results anymore.
I have to admit in the last few months I’ve taken a perverse pleasure in scouring the third tier of English football – League One – results to see just how badly one side are doing. But I won’t have to now as Dumb and Dumber were sacked.
It’s not that I have any animosity towards the club, the team, players or fans, the opposite really with the latter. It’s the board and what they did and who they did it with has meant a smile crept across my face with every goal against and bad result. The smile turned to ever increasing laughter last Saturday as every one of the 5 goals Millwall put past them was announced.
Yes if the board hadn’t decided to sack Ronnie Moore because of lower attendances during his three years in charge and look at the stat as a reason to employ the next person in the role, I wouldn’t have given their failings or indeed successes a second look. But the board decided to try and win fans by employing two ex-Liverpool players, hoping gate numbers would rise because Scousers who couldn’t afford to get into Anfield would follow old “heroes” over the Mersey.
And the two heroes they plumped for being almost local boy Jason McAteer as assistant to John Barnes. Barnes, after his brief stint as Celtic boss had finally got another job as a club manager, a job he jacked in the post with Jamaica to take on. That’s what made it such a joy, all those years after “Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious” someone thought – “I know, John Barnes he’ll take us to the promised land” 😆
Yes I don’t really like John Barnes, I find it funny seeing him falter. Why? Well it’s got nowt to do with the colour of his skin, which always seems to mentioned when people take against him, or he isn’t handed the reigns of a club. Yes some that booed him in an England shirt did so because they were that type of moron, me I couldn’t stand him because of what he gave to the shirt or more to the point didn’t give. I was sick and tired of seeing him do bugger all for 50/60 minutes on a Wednesday night at the old Wembley and then hobble off – to boos – with some injury – groin normally – for him to be fully fit and flying down the wing, getting in crosses and scoring goals for his club the Saturday after. I was sick of hearing about that goal against Brazil – hell even Mark Hateley scored that night – and having what to show since, two crosses against Argentina in the ’86 World Cup.
I was happy when he got the Celtic job, as an Aberdeen fan I figured he’d be useless, sad when he got the sack because it was funny sticking it to those in green and white hoops, then he moved into telly which made me wish someone would give him another job. All the commentary insight of a five foot eleven pile of plum duff. Dear god he was the worst of the bunch and that really does take some doing.
No doubt there’ll be those saying he got the sack because he’s black, much like those that claim it’s racism that has prevented him getting a managerial job since the Celtic debacle. Black, white, yellow, green, puce with tartan spots, colour doesn’t really matter when you are a god awful manager, 3 wins out of 13 games has more to do with it than anything else, that won’t get fans into the stands no matter what your name is or who you may have played for. And it won’t do any aspiring black manger any good of a chance to be hired if club owners see that they can’t fire a manger because of the colour of his skin if John Barnes’ team kept on losing. And quotas are a dangerous game to play.