Cod Almighty | Article
by Steve Bierley
9 December 2014
After Grimsby lost at home to Southport, Steve described our situation as Dire beyond straits. Has our form since then changed his mind?
Just over half way through the season and time to take stock.
Let me start with a small fact. Of all the managers in the top four divisions only one, Arsene Wenger, has lasted in his job longer than our current chairman/non-chairman, John Fenty. Managers come and go; chairmen appear to cling on forever.
John Fenty has saved the Mariners like Mrs Thatcher saved the mines Of course, a manager’s job is largely dependent on success whereas a chairman’s is not. You might say doubly so when it comes to Mr Fenty, who has presided over a decade of sharp and seemingly unstoppable decline. Some, laughably, would still have it that he has saved the Mariners. Presumably these same folk might argue that Mrs Thatcher saved the mining industry.
I will gloss over the finances. As a millionaire and former businessman, Fenty surely has a reasonable grasp of such matters, although when he talks of any new stadium (something that has rarely progressed beyond the pipe-dream stage over 10 years) as providing new streams of income, I find myself wanting to scream: ‘How about promotion first!’
For most fans the chairman’s most critical task is to appoint the manager. In this respect Mr Fenty’s track record is, to be generous, desperately poor. The one manager of any ability (excluding the knee-jerk and wrong-headed return of Alan Buckley) was Russell Slade, who would have stayed but for the chairman’s contract dithering.
And a word on Mike Newell: One phone call to anybody connected with football on Merseyside would have set the alarm bells ringing. Newell’s reputation preceded him, and the fact that Fenty failed to do his homework, or ignored any advice, or did not seek it, speaks volumes for the managerial selection process at Blundell Park. It has, on Fenty’s watch, become a joke. We are three points down on last season at the same stage and five points down on the previous season
And so, one match into the second half of our fifth - yes, fifth - non-league season it remains difficult to maintain any optimism. We are currently three points down on last season at the same stage, and five points down on the previous season. And on both occasions under Scott and/or Hurst we faired less well in the second half, finishing fourth both times.
Dave Moore, always a cheerful soul, said on Radio Humberside recently, that there was ‘only the thickness of a cigarette paper’ between Town and both Gateshead and Newport County in the two play-off semi-finals. The facts tell a starker story: a two-goal difference in both ties, with only two goals scored in the four matches.
Assuming Barnet do not implode, and there seems no obvious reason why they should, it is at the very least imperative Town finish second or third, so that the opening leg of a play-off would be away. As things stand, I am not unduly confident we will even finish in the top five.
To win the Conference outright a tally of two points per match or better is needed. Barnet are on course; Town would need to win their next seven matches to get back on track.
At the start of this season, I had it in mind (as chairman Bierley!) that if we did not have 30 points after 15 games then Hurst should go. We had 21. A run of five wins on the trot between games 16 to 20 brought brief hope – 20 games, 36 points – but since then we have miserably slid away again.
I have no faith in Hurst. Good managers find a system to best suit the players available. Poor managers impose systems. True he has returned to a more attacking line-up in the last two matches, but the change has been grudging, and the post match words increasingly defensive. Take away those atypical 6-1 and 7-0 victories over Gateshead and Alfreton, and we have scored 26 goals in 22 matches. Not good enough.
Not good enough: A phrase that aptly sums up our current manager and, more specifically, a decade of Fentydom. It has been horrible, and continues to be.