Cod Almighty | Diary

Clowns to the right of me, jokers to the left

11 April 2017

Wicklow Diary writes: Now we know how long a "never-ending" GTFC contract lasts: five months, or 154 days, to be precise.

It doesn't seem long enough to judge a manager. Sometimes you can tell instantly with a player. Strikers particularly. Cleveland Taylor, remember him? Of course you don't. Minutes into his debut for Town against Barrow, he raced clear from the halfway line. We held our breath – had Shorty and Shouty unearthed the next Clive Mendonca? A succession of collisions between the ball and every part of Cleveland's anatomy apart from his actual foot gave us our answer as we slumped back in our seats.

Managers take a little longer to figure out. We all had doubts of varying degrees with Marcus Bignot. Whether they were shortcomings down to the naivety of a man in his first league job and lessons that could be learned, we may never know.

Bignot wanted to make it his team – but, perhaps symbolically, we never even got around to having a team photo for him. His sacking is as stunning as his Mariners Player HD first-day introduction to the players was awkward. Not only are younger fans getting mid-table for the first time: they are also getting managerial madness. It's the accelerated hothouse Town fan course. Quickfire dismissals are a trait of badly run clubs. A trait of the club that Town were in the seasons before dropping out of the league. The question now is: are we still that club? 

It's easy for the initial reaction to be that we're back in the League and back to the cycle of sackings and pay-offs that got us in trouble in the first place. Gotta keep those benign loans topped up, after all. Clubs look like reactive idiots when they sack a manager after a short spell in charge, with the obvious question being why did you appoint him in the first place?

Town's approach to PR is to attempt to limit the damage by telling us as little as possible. This mushroom management of the fans doesn't help. I'm no fan of sacking the manager after such a short period – but if you have a good enough explanation, I'm all ears. For now, it just reinforces the feeling that Paul Hurst's appointment and subsequent success were a slice of luck rather than great judgement on the club's part.

The sparse press release just leaves us to read between the lines. As always with Town, the spacing is generous. We can easily fit in the recent shambolic thumpings, rumours of disgruntled players, dressing-room dust-ups and even the missing fitness and conditioning coach as possible factors. When I learned of the sacking, I thought maybe Marcus had pushed John Fenty too far on the fitness coach. You know in Goodfellas when that Morrie guy with the wig keeps bugging Robert de Niro for his cut of the Lufthansa heist money? De Niro finally flips and has psychotic sidekick Joe Pesci use piano wire to do some fitness and conditioning on Morrie's throat.

In a generous and classy interview with Matt Dannatt today, Bignot blames himself for naivety in believing that he had a long-term project on his hands. That is one area where he can't be blamed. If the board instructed him to look beyond this season, then they are a cowardly shower for changing their minds and making Bignot the fall guy. This would mean there's a disconnect between the board's previously stated aims and those set out in the press release. The only hint of a problem at the fans' forum love-in last month surrounded the fitness coach and overnight stays. Wow, everything seemed so idyllic back then. Fire doors and fish and chips were the only blot on the evening.

My opinions of MB have swung erratically between genius and spoofer during his reign. The initial noises sounded promising. His enthusiasm and excitement were such a contrast to Paul Hurst that it was easy to get swept along. He also had a decent record at Solihull to back up the patter. Then the patter became a problem.

He wanted to bring in players with 'technical' ability. What nonsense. We might sometimes think we know better, but professional footballers all have technical ability. What does that even mean – that they can trap and head a ball? These lads have been scouted to within an inch of their lives. Dodgy formations and blaming results on players was another worrying sign. We were spoilt in that regard after years of Hurst encrypting his cards and then hiding them under his GTFC gilet before every interview. 

The lack of a caretaker in the announcement indicates that all this was set up last week after the Donny game and a new appointment is imminent. Thankfully, this appears to be set for 10am tomorrow and should spare us from two weeks of "get Steve Evans in" or "use the Bogle money to get the Cowleys". Unfortunately, it may not spare us from four months of assessing players and the new lad getting his own players in. Again.

Even the dogs on the street seem to know we'll be appointing Slade. If Bignot had a vision that followed the yellow brick A180 over the horizion, appointing Slade would be a return to looking down at our feet and perhaps back between our legs. John Fenty must feel he has played this hand before in 2009. From looking to Division Three and beyond, Slade's appointment seems to be a short-term rescue mission launched before the ship has even left the harbour.

When it's said be thankful for Fenty, it could be worse, we're generally thinking of one of Russ's ex-bosses at Cardiff, Coventry or Charlton. At the venue formerly known as "the BP", Russ may have trouble on multiple fronts. Even if it is the right decision, how did we get there? If it was the players that dunnit and went bleating to the board, where does that leave us? Who'd want to be a manager stuck in the middle of that? 

Another problem for Sort It Slades is that you only get one chance to make a first impression. It's tough enough starting with a clean slate. Bear in mind that Town fans can form an opinion, rational or otherwise, before the ball goes out of play in your first game. In Town terms, the opinions on Slade were formed in the jurassic era and are now harder than diamond. He'll need a 20-game win streak of four-goal thrashings to scratch the surface on some of the negativity towards him. "We're a right bunch of bastards when we lose" was sung with merry gusto at 3-1 up on Saturday. Russ will need to remember this.

Whoever we get tomorrow morning will need to show he can get the basics of management right before moving on to the fancy stuff. By that I mean working with what you've got and making the sum of the whole greater than that of the parts. It's something that Marcus Bignot didn't do and to be fair, it's even a shortcoming of managers well above his wage bracket.

In fact, the higher the wage of the manager, the less it seems he is expected to actually manage or coach. It's all about giving the manager a competitive budget, or 'backing them'. This saturates Premier League 'news' cycles as transfer windows approach and Chelsea's boring procession to the title has started it early this season. Jurgen, Jose and Pep need to spend to compete. Hang on, aren't these guys meant to be managerial and coaching royalty? With cutting-edge formations and tactics? Can't they work with and improve the 500 million quid of talent they've got?

Speaking of talent, Max Wright scored another pearler for Sutton Coldfield at the weekend. Keep an eye out for him Russ. Also, there's a Football League meeting in Walsall today. B teams are on the agenda but I'll leave that for original/regular Diary to talk about tomorrow in case there's nowt else...