Sacking Postecoglou shortly to protect team (5)
I believe the answer is:
axing
'sacking' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'postecoglou shortly to protect team' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'team' could be 'xi' (a football team, from Roman numerals for 11) and 'xi' is located in the answer.
The remaining letters 'ang' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for axing that I've seen before include "Dismissing (employees)" , "Reducing expenditure sharply" , "Cutting down" , "Chopping, wood or jobs say" , "Sacking" .)