Luck-etti? Not with that bloated squad

EReputation Blame

IGHT games. No goals. No wins. In hindsight, I’m sure Bury chairman Stuart Day would admit he made a mistake when he appointed Chris Lucketti in November.

The former Shakers defender, a club legend, never got going and was sacked last week after two torturous months.

But how many times have we moaned about the managerial merry-go-round? How many times do we see men with a track record of failure walk into jobs?

Mark McGhee is a prime example. He’d struggled at Aberdeen, Bristol Rovers and Motherwell before he got the Barnet job in November. Now he’s been moved upstairs to make way for Graham Westley. Was his reputation and experience really worth much? Shakers boss Lee Clark signed 23 players during the summer.

That’s far, far too many and completely destabilised the club. When Lee was sacked, Chris got chucked in at the deep end with a bloated squad and probably only wanted to work with 40 per cent of them. What was he supposed to do in two months?

Now it’s Ryan Lowe’s turn to sort things out but, really, it all depends if he can change the attitude of the players.

If a manager is doing well, players turn up to training on time. They do everything properly in the gym. They’re never on their phones in meetings. You don’t get little cliques forming in the dressing room. When thing are going badly, the opposite is true.

Young managers do struggle for opportunities so we can’t fault a chairman for providing one. You can’t have your cake and eat it.

Unfortunately, timing is everything in these situations. Nathan Jones was a rookie when he took over at Luton but he inherited a club in great shape.

Michael Brown, on the other hand, walked into a mess at Port Vale. So did David Dunn at Oldham back in 2015.

And unless you’re a big name, you’re unlikely to get much time. Would Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink still be at Northampton if he’d spent his career in League Two? I’m not sure.

So you have to feel sorry for Chris. Including loans, former

I could probably write a book on what happened behind the scenes during my time at Bristol Rovers.

Honestly, I could throw loads of players under the bus for the part they played in getting managers sacked. But the way football works, players never get the blame. You never know what’s really gone on.

Bury’s players have let two managers down already. And while Ryan appears to be taking a hard line, getting rid of them is much easier said than done. They’ll be on long contracts, decent money.

Yes, the Shakers have 18 games left. But they’re well adrift of safety and, at the minute, I can only see them going down.