MAN: IRRATIONAL; INCONSISTENT; HAS AXE; IN CHARGE

Harry Secombe
So farewell Peter Taylor. It was fleeting, but certainly functional and you were a real gent.

Temporarily our gross appetite was satisfied, as we first led the league and then fell over the line last May. But given the grudging way that the promotion we were apparently so desperate for was received by the fans, it was inevitable that things would be difficult when the results turned against us.

It was interesting that bald Northerner, Mark Clemmit - designed not only to be the Football League’s good egg to but to look like a good egg too – said on Radio 5 that in his self-confessedly old-fashioned view a manager like Peter Taylor who had won promotion had the right to take the team down again before getting the sack. Like Clem, I’m old fashioned too. But I like to think there’s a little more method in my madness than in Steve Hayes’ patent double-think.

In an interview so irrational it was made for the “play again and again and again” era of the BBC iPlayer, Hayes spoke to Three Counties last Friday. He had said before, he said again, that he wants a manager who is going to be here “a good period of time”. And how do you make that happen? wondered his more jaundiced listeners. You back your manager when he’s in a trough, so that when he’s riding high again, he feels a bit of reciprocal loyalty. It’s the only way it’s ever going to happen.

Perhaps more telling in the Taylor case was what he went onto say: that he wanted “a manager who understands our culture and our vision and desire and what we want for the football club”. That’s the royal “we” presumably. Or maybe “we” as in the Hayes enclave: the Beekses, Kanes, Parrys and Dobsons and Lees, who stood by him in Operation Takeover last summer. An enclave from which Taylor was conspicuously absent.

But there were more criteria for the new manager in that interview too. Apparently it’s no longer enough to just attain and maintain third division level, he wanted “somebody who wants to entertain the supporters” too. Oh and he threw in that Taylor might not have been satisfied by his budget (interesting that Taylor never actually blurted that out, ever discrete as he was) but that Tranmere’s budget was much lower and they turned us over.

So welcome, Gary Waddock. You clearly have much promise, with an impressive promotion under your belt, an entertaining team and a fair amount of respect from Aldershot’s fans. As long as you don’t have an 8-game winless run, keep us in the division, keep the fans entertained and never lose to a side with a smaller budget than ours, then a long tenure is surely guaranteed. Oh, and remember to keep our vain and capricious owner onside. When you unwrap that Christmas photo frame, just be sure to smile.

16.10.2009. 09:36

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