Bye Bye Andy Part 1: Barely Managing

It took a final humbling capitulation away to Coalville for the club to bring down the curtain on Andy's unhappy reign at Kettering.  In truth he couldn't have argued had the club chosen to terminate his contract earlier.  Chastening defeats interspersed with the odd flukey win had not won Andy to the hearts of the supporters.  Throw in his post match analysis which rarely deviated from, "it is all the fault of the players for not listening to me", and we have ended up where we are.  Over a third of the way through the season, looking over our shoulders at relegation and seeking a new manager.

And yet, his appointment back in the Summer was greeted with universal acclaim.  Finally, a Manager with experience, longevity and suspiciously dark hair for a man older than even the writers of Patgod.  He was personable and said all the things we'd been wanting to hear.  The only, even slight issue was that the majority of his managerial experience came in more southerly leagues.  But a good Manager is a good Manager.  Most of us weren't even bothered when the, "we're a few weeks behind in pre-season" line was trotted out again.  We had our man and our man was Andy.

By the end of September Andy's reputation was in tatters.  I heard fellow supporters who had stoically accepted a lot of ropey football over the years calling, vociferously for the gaffer's unusually brown-haired head.  Our record over August and September makes harrowing reading and made even more harrowing watching.  We won just one of our first 10 league games.  And some of those defeats were substantial.  Not always in the score.  Yes, sometimes in the score, but more to do with the gulf between us and often quite moderate opposition.  In the first three games both Stourbridge and Barwell completely and utterly played us off the park.  They were both in entirely different gears to our lumbering team.  Had both won by several more goals we couldn't have argued.  Hitchin's 4-0 win at Latimer Park, equally could easily have been by a larger margin.  

"But, what of our FA Cup run" fans of Andy would argue if he had any.  It does seem, looking back, that any luck Leese enjoyed came in this competition.  Completely uninspiring wins against Hullbridge, Sporting Khalsa, and a Rourke's Drift win at Hitchin got us far enough to be easily rolled over by a Chesterfield team rarely out of first gear.  It really didn't matter if the opposition came from two divisions above or below - we sportingly strove to make them look better than us.

Belatedly, Andy started picking up a few league wins.  But, incredibly lucky triumphs over Berkhamstead and Royston where our opponents are probably still shaking their heads over their defeats, did not even come close to papering over the cracks.  It was soon business as usual as we slithered to further Leese-shoulder-shrugging defeats against Leamington and Coalville.

If nothing else, we've had a salutary lesson this season that there are truly no guarantees in football.  An established manager.  A reasonable budget.  An incredible amount of supporter goodwill.  Even the Latimer Park surface is behaving well.  And still, we are struggling like f*ck not to be relegation fodder.  

The club simply HAD to act now to give any replacement a fair chance of pulling us out of our current nose-drive.  Disappointingly, it was clear Andy wasn't going to accept his limitations and volunteer to step down.  He would have ground this season down to dust and considered it a job well done had we finished fifth from bottom playing in front of 200 bored supporters.  Sorry Andy - not good enough.