Cod Almighty | Diary

We are using up our seasonal allowance of screw-ups. We have to start getting it right.

1 September 2015

What exactly does this town know?

Someone once told me how in 1978-79, after a young team had started to gel the year before, we all knew they were going to get promoted. In fact the team only hit promotion form in the second half of the season. In 1989, after the FA Cup run past Middlesbrough and on to Wimbledon, we knew Alan Buckley was going to get us promoted. But by the end of October, we were 17th, after losing successive home games to Maidstone, Rochdale and Hereford. It was only in March 1990 that the whole team clicked. In both those seasons we finished second, which of course might not be good enough for us now.

Yes, Middle-Aged Diary is starting to bang on about the Buckley years again, and you are sick of it. I'm sick of it myself. I would love to have more recent examples of sustained success to draw upon.

The examples above, in themselves, don't prove anything. We don't know what work John Newman, Buckley, and their squads of players put in to put things right. Just because it came right then, it does not mean it will come right now. They show, though, that when we look back on successes, we tend to forget the disappointing episodes along the way. No season, not even one in which we have stumped up £110,000 as an advance payment on promotion, is the smooth road of undiluted glory we fondly hope for in July.

Stumping up the money and assembling the squad was the relatively easy part. It was the part we know that Paul Hurst is good at. But you can't buy promotion. What money should buy, though, is the right not to have to listen to excuses.

Not having excuses can be frightening. We've probably all of us been, at one time or another, the school or college student who didn't put the work in and then was able to say: "Well, I didn't do too badly considering." On the other hand, when the people around us sweep away all the obstacles to us achieving the thing we have set our heart on – when we are presented with a blank canvas and we know that how that canvas is filled will depend purely on whether we are really as good as we secretly think – that can be a moment of panic.

Panic, as in snatching at a shot, or slipping when through on goal when you have the chance to give your team the lead. Misplacing a final pass. Standing off and allowing the opposition to get in a cross. Clawing at that cross, even though it was going nowhere. The management is not to blame for the odd individual error. But when the errors keep happening, questions have to be not asked but answered about the way that the team is being prepared.

Two things struck me about the interview Paul Hurst gave after the draw at Lincoln. First, he seemed to acknowledge that replacing the composed Andy Monkhouse with the scampering Jack Mackreth at Altrincham had been a mistake. But then, by talking about tiredness and the need for changes in anticipation of yesterday's game, he seemed straight away to be giving his players excuses. He evidently felt he could not ask his two thirty-something midfielders to play two games in three days. So given the leadership they bring, shouldn't one have been held back for yesterday?

Let's not pretend, as we perhaps allowed ourselves to think in July, that this is easy and that there are easy answers. Hurst was rightly praised on Saturday for playing three in midfield to rescue a point, but that must have taken an unanticipated toll on the legs of Monkhouse and Craig Disley. But the most depressing thing about the Macclesfield defeat is that, once things started to go wrong, there were few signs they would be put right.

After yesterday's defeat, Hurst sounded as depressed and bewildered as the rest of us. Only he can know how comfortable he is on his own in the manager's seat. The snippy tone when his decisions are questioned sometimes suggests discomfort. The excessive tactical changes sometimes suggest he is trying to convince himself, or perhaps that he is overthinking.

Against that, Hurst is palpably a good football man, a person you are glad to have at the club. A person who players – and good players, too – want to play for. Against that, there is the familiar argument that if Hurst goes, do we really trust John Fenty to appoint someone better? And against that, overwhelmingly for me, I don't want a new manager to come in with a new set of excuses, able to hide for the next two years behind the alleged failings of his predecessor.

We have the best squad of players we have had in a decade. After Operation Promotion, those players, and their manager, will never have a better chance to prove it. Now they must show what they are made of. There can be no more excuses.

Now we will find out if this town really does know, or whether we have just been whistling for a wind.