Cod Almighty | Diary
You call for a manager's head at your peril
2 February 2017
In the autumn of 1994, when Brian Laws replaced Alan Buckley (and after John Cockerill's extended caretakership), he inherited a good squad, with plenty of young players coming through. The team was in the top half of the second-flight league table. It was, as Laws acknowledged, a very fortunate situation for a first-time manager to inherit.
It didn't stop him dismantling that squad. Paul Agnew, Tony Rees, Dave Gilbert and later Paul Groves and Paul Crichton followed Buckley to West Brom. Paul Futcher was dropped, then scapegoated. The players who replaced them, with one fantastically flukey exception, were at best forgettable. Some of us still wish we could forget Vance Warner.
A new manager likes to make his mark. And some also like to make positive noises, even as they prepare to set about trashing what they find. Mike Newell could somehow admit to being "pleasantly surprised" at the Grimsby team – kept out of the Football League relegation places only by the points deductions of Luton and Bournemouth – that he watched while considering taking on the manager's role.
Changing managers is an expensive business. And I don't just – or even mainly – mean the paying-off of contracts and the shelling-out of signing fees that goes with it. It's easy to look at potential signings as just so many cattle at market, a matter of matches played, goals scored, age, height, weight. And when we all play at being a manager, with computer bytes instead of people, it is easy to imagine a transfer is just a mouse click. Those are humans we are asking to move, arguing about, shouting at. They have families and bills and dreams which may not always coincide with our own.
Town fans' charm offensive to persuade James McKeown to stay at Blundell Park continues. We've had the self-important suggestion that he owes us a public apology. We've had old-fashioned abuse. The phrase "throwing his toys out of the pram" has been used, and it fits; the attitude of some fans, deprived the bauble of an experienced, trustworthy back-up goalkeeper, is indeed infantile.
Do you fancy considering your next career move while complete strangers pour excrement on your head? Welcome to Jimmy Mack's world. Anyone who listened to the interview he gave to Radio Humberside and didn't hear a young man genuinely in bits at the prospect of leaving the club needs to turn off their computer, put away their phone and take some time to talk to real people.
Middle-Aged Diary, like you no doubt, is beginning to get a feel for Marcus Bignot's public persona. He prides himself on being straight with his players. Us fans, though, he likes to please, to tell what we want to hear. So, like Laws and Newell before him, there is no implied criticism of players like Craig Disley and Josh Gowling who have served the club well. New signings are meant to help the current group, not replace them. Nevertheless, the squad now looks very different to the one that Paul Hurst left.
Tuesday night brought two new faces. It is worth braving the ad-attack for the Telegraph's piece about Sam Jones's Gateshead career. Calum Dyson – a reasonably prolific forward at the Everton academy – the Town management had been watching for some time. I bet Marcus got a good maths GCSE because he loves to show his workings.
The comparisons with the way that Laws and Newell began their Town careers are not meant to suggest that Bignot's will end as theirs ended. It means simply that we have to trust his judgement, even as we go through the hurtful experience of saying goodbye to players we have come to like as people, and the stressful one of watching their replacements finding their feet. Unless we want to go through this same process again next year, we must not rush to any conclusions.