CAROLINE BARKER
The television presenter salutes the AFC Wimbledon way
I’M not proud to admit I’ve got some stinkers when it comes to bad habits. I’ve been known, for example, to flick my disposable contact lens at the bin, miss and leave it there.
But worse heinous crimes were committed by me this week when I, at least three times, asked (and not just in my head): “But is he under pressure? Will they sack him? Should they sack him?”
Is that the new football cardinal sin? Where do we get off asking if a manager should be sacked? Would we do it quite so often elsewhere?
Yeah, you can give me all those arguments - it’s a public position, they’re paid well, they don’t need to do it. But when a manager signs a contract, do they accept full public vitriol and demands on the P45 just a few months in?
Given the demands and the relentlessness of the EFL, those questions are daily. Just this week, step forward headlines at Plymouth Argyle over Derek Adams, the club calling abuse towards him “extreme and intolerable”.
Paul Hurst has gone at Ipswich and Neal Ardley admits he’s under ‘growing pressure’ at Wimbledon, but the response from the club was everything I expected to be. Reasoned, explaining their processes, their thinking.
And it’s the Wimbledon approach which I’d back, because, let’s face it, Wimbledon, or more specifically Erik Samuelson, is my moral compass on all things, from managers to lens flicking.
Erik once told me he’d be happy stood in the car park at the new home for Wimbledon directing traffic. I’m not really sure what title to give Erik, every time I’ve ever interviewed him I’ve bumbled over it. I think it’s chief executive of AFC Wimbledon, but that doesn’t sound grand enough.
Model
He’s not the chairman and he’s certainly not the owner, that’s the Dons Trust. I think I’d like to call him Uncle. The Uncle of AFC Wimbledon. But his paternal love of his club and football is a model all clubs could follow.
Erik is a retired accountant, but don’t hold that against him. He takes the grand sum of one guinea in payment for his work at Wimbledon, work that’s invaluable. I first met Erik through Non-League Football and initially it wasn’t pleasant.
Erik and Ivor Heller (director at the club) flicked proverbial victory signs at me as they made their way past my team, Chelmsford (who’d apparently already printed the championship t-shirts) and up into the then Conference and then the Football League.
What I loved then about Erik is what I continue to love now. He would always pick up the phone and answer questions.
I remember asking him about contracting players, managers, how he went about it. He came back, with a flourish of advice, everything important redacted of course, but I think he seemed genuinely flattered that I wanted to pick his enormous brain.
What I found in Erik, I’d go on to find in many who’ve made the progression from Non-League to the Football League. Gary Sweet at Luton, Nicola Palios at Tranmere. An open door to talk, share ideas, discuss their thinking on everything. Simple really.
Each of those clubs has had success, but also struggles. It took Luton a while to get back to the Football League, Tranmere came down and got back up again, Wimbledon have had to think about the cost of progress off the pitch and what they need to match it on it. But they’ve always done it by not panicking.
When chatting to Erik this week he was, as ever, busy, busy working on holiday. “I guess the new stadium is the main off-pitch activity,” he said in his regular understated way. “We hope to take ownership of the land before the end of 2018 and start building early in 2019.”
Community
We didn’t talk about the manager, but that’s because I knew what the response would be.
Whilst many clubs are wearied and cowed by social media, Wimbledon and Samuelson don’t do reactionary. It’s because their foundations are built on not blinking (that’s how my friend Dave Anderson managed to stay in the job so long!), they’re built on the ethos of the club. Sustainability in community (is there a hashtag in there?). Gary Sweet at Luton is equally community focused. Luton, the first club to introduce the Living Wage throughout, they’re now handing over all of the club’s image rights, by way of a veto, to the supporters’ trust. They build around the club, they put supporters at the heart.
That’s the difficulty now with asking for a manager to be sacked. As fans we buy season tickets, we are entitled to voice opinions, we are subjected to dross and delight in equal measure, we should be allowed to have a say.
There should, though, be a line, because as much as community focus is about the fans, that includes the staff too, the players, the manager. The cliched wider football family. Sometimes family needs a telling off, sometimes it needs support, sometimes it needs a blooming good let the hair down and an inappropriate word.
Sometimes we have to trust that the right thing is being done, if it’s not then have a word in their ear.
The Eriks of this world are approachable, if not directing traffic I’m sure they’d hold a robust conversation. We need to cherish their openness, and hope for more of the same when it comes to the way our clubs are run. It’s
good to talk.