DAVID PREECE

BUT DID BRABIN REALLY DESERVE THE CHOP?

Our guest columnist offers some strong views following the sacking of Tranmere boss Gary Brabin

If you lose six out of your first seven games of the season – only managing to take a solitary point from a draw – you know you’re in big trouble. When the axe falls it’s as expected as the morning sun and you take the decision on the chin with a “Thank you”, gather your belongings from the desk that has become your home and you switch off the lights, leaving the office for the last time. No questions asked, no explanation needed. You open up the boot of your car, place your box of possessions inside and as you close it, it becomes a metaphor – a ceremonial act of finality to a job that just didn’t work out. As the locking mechanism clicks shut, that’s it. You’re done. No fuss, no drama, just a part of the circle of a football manager’s life. You accept the blow and move on. But what if you’ve won those six games and drawn against a club you’d formerly managed? You’d think that would be a run that would put you well in the black, should a sticky patch occur, wouldn’t you? Apparently not, it would seem.

Injustice

On the face of it, four points from top spot after 11 games isn’t such a bad place to be sitting and despite the sky high expectations amongst everyone at Tranmere Rovers, Gary Brabin must be left with a sense of injustice and unfinished business about the job he was doing. There’s an old saying that, as a manager, you are only ever one game away from the sack but in truth I think Michael Laudrup got it right upon leaving Swansea City when he said a manager can go from being secure in the job to unemployed within five games. For Brabin it was just four, and that begs the question why he wasn’t given one final chance to put the Tranmere train back on track against Woking. A game, with all due respect to Garry Hill and everyone at Woking, which most would have put down as a home win. It’s a decision that has obviously been arrived at based on more than purely results but looking at it from a third eye perspective, I was still surprised by the timing. After visiting Prenton Park twice last season with Lincoln City, it was clear the atmosphere around the place was filled with frustration and after three seasons that took the club from the heights of the summit in League 1, to the relative depths of the National League, you could see the fans were struggling to come to terms with their new identity. Which is totally understandable when you consider the speed of their plummet. It’s not just the players and staff who need time to adjust and get used to the environment, the fans do too, and there’s no getting away from it, the acclimatisation must have been difficult for all. As a Championship or League 1 club, drawing against Guiseley or even Forest Green at home is unacceptable to many fans of clubs in those divisions and it’s easy for the fans showing their dissatisfaction to forget that despite the big crowds, the impressive stadium and the recent history of FA Cup runs, a League Cup final, they are a National League club themselves. But that’s the feeling I got in our FA Cup game last October. It’s the harsh reality of life outside the Football League and I’ve seen how difficult it is for clubs to adapt to life in a lower division after relegation. Words like ‘should’, ‘must’ and ‘need’ all creep into your vocabulary and it only hinders your progress by heaping more pressure on you than their already is. Ambition is fine, but you have to be rational about it too and see how hard it is for clubs that drop out of the Football League to bounce back up. I know that many Tranmere fans think the decision made was the correct one, and many of those cite Cheltenham Town as an example of, “If they did it, we should have too”. But as you’ll notice, there’s that old word ‘should’ again. It screams entitlement, that the club is deserving of promotion simply by being. That just doesn’t happen and more often than not, it’s these clubs that fall short because of this line of thinking. The way I see it is that Cheltenham had an experienced manager who had run this particular race before and come out a winner. They went for tried and tested and in the end they were promoted as champions. Not through anything spectacular or steamrollering teams as Tranmere fans expected, just a sheer consistency that kept their performances at a 7/10 most weeks.

Spiral

On the other side of the coin, Tranmere went with a young manager who was given the task of stabilising the club who were on a downward spiral and when a losing mentality grips a club, it can be like trying to stop a runaway steam train. Brabin did halt that slide though, and with a huge turnover of players just missed out on a play-off place. When you employ a young manager and place him in difficult circumstances, surely there has to be an understanding that goes alongside that too? I’ve no doubt that Gary had high expectations for the team too, but it just makes you think that if he was skating on such thin ice, why was he given a full pre-season to prepare a squad for the upcoming year and allowing him to shape that squad the way he wanted and then dismiss him so soon without an immediate replacement at hand? The club has gone through a tumultuous three years and five managers, it doesn’t want to get caught up in the cycle of hiring and firing that brought them to this point. Hopefully Tranmere’s short-term solution doesn’t become a long-term headache for them.