GLENN MOORE
Our guest columnist on broken dreams and keeping the faith
IT HAS reached that stage of the season when the vast, tottering pile of Football League Papers and Non-League Papers blocking the door to my office needs to be trimmed and sent to the recycling bin.
Scything through the newsprint however, extracting key articles for long-term filing, is to wade through pages of broken dreams.
Those heady months of autumn, when the optimism in the air can be smelt as keenly as newly banked season-ticket money, are now long gone.
For every club still pursuing those pre-season dreams of promotion, there is another one facing the terrifying prospect of the drop.
There is also a third group, enduring the living death of meandering towards the end of the season with nothing at stake, no reason for joy or despair, just existing – apart, that is, from players anxious to be offered another year’s contract in this most insecure of professions. For them, there is always something at stake.
Dreams
It is the destroyed dreams and false hopes, however, that stand out from the welter of headlines.
‘We’ll warm to Harry’s game’, was the clarion call atop an interview that began: “Trust in Harry. That’s the mantra skipper Michael Morrison wants Birmingham to adopt in their quest for a return to the top flight.”
That was on the second weekend of the season, August 13. That was the dream.
A month later the front page headline delivered the reality: ‘Harry’s game is all over – Redknapp axed after Preston defeat’.
Birmingham have since hired and fired Steve Cotterill and are now hoping Garry Monk can prevent them taking the wrong route out of the Championship.
The front page photograph that issue showed Kieran Dowell celebrating Nottingham Forest’s fourth goal at Brentford with the headline: ‘Warbs’ sweet return’.
It soon turned sour for Mark Warburton. Forest fired him on New Year’s Eve. The back page had an interview with Justin Edinburgh. ‘Watch us go says Justin – Cobblers boss eyes tophalf finish’. Edinburgh did not even last as long as Redknapp. The same page four weeks later was headed: ‘Cobblers call time on Justin’ after Northampton lost their opening four league matches.
Edinburgh is now trying to put Orient on an even keel in the National League while Northampton, under Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, went into this weekend still in the bottom four.
A week later an interview with Lee Cattermole claimed: “At last, we have the right man”.
The Sunderland skipper was not talking about current boss Chris Coleman but Simon Grayson. Sunderland are now staring at the abyss of a second successive relegation and likely to meet Grayson again next season, at Bradford’s Valley Parade.
Open up the following week’s issue and there’s Jaap Stam stating “we need time to hit form”. To be fair to Reading’s owners, he was given time, but it ran out 11 days ago after one win in the last 18 league matches.
Elsewhere, my colleague Chris Dunlavy has twice featured Barnet managers in his excellent profiles - neither of them (Rossi Eames and Mark McGhee) are in the job now.
Nor are several other subjects including Pep Clotet, Thomas Christiansen and Leonid Slutsky. The file marked ‘out-of-work’ managers is one of the thickest in the filing cabinet.
That’s football, unfortunately for the individuals affected. Patience is rarer than a beaten manager complimenting the referee.
But turn to the results pages of some of those yellowing papers, and you wonder. Nine games in – a decent chunk of the season, long enough for patterns to be established, Brentford were 20th in the Championship, Plymouth Argyle 23rd in League One, Colchester 20th in League Two.
Many of the clubs around them then have changed managers, the bulk are still fighting relegation, but those clubs’ chairmen kept faith in Dean Smith, Derek Adams and John McGreal respectively, and have been rewarded.
Rewarded
It takes time for coaches to build a team. If it took a year for Pep Guardiola, working with some of the world’s best talent, to embed his style of play at Manchester City, how much longer might it take a coach working with more limited players, and smaller squads? Yet the sackings go on. Last week it was Graham Alexander, his Scunthorpe team in the League One play-off places, who was fired. A few weeks earlier Stuart McCall, with Bradford City in the same playoff places, was axed. That’s not looking a smart decision at present. Part of the problem is raising expectations. Eyebrows were raised when Grant McCann was replaced with Peterborough on the play-off fringe, but after nine games they were second (and Bradford third). In the Championship, Leeds United were top. Better to start steadily, then move through the gears, like Fulham or Blackburn Rovers. Then there appears progress and momentum, commodities that are almost as intoxicating in football as hope, but far less dangerous.