaced four-time premiership coach Kevin Sheedy.

Former chairman Ray Horsburgh and former CEO Peter Jackson, the two men who drove the Knights reappointment, believed it was a five-year job. He is gone after three.

Given the state of the list when he arrived, Knights' record isn't totally unacceptable - 25 wins from 67 games - but he had no one batting for him after Horsburgh stepped down and Jackson left the club.

What hurt him even more was the perceived success this year of Damien Hardwick at Richmond, the man he beat for the job ... and an Essendon premiership player.

The question now is "who will get the job"? Surely Mark Williams is the outstanding contender. He is a premiership coach, a 12-year coach looking for work. He stayed a year too long at Port Adelaide but, at 52, he should be in his prime.

Neale Daniher is the interesting one. He was a grand final coach at Melbourne, is a former Essendon player and remained in the system as part of the West Coast administration.

Essendon development coach Alan Richardson is seen as the roughie.

Originally published as Knights 'disappointed' at sacking