‘IT’S BEEN HAVE GOT TOUGH BUT WE OUR SOUL BACK’
TAKING on the Stevenage manager’s job just over a year ago was a tall order for a managerial novice, but Alex Revell has come through with flying colours and helped restore the club’s soul in the process.
Rewind back to February 2020 and the former Brighton and Rotherham striker, then aged 36, became the fourth manager of a tumultuous season at the Lamex Stadium, following in the footsteps of Dino Maamria, Mark Sampson and Graham Westley.
Boro were rooted to the bottom of League Two and looking destined for the National League. As it turned out, Revell had just a couple of games in charge before the season was brought to an early end by the coronavirus pandemic. However, Stevenage then endured five months in limbo as they waited to find out if they would be relegated. In the end, crisis club Macclesfield Town suffered the drop instead as a result of a string of points deductions which saw them plunge to the bottom of the table, while Boro were handed a reprieve.
In the opening half of this season, it looked as though they were going to be in for another battle against the drop, but slowly and surely Revell has turned their fortunes around.
Their goalless draw at Leyton Orient in midweek left them a comfortable 15th in the table and underlined their new-found resilience. It made it one defeat in ten, meant they had conceded just two goals in nine games and had collected five clean sheets on the spin.
Goals remain hard to come by (Boro had netted just 28 from 35 games to be third lowest scorers pre-weekend), but they have been miserly at the back, conceding just 31 (the joint second fewest). They are quite clearly no longer a soft touch and Revell has revelled in their new-found steeliness.
“The football club was in a tough place last year,” he told The FLP. “We lost way too many games. One thing we wanted to do was to make sure this football club got its soul back and that community feel.
“The fans didn’t enjoy being Stevenage fans, and our job was to change that - that was the biggest aim. I think we have now.
The fans didn’t enjoy Stevenage being our job fans, and that. was to change I think we have now
Alex Revell
Tough
“You walk though Stevenage and you talk to people who now support the club again, which is great. I think we’re in a good place from where we’ve come from.”
So how difficult was all that uncertainty last summer about which division they’d be lining up in this term?
“I’ve got to be honest – it was extremely tough,” admitted Revell. “We were trying to sign players, sell a football club and a way of playing to them, but we didn’t know where we were going to be.
“We had players who signed for the football club when we were potentially getting relegated into the National League so that shows what a great group we’ve got. They put their trust in
the football club.
“We’ve come a long, long way and that’s a credit to the players for the way they’ve worked and their desire to improve.
“We’re proud of what we’ve done but if we want to get better and get to where we want to get to, we have to be critical of those areas we need to improve - but in the right way.
“We’ve seen it a lot this year. We’ve played teams off the park really and just that final part, which is obviously the hardest part, is probably what we’ve lacked but all you can do is just keep getting in there, keep putting the ball in there, keep getting the players to run in there.
“There are two parts – keep a clean sheet and score a goal at the other end. We’re doing really well in one aspect. That was our 15th clean sheet of the season (against Orient). Every single player is working extremely hard from back to front and the workrate they put in deserves clean sheets.
“But the minute you maybe put all your attention on to scoring, you start conceding so we’re looking for that balance at the minute. The positive thing is that we’re creating – if we weren’t creating, I’d be worried. We have to keep believing.”
Assured
Revell comes across well when you speak to him. He’s calm, assured and appears to have the right temperament to be a success. Crucially as a rookie manager, he’s also not afraid to seek help and advice from those with more knowledge and experience than him.
He believes bringing in his former Brighton boss Dean Wilkins, 58, brother of Ray, as his assistant manager in December – when Boro were 23rd – has been one of his best decisions. “He’s come in and been fantastic,” said Revell. “I said to the football club that he would be a perfect choice for what we want. He demands stuff because he’s been at the highest level, he’s been in the Premier League, had promotions from League One to the Premier League with Southampton. He has an incredible wealth of knowledge for me to learn from and for the players to get better.
“It was probably the realisation that I needed that help in training every day and having a clear plan. That’s the biggest thing that he has brought.
“You can have a clear idea of what you’d like to do, but when you take over a team and see the players you’ve got, you have to adapt. We’ve managed to do that and the last few months have been more enjoyable.”
In the increasingly cut-throat world of management, Revell has done well to pass a year in the hotseat, but he’s not taking the current upturn in fortunes for granted – or already looking ahead to next season.
“Time’s flown by and I’d have preferred to have had fans present, but hopefully we will get back to that soon,” he said. “I’m looking forward to the day I can stand on the sideline with people around us supporting the team.
“All it is at the minute is making sure we win as many games as we can. We have to make sure we keep improving and then, when we know where we are, we can then concentrate on next year.
“Until then I haven’t really thought about it and I don’t want to, because I want to make sure we take care of this year first.
“If we can achieve a top half finish for this football club from where we were, it would be a fantastic achievement from every single person at the football club.
“For me personally, I concentrate on that because I know how football can turn.
“You’ve got to try to make sure that when you put a team out, they play a certain way that you enjoy watching and people enjoy watching.
“I want them to show a real desire that matches mine.”
It helps if you’ve got strong, experienced characters in your dressing room and skipper Scott Cuthbert, 33, was a rock in the heart of defence against the O’s on Tuesday night.
“Scott is a fantastic leader and brings the group together, but we’ve got several of them,” stressed Revell. “Tom Pett has really come out as someone who leads people, while Luke Prosser and Romain Vincelot didn’t play tonight, but they are on the sidelines helping players.
“We have a fantastic group, one to be proud of. That’s when you know you have a successful club – when you have people like that.”