Most football managerial careers end in failure. “That”, as Bruce Hornsby pointed out, “is just the way it is”, adding that “some things will never change.” Unless you are Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger, you, the manager, will not dictate the time of your departure. Someone else will and it will usually be because of bad results. As a supporter of a football club, you may want your manager to stay forever. I know I did when Ian Holloway was Bristol Rovers manager.
Holloway became Rovers manager in 1996 at a time when the club had returned to Bristol, after a near nomadic time in the club’s history, being based mostly at Twerton Park in Bath. He was the returning hero, a Bristol boy who became one of the club’s playing greats and was destined to become one of the managerial greats too. If only. Holloway’s time was not all glorious – far from it – but for a time we dared to dream. With strikers like Barry Hayles, Jason Roberts and Jamie Cureton, the Memorial Stadium was the place to be. But after the failed promotion year in 2000, things went sour, culminating in his sacking less than a year later, just before Rovers were relegated to League Two.
Myths perpetuate and grow. Time loves a hero, but not always. Partly due to Holloway’s outspoken comments, a broad Bristolian image that occasionally lurched into self-parody and sometimes beyond, the legend has slipped, so much so that when his name was recently mentioned as being a successor to current manager Darrell Clarke, who was being courted by Leeds United, loud voices were urging the club not to re-appoint him. Sadly, there is no universal love for Holloway at the Rovers. Mine, based on what he was as a player, what he has been as a manager and what he is as a human being is unqualified. But I didn’t want him to come back as manager. Luckily, the question being asked, speculative though it was, never needed to be asked. Clarke saw to that.
Darrell Clarke’s career as a manager is on an upward trajectory. He started on a downward trajectory. not of his making, and ever since then the only way has been up.
When Leeds came knocking, I was away on holiday but I followed the fear and trepidation of supporters on social networks. The move must have been hugely tempting to Clarke – how often do big clubs come knocking? – but there is an old adage in life, never mind just football: if in doubt, kick it out. Managers, like players, and like anyone else in the real world of work, will always take the longest contract paying the most money, as well as balancing how their CVs will appear a few years down the road. In the end, the exciting ambition of Bristol Rovers new owners and board members persuaded Clarke to sign up for three more years. Cue celebrations in the blue half of town.
We do not know if there are clauses and conditions in the contract. It’s arguably not our business. If another club comes along, we cannot guarantee the manager will stay forever. It’s not so much that every man has his price, more that many people strive to be the best they can be.
A hero today, Clarke will know that only success will determine his status tomorrow. Just look at Jose Mourinho’s fall from grace at Chelsea, from champ to chump in a few months. The two men could not be more different but in the end results will represent the be all and end all.
Bristol Rovers’ move to retain their young and ambitious manager was swift, impressive and professional. The drift and dither of recent years replaced by clear, dynamic action and chairman Steve Hamer did his best to keep fans ‘in the picture’, so to speak, again a vast improvement on the old regime’s “things are going on behind the scenes” type of evasion, something that always carried the unspoken line ‘mind your own business: we know what we’re doing.”
Sooner or later, unless Clarke is another Sir Alex, there will be difficult times, days when the team cannot string a few results together, games where they will disappoint. Belief in our young manager does not mean that we can never criticise or disagree, but it does require faith, based on what he has achieved so far and what he can achieve in the future.
If the new owners and the manager are ‘in it for the long haul’, then we should be too and that includes people like me who have wasted years on the sidelines, engaging in arguments that have been done to death and are now, thanks to Wael Al-Qadi and Steve Hamer buried forever. If only someone could tell the Supporters Club chairman who still appears to yearn for the bad old days.
Darrell Clarke’s arrival in the Rovers hot seat did not happen as a result of the best laid plans, not least because the old guard at BRFC had almost no plans at all. Clarke’s success started under owners who had little idea of what they were doing, his continued success has occurred under owners who have shown to date that they know exactly what they are doing.
