This isn't a prelude to me asking if you want to join my Patreon page or owt so I can afford to set up a club in my image. It's me trying to explain that I'm not entirely conversant with the dilemma facing Simon Sandler (sic) and his board. Actually... I mean just Simon Sandler (sic)
Anyway, whilst I'm not entirely conversant with his situation, I can use my imagination. I'd probably find running an U14s football club a *bit stressful* because other people who aren't me would have their ideas about how it should be run.
In fact, I'd probably actively avoid the situation for fear that the football dads called me a "fucking muppet" or "a cunt of a retard" or "a cunting shit for brains blogging nonce dickhead who couldn't run a football team to save his fucking life"
What I would worry about is that I'd bow to the pressure of the group and eventually end up doing what they want just to appease them. I'd pick the players and tactics that the group felt best.
I'd start to second guess myself. I'd start to fight internally with my own mind.
This is what responsibility can do. I'm feeling a bit panicky now and I'm only thinking about an imaginary scenario that hasn't actually and isn't going to happen. I am never going to run any football club.
The thing about football fans is that opinions change quicker than the wind. What's right one week is moronic the next.
When we sacked Mick I was utterly convinced that we needed to search far and wide. Now I'm convinced that we've already got a perfect answer in the building. I am a vacuous moron with changing views. I am the mob.
So, in essence... this is my long winded attempt to explain what we should do without the weight of any responsibility for the actual decision.
The case for Stephen Dobbie
1) At the outset of his reign Mr Sandler (sic) set out a vision of good football with young players and incremental progress.
Stephen Dobbie plays good football with young players and both the first team under his brief stewardship and the youth teams under his control have made progress.
2) The actual style of football is secondary to the case. A good manager has to be able to communicate a plan that the players both understand and is within their capabilities to deliver. That has to be achieved through a blend of coaching, practice, motivation and well times decisions. In the six first team games we've seen, there have been very few (if any) examples of players who didnt appear to understand their job or believe they could do it.
Sure, there were some errors or poor decisions on the pitch but at no point did we look like we didn't have a plan. In every game we've had relatively long spells of control or attack and most impressively, we've been able to reassert ourselves in a match after a period of pressure - something we've almost never done this season.
Whatever style he played, Dobbie achieved the basics of putting on performances fans could back because he'd clearly prepared the team well. That's the bottom line.
3) Not everyone wants Dobbie. Most people do though. He's the reverse of Michael Appleton in that respect. I have sympathy around the Appleton mess. I can see the logic. I, to an extent, applaud the bravery of going against the grain and taking a risk. Risks are required. It clearly backfired. Risks wouldn't be risks if there wasn't a risk a risk would backfire. Football is nothing without the prospect of failing. This week's idiocy is last week's stroke of genius.
Anyway... We're at a different point now. Things are unsettled. Ben Mansford has swapped the ire of the West Stand for the peace and tranquility of proximity to the West Bank. Brett Gerrity has moved back to the stands. The lad with a weird job title like 'Chief Strategic officer of Football Synergy' has been dispatched. The club will make no further comment etc.
I've already written all that the other week. The point, for me, is that Dobbie buys time.
On the whole, there was patience with Critchley. Granted, we'll never know what the vibe would have been with fans present but by and large there was an acknowledgement that the board were undertaking a project and the project had some value to it and we'd need to stick with it for a bit and see where it went. Mostly.
We need a similar scale of project. We need another rebuild and Dobbie starts from a position of popularity. He's the corner piece of a jigsaw.
If we are serious about making our club a place where young players thrive and we blood them early, then we need to have a positive atmosphere. We need to have a manager who supporters trust. We need to have a culture whereby a mistake, a misjudgment, a naivety isn't punished with toxic rage. They will be part of the growth. They are integral to that vision.
It isn't Dobbie or bust but any other choice will either be come with either suspicion and need to prove themselves or bring more disruption and turnover of staff and players after a season where we could have just written 'turmoil' across the club crest and called it done. To torture the metaphor, anyone else is potentially the corner piece of a different jigsaw we don't yet possess. Dobbie lets us start today.
4) It's proof of a belief in what we've done to date. In a season where the structure has come under fire, it shows there is, to some extent, a structure.
It's tempting when relegated to look at all the bad things. There have been bad things. There have also been good things. Stephen Dobbie is one of them.
If we're a club focussed on youth and progression then what possibly could speak of it more than the fact we trust our staff to step up?
Dobbie would be a manifest example of taking your opportunity when it arrives and doing so fearlessly. That's the precise ethos we need for the young players we want our future to be built on to work within.
If a 19 year old can drop into the first team (and we have to, if we want to do the thing we originally intended to do) them why can't a manager of 40 years life experience do so too?
If Arteta can start at Arsenal and Pep at Barca (and so on) why can't Dobbie start with us? If he's good enough to have been entrusted with age groups (our clubs future) them why on earth can't he be responsible for our present?
Why would Liverpool's youth coach be good enough to manage our senior players but our own (with his own rich and varied playing career in addition to his credentials as a coach) not? Surely it can't simply come down to Critch having an FA BTEC in coaching?
5) It would enable the club to switch off twitter for a bit cos most of the mob (hi @Blackpoolfc 👋) would be appeased and if it turned to shit, the club could have megabants like "last fucking time we listen to you lot!"
6) His beard. It's so good it deserves mentioning again.
It's not up to me of course. I don't imagine it is, nor do I imagine that everything is as simple as I make it out to be. Without a debate then a football crowd are just 'consumers' and the game is just a 'product'
We argue. We love. We hope.
If it's not Dobbie, so be it. I like some of the other names rumoured. I just sense that Dobbie is a story that needs to play out. The brief flash of style that has been the last six games has captured my heart. I want more.
Onward!
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