Flowers appointed new Macc manager M
ACCLESFIELD Town have appointed former England goalkeeper Tim Flowers as their new manager.
Flowers replaces head coach Mark Kennedy, who left Moss Rose following the Silkmen’s relegation to the National League.
Flowers, who won the Premier League in 1995 with Blackburn Rovers, will be assisted by Gary Whild and Danny Whitaker and has agreed an initial deal until the end of the 2020/21 campaign.
The 53-year-old started his professional career at Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1984, before establishing himself as one of the best goalkeepers in the country.
After moving to Southampton, Flowers then signed for Blackburn Rovers in 1993 in a £2.4million deal, making him the most expensive goalkeeper in Britain.
His excellent goalkeeping contributed massively to Rovers winning the Premier League under manager Kenny Dalglish.
Flowers’ playing career - which saw him earn 11 England caps - came to an end at Leicester City in 2003, after which he moved into coaching and then management.
His most recent spell came as manager of Solihull Moors, in which he guided the club to their best ever finish of second place in the National League in 2018/19.
Flowers won 44 of his 92 games in charge of the Moors, before leaving the club by mutual consent.
Now, Flowers will come up against his former club in the National League after taking over as manager of the Silkmen, as he aims to guide the club back to the Football League at the first attempt.
Speaking to the club’s official website, Flowers said: “I am very excited.
“The club has, I think it has been well documented, been doubly unlucky to have been relegated from League Two, so to be given the opportunity to come in is wonderful for me.
“I have been out of the game for six months or so since leaving Solihull Moors and I have had one or two options to get back in that haven’t quite been right for me at the time.
“Obviously, I saw this one had become available and am lucky enough to be sat in front of you today, so I am looking forward to it!
“I am under no illusions as to what it is going to take, because currently just over four weeks from kick off we haven’t got one player under the door; we haven’t got one fixture.
“So, there is a hell of a lot to be done in a short period of time. Gary Whild who has come in with me, was my assistant from Solihull, and Danny Whitaker, thankfully is going to stay and be my first-team coach, which is great news for everyone at the club.
“I have got a lot of work to do in a very short period of time with limited resources.
“Let’s be transparent, that is where we are at; but I will quantify that by saying when I walked through the door at Solihull it was a very similar situation.
“The team was bottom of the National League after nineteen odd games, marooned by about 12/13 points, we stayed up that season on the penultimate game by winning at Tranmere to secure our survival and the following year finished runners-up.
“There was a turnover of players, which you would expect, but right now the challenge is to get a squad of fifteen, sixteen players with some pedigree with not a lot, if I’m honest.
“I want a tight, lean, hard-working, committed bunch of lads who will go through a brick wall on a Saturday and a Tuesday for the next eight or nine months, get this football club back on an even keel, and plan with diligence for the future.”
After taking on the challenge, Flowers has vowed to give it his all in his bid to guide the Silkmen back to where they belong – in the EFL.
He added: “I am delighted to be here and I want to assure people that whatever happens, I will give it everything I have got to try and stabilise and get this club back to normality and back to where hopefully we belong in the EFL.
“I don’t know how long that will take, but I am bang up for the scrap.”
Flowers added: “The siege mentality, or the attitude where you think you have been wronged to a certain extent, can take you to different lengths.
“If you feel you have a point to prove and maybe people haven’t done right by you then not just as a group of players, but a community, a stadium full of supporters.
“This place next season we want to be a fortress, it has got to be hostile.
“I am going to try and put together an in-yourface group of lads who are going to roll their sleeves up and win, lose or draw – you will have to peel them off that pitch out there.
“That is what I got at Solihull, I got a group of lads that would run through a brick wall and that is what I want, men who will go to the well week in, week out and prove their worth for this football club.
“Although we have got a short period of time and a very short window to do our business because for obvious reasons, we are a month away from kick-off and we haven’t done anything.
“We have got the Covid laws and group training to factor into that.
“I have still got to be a little bit patient and make sure I don’t jump too quickly because there are loads of players out there who need a job and are unemployed and the season is coming quickly and they have got families to look after and mouths to feed.
“So hopefully we can, not take out time, but make sure we do our due diligence, get the right sorts in and hopefully move forward.
“Then we have got to get cohesive, work on every aspect of being in and out of possession and be as organised as we can be for kick off in October.”
Speaking about the prospect of playing in the ‘unforgiving’ National League next season, Flowers was under no illusion as to the task facing the Silkmen - but he is feeling confident the club can succeed as long as they get the right players through the door.
Flowers said: “The National League is an unforgiving division, everyone is professional, everyone works all week.
“Everyone has got reconnaissance scouts; everyone has got sports science. Everyone know what you are doing and have everything that I had in the professional game and a lot of them have got training grounds. That is what we are up against.
“We have got to get
‘I am very excited – to be given this opportunity to come in is wonderful’
ourselves organised and up and running ASAP and that is the key factor for us as a staff now and for us as a group at the football club.
“We have got to get out together and get the right types through the door here. Convince them that Macclesfield is the place to come, we mean business.
“We might take a few punches on the nose this year, we might get beat, but we have got to come out swinging with a few back. That’s what we want and that’s the type I want in through the door.”
With a great deal of work to do in a short space of time ahead of the upcoming season, Flowers’ message to fans is to pull together and stick with the club.
He added: “Hopefully Covid will allow our supporters in for the first home game and they will get right behind us, understand what we are up against, but as I said if they get right in behind us win, lose or draw – stick with us, stick with the lads because no one will be running out of that tunnel not trying 100 per cent - I will guarantee that.
“It is very surprising what you can do if you have an entire community pulling together and if we can build into the season and bed ourselves in, who knows?
“Right now, I know where we are, I know the line in the sand. It is going to be desperately difficult, but we are all up for the scrap, that’s why we are here, and bring it on.”