My body and mind have been drained by fog… now there’s a chink of light
IT’S hard to write about much else because to be honest it’s been hard to think about anything else.
We have been on a run of seven games without a win — including six losses — the worst I have ever experienced as a manager, and the closest I can get to describing how that feels is to say that it is like living in a fog.
You’re looking for some daylight and you know there’s some out there but it’s hard to locate where. The fog can drain you, body and mind, and that’s what you’re fighting against because you’re desperate for some clarity of thought.
I’ll be sitting down for dinner with Lisa and afterwards I won’t know what we’ve spent that hour talking about. You’re only ever thinking about football and the team and what might just have made a difference in a moment of those matches. You don’t sleep the same. There have been one or two times when I have been in the lanes around our new place in the pitch black of 4am with our dachshund, Bill. Last Tuesday’s 1-0 defeat at Boreham Wood was possibly the hardest of all. Their goalkeeper pushed one over the crossbar right at the death and then there was the long, subdued drive home, getting into Chesterfield at 2am.
I spent most of Wednesday with my first-team coach Carl Muggleton and assistant Adrian Whitbread, looking back at videos of all our games. Goals conceded. Which of our substitutions had worked. Technical errors in the final third. Why we are not getting the crosses in that I would expect, or creating the chances. The three of us spent eight or nine hours trawling through, looking for details and evidence. Above all we were looking at ourselves and what our decisions had been like. This isn’t the worst I’ve known. It’s not as bad as 10 years ago when I was at Cheltenham Town, the team I had supported as a boy and that my dad, Dennis, had managed.
There were times that autumn when I’d lie awake wondering how the hell I was going to get us out of the state we were in. I just could not see a way out with the players I had. No, this is not the same. It’s a difficult time because the club have been through two relegations in as many years and a lot of players have been moved on. We had one of the five highest wage bills in League Two last season and couldn’t afford to keep Chris O’Grady, who went to Oldham. I would have loved to keep our top scorer Kristian Dennis but Notts County’s £90,000 offer was too good to refuse.
But despite the changes, I have a great group of players. It’s not as if we’re losing heavily and badly. I’m not thinking ‘Oh my God, this group of players is rubbish’ or ‘they’ve turned their backs on me’. I do need to tinker a bit and make a few changes but I’m convinced we’ve got the makings of a very good and competitive team. A goalless draw at Dover on Saturday was a step in the right direction. Still no goals.
We’ve gone nearly eight hours without one. We hit the post and bar in the last minute. But we needed to stabilise. At least we’ve done that.