|
I’ll nail my colours to the mast right away. I’m a fan of his - I think he’s a good manager. I can’t pretend to agree with everything he does or says, but I do think he remains the best man for the job.
But it doesn’t surprise me to see people divided over him. It has always struck me, even in the best of times, that there were a few out there who never quite took him to heart. Perhaps it was because his decisions could sometimes appear obscure, or because he could come across as stubborn, or because he was unfashionable - whatever the reason, there have always been a few murmurings.
When we were doing well, though, the results brooked no argument. Now, however, the failings of the team give those critics some ammunition to fire off.
A lot of statistics have been bandied about, both to support and criticise Stan. Unfortunately, statistics can be misleading - never more so than here.
The Burnley Football Club Stan Ternent walked into in 1998 was a very different club to today. That club had become used to being a big fish in the smaller pond; a club which aspired towards the elite, but which hadn’t seriously threatened it for twenty years and didn‘t really expect to. It had a team shorn even of players - like Gerry Harrison - who had been in a team barely good enough to stay in the Second Division the previous season.
Today’s team has million pound players, and the club has flirted with that elite: expectations today are set at that level, light years higher than they once were. The whole football club is geared to a different level of football. The two are incomparable. Nor has the journey been steady - conditions at the club have fluctuated dramatically.
This leads to a number of conclusions. The first is that when Stan arrived, he had very different priorities, and very different horizons to those two years ago, which were different in turn to those today. You simply cannot make the comparison between Stan’s win / loss record now and at any previous time. At different times he will have signed different players of different standards for different prices - because our league position and financial position dictated it. The likes of Ian Moore arrived for big money at a time when the market was inflated and we were doing well. Stan’s grand plan will have been very different now to then.
|
The crux of the matter is that Stan can only be judged upon how well he is doing now. Not on the players he brought at different times to fit in with different players in different circumstances. For what it is worth, I think he is doing rather well.
He has a disparate group of players, some signed in more extravagant and optimistic times, some which date back to the second division, some signed more recently to do a holding job whilst we get ourselves back on our feet. Some are on low wages, some are on fat salaries; those out of contract in the summer know they are unlikely to be playing here next season.
Of all Stan’s previous seasons in charge, this one reminds me most of the first. Like then, players are uncertain about the future: then because they knew the manager was looking to rebuild the team, now because the club can no longer afford their wages. Now, as then, there is no real cause, to inspire the fans and unite the team. In those intervening years - until perhaps the end of last year’s cup run - the club was always aiming for something. Instead, we’re rebuilding, and treading water.
Can you, then, blame Stan if we’re sometimes a bit uninspired? Without the ability to bond the players, and the threat of dropping them, he has little that he can use to motivate them. Can you blame him if he cannot eradicate the glaring deficiencies of the team? If they are a result of personnel, then his hands are tied - and if it is to do with attitude, then again he must make the best of what he has.
The fact is that anyone whom Burnley will attract to take over the mantle is going to suffer from exactly the same problems - and the list of potential successors is unlikely to be too long. There are few better at doing something with nothing, whatever the level. Call it a gut instinct, but the best man for the job is staring us in the face. He’s already here.