Cod Almighty | Article
by Tony Rogers
24 February 2011
After the sacking of Neil Woods, we ran an article by Pat Bell denouncing chairman Fenty's hasty populism. This article appears in response to Pat's.
There is always a period of mourning when we lose someone we like and in many ways admire. Pat's eulogy, though, even with his qualifications, goes a bit too far. We have to remember than football is, as Woods himself said this week, a results business. He simply didn't get the results fast enough.
There is a case that Woods should have had more time and in a way it is fair comment. But time is something this club does not have, at least not the amount that Woods would have needed to learn his trade. The falling gates, the lack of interest in the town, the early exits from the cups, the loss of income, the distance from a play-off place - all these are on the debit side and we cannot excuse them all.
More sensible is to look at the appointment. It ought never to have happened. The club was needing stability and character, as well as a hard look at the playing staff. It seemed clear then, and clearer still now, that asking a former player whose only management experience was coaching a youth team was folly - and Fenty stands guilty as charged.
The only times when the club has tried internal appointments like this have ended in tears for Paul Groves and Graham Rodger. When internal appointments were made before that, George Kerr had been an experienced manager and assistant, and Dave Booth had done a long stint as assistant and youth coach.
Fenty has to take the responsibility for placing Woods in this position. Pat Bell cites other managers also making mistakes, but none in my memory have made so many and such big ones as Woods has made. Alan Buckley, Pat forgets, was an experienced manager already, with contacts in league and non-League and an excellent assistant in Arthur Mann. Woods had neither.
"It is a toss-up if it was inexperience or desperation that prompted the signings of Gobern, Hughes, Sinclair and Ademeno, whose first-team appearances are best measured in minutes"
We saw Woods try to do something about this last point with the appointment of John Deehan, but in effect he was just a scout when he could have been a mentor and dogsbody, freeing Woods to do the first-team job that was essential. Then we had Chris Casper, who brought good coaching and management experience plus a number of contacts in the north-west. When he went, Woods lost more than just an assistant. Promoting Dave Moore was a retrograde step for a rookie manager and showed his inexperience. He simply did not appreciate what he needed, or didn't want to admit it, and it wasn't Dave Moore whose talents lie away from management.
Pat writes of the changes to the team. Of course, those changes were necessary and Woods made a few decent signings. However, it is a toss-up if it was inexperience or desperation that prompted the signings of Gobern, Hughes, Sinclair and Ademeno, whose first-team appearances are best measured in minutes. Signing a promising young defender from Mansfield and then refusing to play him for over half a season is also a strange thing to have done. Neither have we seen much evidence of the fabled youth side that Woods coached to glory. Only Bradley Wood has made any real impact, yet Jack Wilshere was playing for England last week and he is younger than the players Woods seemed afraid to trust. Or are these lads just not as good as we were led to believe?
Which brings us to performances on the field. These have ranged from the fair to the dire and the reasons have been evident. They were even obvious to Woods himself as he repeated frequently in post-match interviews the same things we had all seen. Yet the next game might perhaps show a change in midfield before following the same sort of pattern. The side often appeared not to know what to do with the ball or without it. The defence has never known when to go forward or back and the midfield has been consistently poor. Only Connell has saved Woods from an earlier demise.
Most tellingly, we saw in pre-season that it was easy to beat the Mariners if a team was prepared to close them down, chase and then move the ball quickly through or over our midfield. By February we were seeing yet another side do exactly the same thing to us in the first half this week. Woods has never looked like working out the way to play for points. He seemed to have learned nothing from the huge no-win run that brought about our relegation. Blame for that was always placed on the Newell signings, but surely even they could have been managed to two or three wins by a manager with a bit of tactical nous. Nevertheless, Woods was forgiven and allowed to build his own side that would surely reflect his way of playing.
But what did we see? From August onwards points were dropped against well organised teams whose budgets are far less than ours and whose players, man for man, are not as good as ours. Once or twice this may be acceptable. Even Man U struggled against Crawley. But this has been a consistent and unforgivable failing throughout Woods' tenure.
I agree with Pat on one thing: Woods does deserve our sympathy - but only for being a decent bloke who has lost his job in a cruel game. Fenty was definitely wrong to appoint him but Woods applied and said he wanted the job. It ultimately proved beyond him and he has lost it through his own decisions and sometimes his own indecisions.