Cod Almighty | Diary
Shut up Buttwad
4 April 2016
Miss Guest Diary writes: Well, that was a disappointment on Friday. Something which had the potential to be a really enjoyable occasion – good weather, friendly stewards and police, a decent view from a seat behind the goal and a large, vocal crowd – turned into a match I'd rather forget. Town barely turned up for most of the first half against an opposition who were intent on diving and fouling at every opportunity and with a referee intent on giving these graceless louts the benefit of every decision. From shortly after kick-off it was obvious the result was only ever going to go one way.
Who am I kidding? Even before kick-off, sitting in the pub enjoying some very fine Gloucestershire Old Spot sausages, it was obvious. When the team news came through and we saw that Tait had been dropped for Nsiala. Leaving the best full-back at the club on the bench and replacing him with a centre-half can only do one thing – send a message to the opposition that you are worried about their size.
I heard an interview with Alan Buckley a while ago on this very topic: the seemingly constant need by Hurst to tinker with the line-up or the formation. Buckley's view was that you don't worry about the opposition: you play your best eleven players in their best positions and let the opposition worry about you. He also isn't a fan of this new-fangled idea of squad rotation and I agree. Surely, the more times the same people play together, the better they play as a unit. In effect, they become a team.
If you have ever been on any sort of management training, you will be familiar with Tuckman's stages of team development. For those who've not had that misfortune, I'll explain. The stages are forming (team members meet), storming (members are jostling for position, disagreements occur and the team may fail), norming (members take responsibility and begin to work for the team) and performing (members are motivated and knowledgeable and a high level of success is achieved). Unfortunately, even one change of personnel can send the team back to the storming stage.
Looking at Town's results, you could definitely say that they were at the performing stage by the end of November, after which they won 10 and drew only one of the next 11 league games, culminating in the 5-0 defeat of Altrincham on 23 January. What happened next? Craig Clay was dropped for new boy Jon Nolan, and Town put in a dismal performance at Gateshead and lost 1-0. Don't get me wrong: I like Nolan and think he is an asset to the team – now. Back then he was a disrupting factor and the start of what Cod Almighty's match reporter likes to call the post-Christmas dwindle.
Now we come to Hurst's most egregious piece of tinkering – the replacement of Omar Bogle as Podge's strike partner by Patrick Hoban. I won't attempt to analyse the whys and wherefores – I couldn't anyway, as I don't have sufficient footballing knowledge. I'll just let the facts speak for themselves. Amond has scored 26 league goals in 35 appearances. Seventeen of those came when he was paired with Bogle, but only two have come in the six games he has started up front with Hoban. And Town's record in those six games is three wins, one draw and two losses: not championship form, barely even play-off form.
If I understood his thesis correctly, I agree with Retro Diary's conclusion that to compensate for having to work with a fixed budget and the randomness of factors like incompetent officials, the football manager's job is to take control of things where he can. Including such things as organisation, confidence, closing down, tempo, team spirit, discipline, will to win – and with them mould a winning team. That's what Cheltenham's manager has done. OK, it's a team that plays ugly football in an unsportmanslike way, but one which must now be odds-on to gain automatic promotion.
Town have great raw materials this season: players with skill and talent (Amond, Arnold and Bogle), with intelligence and experience (Disley, Gowling and Monkhouse), with physical presence (Pearson and Nsiala) and one of the best keepers in non-League. Hurst has had similar talents in previous years: Magnay, Hannah, Neilson, Miller, for example. But in four years of trying he has so far been unable to fashion them into a team capable of winning promotion.
Why not? Could it be because his constant changes of personnel disrupt the team and send them back to the storming stage? Could it be his insistence on "keeping us shape" is simply too negative a tactic in a division where big men barging forward and playing for set pieces is often how games are won? I don't know. What I do know is that, if Hurst does manage to get Town promoted this season, I really don't fancy our chances of staying up with him still in charge.
Putting that to one side for now, it's off to Aldershot tomorrow: another triumph of hope over experience. This will be my first time there. Not the town – I once went to a party there in 1972 – but to the football ground. Here's some news about tickets and travel. See you there!