Cod Almighty | Diary

Our first advice to John Fenty: don't appoint family and friends

26 October 2016

Trans-Pennine Diary writes: He’s gone, I didn’t want him to go and its highly unlikely we’ll be told why he left. Annoying and frustrating, but we move on.

It’s recruitment time at Blundell Park! Opinion is split amongst fans as to whether the board can do a good job of finding the right man. I’m quietly confident that when it comes to the big things, lessons have been learned from past mistakes. During this process, alongside John Fenty will sit respected, experienced business people with a diverse range of relevant skills, including for the first time a Mariners Trust representative. They can also call upon the knowledge of some experienced football professionals, both inside the club and externally; and I hope they will.

Since the club won’t be "giving any running commentary to the media on the process of appointing a new manager", I thought I’d try and give you an insight into what will be happening behind closed doors.

So what happens next? We can draw upon recent events for clues, expect a lot of secrecy. There’s been a lot of understandable frustration from Town fans about this during the last few days. What did John Fenty know on Friday? What did Chris Doig know at 5pm on Saturday? Why weren’t we the fans told what was going on? When another club is trying to poach your manager, it feels very different to when you’re trying to steal theirs. Recruiting clubs risk breaching contracts, alerting other clubs to their targets and getting a bad reputation among other directors, managers and players, which could harm the club long term.

The first important step will be drawing up a short list of favoured candidates. This will be chosen from applications received and exhaustive research using contacts within the game, agents, the Sky Bet odds and, of course, the Fishy.

Next up, and all the way through the process is "due diligence", a posh way of describing taking up references and generally checking out the history and background of candidates. The Football Association did it before they appointed Sam Allardyce (but not very well), Sunderland did it before they appointed Gus Poyet, and Brian Caldwell, the Shrewsbury chief executive, did it before appointing Paul Hurst. This apparently included time spent watching videos of Hurst, presumably being impressed by how much shape us was keeping.

It’s quite likely, over the next fortnight that John Fenty and his fellow directors will be creeping around motorway service stations and hotels across the north and midlands carrying out undercover interviews. So if you stop for a break on the M1 or M62, keep your eyes peeled and camera ready. When they’ve made their minds up it’ll be time to offer the lucky chap, a "package."

So how should the club go about choosing the new messiah? First, in my own experience of employing people, 'don’t employ friends and family' is a tip I’d always follow. I’d extend that, in this case, to any former player, however brilliant they were. Its just got a nasty habit of going pear shaped.

Secondly, managers who’ve won promotion in the past, seem to be more likely to do so in the future. I’d prefer someone who’s won promotion in the League at least once. Finally, although Paul Hurst was a nice bloke and a good manager, he wasn’t brilliant at handling some quarters of our support. I’d be looking for some good PR skills.

To confuse you even more and perhaps to make you feel a little sympathy for those entrusted with the recruitment job, I had a look at the recent career history of the managers of the last few fourth flight champions, immediately prior to joining the club in question.

• 2016: champions Northampton were managed by Chris Wilder. Prior to the Cobblers who he took up in his 3rd season in charge, he spent 6 seasons at Oxford winning one promotion from the Conference during his time there.
• 2015: Burton Albion were managed by Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who had less than one year's managerial experience with Belgian league two side Royal Antwerp, guiding them to seventh place. He took Burton up in his first year.
• 2014: Paul Cook took Chesterfield up in his second season with them. Before that he managed Accrington Stanley for less than a season and spent five years managing Sligo Rovers prior to that.
• 2013: Martin Allen led Gillingham to the title in his first season, following an almost spectacular run of non-achievement with Barnet, Leicester, Notts County and Cheltenham. It was his first ever promotion as a manager.
• 2012: Paulo de Canio took Swindon up as champions in his first season as a manager.
• 2011: Chesterfield were taken up by John Sheridan in his second season there. He’d previously been caretaker at Oldham on more than one occasion and taken them to a play-off semi-final
• 2010: Steve Cotterell steered Notts County to the title, only taking over in late February of that year. He’d previously managed Burnley for almost four years, all in the second flight.
• 2009: Brentford were managed by Terry Butcher until December 2008 when Andy Scott took over as caretaker, winning the title in the first season. He had been youth team coach at Leyton Orient.

It’ll be a very tough job choosing the right man. I’d like to see it concluded within a couple of weeks. It goes without saying that we want a great football manager. Wouldn’t it be great if we could also have someone who could whip up our already fervent support even more than the last couple of seasons; we might be unstoppable.