This myth that MM set us up ultra defensive and with no intention of trying to win games has to stop. It’s just not true and the forum equivalent of lazy journalism.
Yes there was a focus on tightening us up defensively. The first job of managing anything in any industry is to take a look at the tools at your disposal and work out a way of using them best.
For us, there was a clear lack of attacking talent, from day 1. Humphries had his eyes looking elsewhere from the moment pre season commenced. He was always going to be moving on before a ball had really been kicked in anger. Kelman didn’t return in the best of shape physically and my own feeling is (wrongly), he didn’t feel that league 2 was where he should be. Both of these were always going to be leaving and neither of them looked like they believed they’d be hanging around long either. We didn’t have any cover at all in those areas. MM made a mistake remembering the player Goodship was for Weymouth and gave him the 10 shirt and the role in behind a main striker and he flopped. Our only other player with attacking intent was Hutchinson who was forced to play deep in order to accommodate Goodship in that role, which was madness given his defensive limitations.
This situation never improved. I honestly don’t think it was ignored by manager or chairman, I just don’t think they ever had the opportunity to adequately remedy the situation. What striker in his right mind would come to Southend? Firstly strikers want the biggest wage. Secondly, they are in the most demand and have choice. Thirdly any striker worth his salt takes a look at the side he’ll be playing for and ask himself who is going to create chances for him. We were at the bottom of the list in all three departments.
It’s foolish, incredibly foolish to suggest MM couldn’t see that we needed a striker or that he could see it but chose to ignore it. I’d bet my last buck that he spent hour after hour and phone call after phone call trying to remedy it. Fans saying we had this striker or that striker training need to ask if they really were any good or not and trust that actually they must’ve been way off it! Looking at players from other clubs and quoting goals per game career records off wiki was equally foolish without asking why would they want to leave that club and come here!
We simply didn’t have the resources or the personnel to turn ourselves into a potent attacking force. As a manager you only have one option after that and that’s to do all you can to ensure that you need as few goals as possible to win a game!!
You have two basic criteria to be met....score more goals than the opposition and concede less than the opposition. If you’re struggling with one you have to be really good at the other. MM made us really good at conceding less, but he didn’t for one minute give up or refuse to try and score more, he simply didn’t have those tools available to him.
He knew that to get points he had to make sure we needed as few goals as possible to do it, he didn’t actually try and score as few as possible!!
Look at the comments after last night. Almost every single post makes reference to blaming the standard and the quality of the players. Yes you’ll argue that MM put them together, but again you’re ignoring the capability of the club or the effort he had been able to put in to attract anyone any better.
Be realistic. Southend United attracted the level of player that the club with its recent history and its recent reputation deserved. No more no less. What you sow, so shall you reap. It only takes so long for players and their agents to be steering well clear of a ‘difficult’ owner who refuses to meet or talk to people until it suits him. Who ignores phone calls and who ignores pressing matters that need dealing with. Players and agents will have heard and been wary of poor communications, they’d be well aware of payment issues and they’d be well aware of embargo’s and poor public relations.
In my eyes, MM did an incredible job to have Southend in the position they were in. Most people on here had us relegation certainties before the end of September. Many made comments that we’d be down by Xmas, many more said down by Easter.
He took on a club that was at the lowest point any club could be in. Don’t be kidding me on that every club was in the same boat. No other club in the country was in as poor a condition morally, ethically, socially or most importantly financially. No other clubs players were in as poor condition physically or psychologically and no other clubs fan base were as disenchanted and disillusioned as those at Southend United.
When first lockdown hit, our clubs players went home to their families like the rest of us not knowing when or if they’d ever go back to work again. Like the rest of us they were scared, worried and insecure about their futures.
Many of these players had mortgages and kids to worry about, futures and commitments to pay for, but they were at least adults with secure mentalities and a life experience to draw on often with wives to support each other. However there were also young men just starting out on their careers. Kids who were living away from home, alone, for the first time in their lives. Teenagers of an age where most people (including many of our most idiotic fans) are only interested in whose knickers they’re getting into at a weekend and how much beer they can consume while watching football and checking their betting slips.
While dealing with all this uncertainty, our club, our manager, our chairman.....didn’t make one single phone call or drop one single text message to say “hi, how are you doing? Are you ok? Are your family safe? Is there anything you need help with?”
Scandalous. Almost criminal neglect.
It left our players, when they returned, need to start from a point far far further back than most others.
During the lockdown, they had a generic fitness program hastily put together. No plan towards rest, recovery, maintenance or enjoyment!
All players come in different shapes and sizes and they will all have had different situations. Experienced pros who had family stability and a knowledge of their own fitness requirements. Players who had parents or siblings who understood the training requirements and who could support, assist and join in to help direct them. Players who had no parental support whatsoever but are driven by their own determination. There were also players who had no help. No drive. No determination. Players who needed the daily structure, the support of staff, the motivation of team mates, who needed the right environment to drive them on each day. There were also players who had all the right desire and all the right dedication but who lived in a tower block and had no football to use, and no park to run in.
Our club let these people down. Yes you can always help yourself but these were kids who knew no better and understood nothing. Their starting point on their return was from further back than almost every other clubs players.
By the time Ron Martin announced on talksport that his clubs players were returning to training, almost all his players hadn’t kicked a football for FOUR months and they’d stopped having updated fitness programmes sent through to follow.
The following were also not in place :-
1. There was no manager and no management team
2. None of the office staff were aware or were notified of the return date.
3. None of the clubs coaches or fitness staff were aware of the return date.
4. The players hadn’t even been told.
5. Some players had no plans for accommodation. Having left club ‘digs’ to go home they were responsible for having to find local accommodation to begin work again. The club offered no help with this even for young players with no local knowledge of good and bad areas to look for. Even when asked if they could help!!! Some players stayed at a travel lodge with their kit and clothes in their cars using local launderettes for clean training kit. So instead of focussing on training and doing extra to catch up they were driving round Southend looking at beds it’s and house shares.
6. There was no training kit organized or in place.
7. The pitches weren’t cut or marked out because the groundsmen didn’t know they were returning.
8. None of the training ground facilities had been cleaned since March!
Most importantly...
9. There were no plans for any pre season games in place.
MM and his team were appointed a week after the players returned.
They also had to relocate and find accommodation. They then had to put together a plan for a pre season, that despite no one having played for four months and being in the worst physical shape of their professional careers and having no games in place and having been relegated, that would only be 3 weeks long instead of the usual 6/7.
They then had to contend with their star striker asking to leave, their young talent who’d raised everyone’s hopes coming back not particularly fit and more than a little disillusioned. They had several players who’d been offered extensions to their contracts that hadn’t signed them, an embargo preventing them from signing anyone else, a host of trialists from god knows where, players choosing non league over them and to top it all an entire squad who were owed money due to deferred furlough payments that the PFA had instructed them that the owner hadn’t followed protocol or the legalities of their contracts.
We didn’t even have numbers on our shirts for pre season games due to the rush!!
Within 8 weeks of the season starting there was the first Molesley out thread on Shrimperzone!!!
Nice work if you can get it eh?
Despite all this, we somehow managed to keep clean sheets, stop getting ripped apart on a weekly basis, won some games, picked up some bargain basement players - some worked some didn’t - made ourselves a respectable football team on the pitch which was organised, committed and hard working (cos that’s all we ask isn’t it?), accrued points on a regular basis, kept in with a shout of avoiding relegation, had literally every opposition manager comment on how we were a far better side than the league table suggested, got out of a transfer embargo and were gradually moulding a squad that could compete every single week against every level of opposition.
Was that enough? No?
Ok.....with 20 games left, we went unbeaten in 10 out of 14 games, winning 3 and drawing 7 losing just 4, picking up 16 points, keeping 7 clean sheets, playing 9 of the promotion candidates and all the current top 3.
The owner makes a public declaration of how the manager has his full support. How he has spoken with him, is impressed with him and that he will definitely be the manager of the football club along with all his staff at least until the end of the season.
And then sacks him.
Careful what you wish for people. There are two tragedies in life....not getting what you want.....and getting what you want!!!
People wanted Phil Brown gone first time around...
People wanted Chris Powell gone....
People wanted Sol Campbell gone....(this one was for the best ??)
People wanted MM gone....
We got what we wanted on all those occasions, to what end? What changed? What improved? What was better?
Phil Brown came in and on the back of the evidence of 90 mins suddenly we were an attacking threat again and it was MM tactics that were the problem. Three games later we still haven’t scored a goal and on the one occasion a win was simply a no brainer, we opened up went for it, got picked off comfortably by another average side....and guess what....we still didn’t score!!!
So now what? Is it MMs fault? Is it Phil Browns? The players? Rons?
What’s the answer?
Get rid of Phil Brown and start again? I got a lot of stick over ‘the process’. That’s fine, I can take that and I can justify my argument.
But it’s only a word. Process, progress, planning, takes time, start afresh, won’t happen overnight.....no matter what we call it it won’t happen if every time we hit a bump in the road we start over. It’s cost fortunes and it’s affected so many people’s lives and where’s it got us? In a week or two, Phil Brown will decide that he isn’t keen on managing in the conference and we’ll be on the look out for a new manager. Whoever it is will inherit many of the problems the last 5 have encountered. The new manager will then start his version of ‘the process’ and the fans will start theirs.....
He’s a great appointment
I really think this is the right one this time
Can’t expect overnight success
How did we not beat them
We need to be careful we aren’t sucked into the relegation
Why isn’t he playing....so and so....
We should just stick to 442 it’s what the players understand
He hasn’t got a clue
He’s lost the dressing room
No one likes him
His job is completely safe (Ron)
Sacked.....
Start over with an inquest.
Careful what you wish for.....because as far as I can tell the biggest tragedies that we’ve endured over the last few years are the times when we got what we wanted....not the times we didn’t......
