Archives for October 2010

Keith Alexander's son Matt fondly recalls many tales about his late father but he rates one above all others.

The Alexander family were visiting Keith in hospital as he recuperated following the first of two life-threatening brain aneurysms he suffered in 2003. Keith, then manager of Lincoln, was still very ill and the family were aghast when they realised that he had tried to unplug his heart monitor.

The Imps boss had attempted to free up the socket so that he could plug in a television and follow Lincoln's progress on Ceefax.

I think it is a story that perfectly illustrates Alexander's love of the game and the dedication that he brought to all of his managerial roles.

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At the Keepmoat Stadium.

Sheffield United manager Gary Speed watched his team's 2-0 defeat at Doncaster on Saturday evening from the lofty perch of the press box as he served a touchline ban.

He rarely displayed any outward emotion but the 41-year-old must have been bitterly disappointed by what unfolded below him as his team were punished for an atrocious start and went on to lose for the fifth time in 11 games since Speed succeeded Kevin Blackwell as Blades boss.

At the final whistle Speed remained motionless for several seconds before finally rising from his seat. By then the concourse was packed with supporters, many of whom went to shake his hand. Speed, a polite and dignified man, obliged but it was obvious that mingling with opposition fans was the last thing on his mind.

His team are 18th in a congested Championship table, six points shy of the play-off zone and just four above the bottom three.

With 33 games left in the campaign the success or failure of the Blades' season is yet to be determined, but if Speed's side are to go anywhere close to a repeat of 2009, when United reached the play-off final, a serious improvement is required in several areas.

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Longueval, France.

It is difficult to reconcile the tranquility of a fresh and sunny October morning in the small French village of Longueval with the horrors that unfolded there during the Great War.

Take a walk down the main road towards Guillemont and Delville Wood soon appears on your left. A child's swing rests in the back garden of one of the houses, a symbol of happy and secure times. It is peaceful and serene now, but when the Somme offensive was launched on 1 July, 1916 Longueval quickly became ravaged by war.

The village was the scene of vicious bombardments and bloody fighting between the Allies and the German army. Delville Wood was destroyed to the extent that only one tree remained when the war ended in November 1918. Photographs show a scarred landscape, the shelled turf scattered in huge clumps. It quickly acquired the nickname Devil's Wood.

"I can assure you the name is very appropriate," said Captain Ernest Parfitt in a letter to his wife written on 31 July, 1916.

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Life has moved on significantly for Doncaster goalkeeper Neil Sullivan since his early days as an apprentice at Wimbledon.

Back in the mid-1980s, Sullivan, still a schoolboy, would train with the now defunct London club one day a week and vividly remembers the mixture of excitement and trepidation he experienced.

"It was the proper Crazy Gang back then," said Sullivan, whose brother nowadays watches AFC Wimbledon occasionally as they push for promotion to League Two. "If I kept my head down, did my work and got out unscathed, then I would regard it as a successful day."

My own memories of that era involve training ground images of an expensive suit smouldering away in a dustbin as the likes of Dennis Wise, John Fashanu and Vinnie Jones delivered a crash course in life at Plough Lane to new signings.

I asked Sullivan if he ever turned up in a suit. "Blimey," he replied. "You'd hardly wear anything because it was either burned or ripped up."

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After his appointment as Middlesbrough manager late last October, Gordon Strachan repeatedly stressed he did not need the job. Instead, he said he took it because he wanted it. I wonder if he feels the same way now?

The results of a survey published in Middlesbrough's Evening Gazette last week delivered a damning verdict on his first year in charge.

Participants were asked to rate Strachan's performance as either poor, satisfactory, good or excellent across a range of categories, from the signings he has made to the entertainment value of his Championship team.

He was rated poor by the majority of people in all of them, although 2.7% of those polled rated his relationship with the media as "excellent". The fact that this is a notoriously thorny area for Strachan perhaps says it all about his current travails.

Oh, and a whopping 78.1% said Strachan should be sacked.

Boro legend Bernie Slaven then put the boot in by claiming chairman Steve Gibson "will have the gun in the drawer - he may not have loaded the bullets yet but he will if he needs to".

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Tranmere's match at Southampton on Saturday takes place exactly one year since chairman Peter Johnson sacked John Barnes and put long-serving physio Les Parry in temporary charge of Rovers.

Johnson told Parry he would run first-team affairs until he had appointed a "proper manager" but the Tranmere chief found that to be an unexpectedly difficult task.

One experienced figure was offered the position but subsequently told the chairman that he could not keep Rovers in League One unless he was given the resources to strengthen the team.

Rovers had no money and so the weeks rolled on with Parry in charge. Shortly before Christmas, he was given the job until the end of the season.

Parry's appointment generated plenty of headlines. A physio at Rovers since 1991, he had not played the game professionally and did not have any managerial experience.

Yet he kept Rovers up last season - a 3-0 victory at doomed Stockport on the final day of the season guaranteed the club's League One survival - and subsequently signed a one-year contract in the summer.

I wanted to know how a physio had managed to establish himself as a manager in a notoriously fickle and fragile industry. What I discovered is that Parry is a remarkable and incredibly hard-working individual, whose route into management is probably unique.

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At the Walkers Stadium.

Exactly 10 years ago Peter Taylor's Leicester headed into an international break sitting proudly at the top of the Premier League.

A week later a sodden Kevin Keegan quit as coach of England after his team lost to Germany in the final game at the old Wembley - and within months Sven-Goran Eriksson had left his job with Italian side Lazio to replace him.

A lot has happened over the intervening decade but it is fair to say that both Leicester and Eriksson find themselves in greatly reduced circumstances. Unlikely as it might seem, they have now turned to each other to attempt to restore their reputation and standing.

The 62-year-old Swede is poised to sign a two-year deal to succeed Paulo Sousa at the struggling Championship club, with an official announcement expected on Sunday.

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