Panic on the streets of Mutley

If you believe what you read on the internet, anyway. The lemmings are running round in ever-decreasing circles, screaming in their shrill voices “Relegation” and “Sturrock out”. Neither of these make much, if any sense.

Admittedly, one win in ten is far from ideal. And Arsenal aside, most of the performances have been pretty lack-lustre. The squad is long on personnel but desperately short of quality and confidence and team spirit have been drained away – dating probably from the Blackpool debacle where we managed to turn a winning position with ten minutes to go into a catastrophic defeat. Several of the teams below us – Forest, Doncaster and alarmingly Norwich have found their form. From having been twelve points clear of relegation before Christmas, we are now only six points off 22nd place. Huddersfield – Huddersfield! – are apparently in for Gallager. Otherwise, transfer news is thin on the ground. We have a tough series of games coming up: Bristol City home; Ipswich away; Preston away; Derby home; Charlton away; Palace home.

Take a breath. We currently stand on 33 points – 19 or 20 light of what would normally be regarded as safety. Six wins and a couple of draws, in other words. Let’s see: Derby home, Charlton away, Watford home, Burnley home, Blackpool away, Coventry home, Doncaster home, Barnsley home. Eight wins. Bristol City home, Sheff Utd home, Swansea away, Norwich away, QPR away. Five draws. 62 points. Leaving an 9 or 10 point safety margin. Can we all relax now.

Even if your prognosis is significantly worse than mine, sacking Sturrock at this stage makes no sense. Firstly, as I’ve said before, who replaces him? The only realistic candidates out there are the failed and the unproven – neither of which you need in a dogfight. Secondly, any new manager coming in now has no time to assess the squad and make his own determination as to what is needed, as the transfer window is about to slam shut. As history shows us time and time again, its the clubs who change managers too quickly who invariably go down. Look at Leicester. Look at Saints. If things are critical,, then what is needed, above all else, is stability.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the internet has been an aggravating factor in the increasingly short average tenure of the Championship manager. Patience is not an internet virtue: indeed, its very raison d’etre is founded on immediacy, on getting instantaneous answers. Add football fans into the mix, and you have a lethal combination of hysteria, wild rumour, impatience and dissatisfaction. Chick Young’s BBC blog talks intelligently about this in Scotland.

Increasingly, criticisms have been raised about Sturrock’s direct playing style – often coupled bizarrely with a desire to “get a scrapper like Pulis in”. Whilst Sturrock’s style and preference for a big target man to hold the ball up may not be as free-flowingly purist as some of us, myself included, would like, to sit patiently through a season of Pulis and then complain about Sturrock is risible. I have yet to see under Sturrock any performances that rivalled the sort of dross we had to suffer under Pulis. Sturrock is doing the best he can given the limited funds available. If ire is deserved, it should first and foremost be directed at those who hold the purse strings, for their repeated and dogged refusal to seek additional investment to at least allow us to compete.

All this was blowing around at the start of the season. People needed then, and they need now, to calm down. I simply repeat what I said at the end of July when considering our prospects for the season. It’ll be a bit bumpy. But we won’t go down. Now can everyone please take a chill pill?

Category: Team News

Tags: Team News

Subscribe   The Offside RSS Feeds

Print

Share