Cod Almighty | Diary

Management Speak

5 February 2025

The best manager I ever had was a man named David. He was intelligent, thoughtful, hardworking, and inspiring. Most importantly he trusted each member of the team, knew how to delegate and was a genuinely nice guy.

David was (and I assume still is) a Carlisle United fan. When you first meet someone you will be working with it is important to find common ground and with me following Town and him Carlisle there was tons. It is so much easier and more enjoyable to talk to someone about football when they follow a team at a similar level to your own. Dissecting our team's hilariously bad defending, reminiscing about ex-players who had represented both clubs or debating the boycott of the FA Trophy resonated much more than the watercooler discussions about multimillion-pound transfer rumours or contentious refereeing decisions people had seen on Sky TV in the pub.

David's team are our next opponents. Carlisle are bottom of the league and are managerless. The Cumbrians sacked Mike Williamson on transfer deadline day after less than five months in charge at Brunton Park. Despite signing pretty much a whole new team in the January transfer window, they were thrashed 1-5 by Swindon Town, which proved too much for their American owners.

Reading the rather curt official statement confirming Williamson's dismissal, I was reminded that most football teams in England now have a Head Coach rather than a Manager. Gone are the days when the elite football clubs had a Manager who oversaw pretty much everything. Now the person picking the players and doing the team talks is invariably called a Head Coach and has an army of other staff responsible for recruitment, conditioning, strategic direction and other off-field matters.

Our very own David, Mr Artell, was described as the club's Head Coach rather than manager when appointed back in 2023. Interestingly, before joining us he wrote a great article in which he said that one of the lessons he had learned from his time in charge of Crewe Alexandra was that he had spread himself too thinly and tried to do too much. Hopefully having a more focused role will help him concentrate on his main area of responsibility, prevent him from burning out and allow the many other talented people at the club to flourish in their roles.

If you want to learn more about what makes the main man tick then then this Friday’s Evening with David Artell will be of interest. This event will also give fans the opportunity to learn more about Grimsby Town's game model. A game model?! That sounds like my first girlfriend, but you wouldn't know her - she went to a different school.

A bit of googling tells me the game model is actually a philosophy that will run all the way throughout the club and therefore help us create a unique identity and a holistic approach to development. Like the Total Football which Ajax played under Rinus Michels or our constant hoofing it down the line under Russell Slade.

There have been numerous references to us trying to play "the Grimsby way", which I am still not sure I understand. I assume it means playing Buckleyball, but it hasn't been formally defined. We must have tried quite a few "ways" since 1878. Hopefully, Friday's event will shed some light on this.

Artell's style is also something that I would argue is still developing and evolving. The improvement in certain individual players and the number of points on the board is unequivocally an improvement on previous seasons – but our formations, tactics and performance levels are still frustratingly changeable.

We all want Town to play lovely football and win every week but, clearly, we are unable to take the quickest route and spend our way to this goal. Therefore, a lengthier, but more sustainable route is hopefully being plotted. As seen this season, that route may at times be annoyingly indirect and not as fast as we hoped, but as the philosopher Dolly Parton once said, "if you want the rainbow you've got to put up with the rain".

To use management speak, let us hope that "lessons have been learned" from those rainy days and that the rainbow is getting closer and closer.