Club could only afford to give Lyttle so much time

AND so it begins once more. After the selection process comes to an end and the pen put to paper, whoever is selected as the next man to lead Sligo Rovers, will be the club’s 50th full-time manager. The more pressing number which illustrates more clearly the club’s recent struggles is that when announced, the new management team will be the club’s tenth, including full-time and interim since the summer of 2014.

It’s an alarming statistic and ‘instability’ is the word that comes to mind. But the few running the club hadn’t much more choice than their predecessors who parted ways with Ian Baraclough, Owen Heary or Dave Robertson.

Sligo Rovers aren’t a modern day Dundalk, Cork City, Waterford or Shamrock Rovers in that we can afford to squander away the odd few thousand euro here and there.

The situation where the club finds itself, is operating with similar budgets to and clambering with the likes of Derry, Bohs and St Pat’s in an effort to challenge the top four requires clear progression each year.

As it stands it looks like Rovers will finish just outside the relegation zone, albeit with a few points to spare. It took the full season, 33 games, 22 of which were under Ger Lyttle to ensure safety in 2017. Rovers were guaranteed to play Premier Division football in 2019, also after 33 games of the current campaign.

There was no advancement in the cup as another embarrassing collapse to Longford saw Rovers knocked out at the first hurdle. The EA Sports Cup did see us progress through two rounds before our horrific home record struck again, this time against Derry.

Of course it will take time and quite a lot of it to prepare the club to challenge for the major honours again. But as 2018 wore on it became more and more apparent that Lyttle wasn’t the one to take us back there.

There were some nights that hinted that we were going in the right direction. Wins on the road against Pat’s, Derry and Cork showed what this team could do.

But they were all away from the Showgrounds and a team who is beaten ten times in 16 games on their own pitch (to date) doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near the top-half. Especially when you consider both Bray and Limerick have similar records.

It takes time for any manager to assemble a side with an ability to achieve that club’s targets. And it times it was hard not to feel for Ger in that regard.

It was clear from speaking to him that he was continuously identifying where he’d gone wrong in terms of the type of player that was required. That he took every defeat personally. In his head, he had a plan but he couldn’t materialise those thoughts into something tangible when the time came. But the club could only afford to give him so much time.

Recent wins over Cork, Limerick and even Livingston Colts made it feel as if his position was safe. But sluggish performances against Pat’s and Waterford and Bray were mixed in and again planted doubts.

That wasn’t the first time a Ger Lyttle team failed to ‘kick-on’ from good results.

Of course, preparations were nowhere near ideal ahead of the Motherwell Colts clash. The home side surprised more than a few with their pace and pressing, but Rovers, also youthful but with more than enough experienced full-time professionals, made them look a lot better than they were.

In the end it was inconsistency, a lack of fire-power and an inability to properly motivate players that ended Lyttle’s term. In a nut shell, a lack of progress.

There were indications last winter that he was the right man to progress the club on the pitch, but since the summer it slowly developed into a drawn out farewell.

By all accounts, it looks like manager number 50 will be Liam Buckley. A spectator at last Friday’s game at Oriel, Buckley will have learned a thing or two about what needs to be done.

Friday’s trip served little more than a reminder as to how Lyttle over-relied on youth as a consequence of releasing seven senior players during the season. The game itself was little more than a training session for what is the best team in country against a Rovers outfit which featured seven players under the age of 20. And one or two seniors who seem to be looking elsewhere.