03-12-2018, 14:29
It takes a moment or two to get your head around a run of form that enabled Chesterfield to enjoy their best unbeaten run in 12 years while simultaneously enduring the longest winless run in their history. “Enjoyed” may not be the most apposite description of a 12-game streak involving ten draws, mind you, nine of them encompassing another club-record consecutive streak in the National League.
FA Cup wins against Fylde and Billericay Town briefly broke the cycle of draws but defeat by Grimsby Town in the FA Cup second round at Proact Stadium yesterday ended that faint glimmer of light amid the gloom.
It is back to the league where, after starting the season with three consecutive wins in August, Chesterfield have failed to triumph in 19 games. High-flying Salford City visit the town with the crooked spire on Saturday.
If we step back for a moment, it is a bizarre and depressing stretch and yet, strangely, it almost feels befitting of a club at risk of a third successive relegation, rooted in a seemingly interminable malaise.
The FA Cup, of course, kindles memories of the finest moment in this proud club’s history, 21 years ago, when Jamie Hewitt’s memorable header at Old Trafford brought a semi-final replay with Middlesbrough. Until May, Chesterfield had been a fixture of the Football League for almost a century.
Martin Allen’s arrival in the summer was meant to shake the club from its torpor and spearhead an immediate return to League Two. His arrival felt like a breath of fresh air and Chesterfield fans, like many on social media, were quickly enamoured by the brevity of Allen’s quirky first-person press releases, always beginning with a cordial greeting and signed off with, “Take care, Martin.”
Yesterday, though, when the 1,700 travelling Grimsby fans, gleefully celebrating their 2-0 lead, aimed a second-half chorus of “You’re getting sacked in the morning” towards Allen, a significant contingent of the home support joined in. Chesterfield, fourth from bottom in the National League, look more likely to follow Stockport County, Darlington, Torquay United and York City into the regionalised realms of the sixth tier, than make a return to League Two. “Take care, Martin” may soon be his epitaph.
To lay the blame squarely at the door of “Mad Dog”, however, would be short-sighted given the events of the past few years. Indeed, without a change of ownership, it is becoming reasonable to ask who exactly can arrest their decline?
Dave Allen, the owner since 2009, has presided over two League Two titles, an EFL Trophy triumph at Wembley and the move from the antiquated Saltergate into the 10,000-capacity Proact in 2010. But, since November 2016, when the Sheffield casino owner — to whom the club are indebted to the tune of more than £12 million — stormed out of the club’s AGM after the refusal of directors to forgo interest on their loans, he has only been seen when appointing Allen and denouncing his predecessors as “total failures”.
The former Sheffield Wednesday owner has repeatedly stated his desire to sell the club. A series of interested investors — including a Chinese consortium reportedly willing to part with £10 million — have come and gone as the club’s decline continues. Allen would be lucky to get a third of that now and what bewilders supporters is why a successful businessman has accepted such staggering incompetence as the value of his investment nosedives.
The origins of the club’s atrophy can be traced back to the departure of Paul Cook, the former manager, to Portsmouth, a matter of days after leading the Spireites to the League One play-offs in 2015. Dean Saunders, his replacement, had been relegated with Doncaster Rovers, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Crawley Town in his previous three posts but was hired and fired by November before he could add No 4.
Danny Wilson saved them from the drop but was unable to arrest the decline. Gary Caldwell won three games in 29 as the club were relegated to League Two with a whimper. Club legend Jack Lester — appointed in the hope of inspiring a miracle while appeasing growing fan unrest — could not stop them hurtling out of the Football League.
Off the field, the category of transgressions would be comical were it not so tragic. A raffle for a place on the club’s 2016 pre-season tour to Hungary yielded just four entrants and the news that a winner was subsequently invented drew widespread ridicule. The FA, meanwhile, has been called in to investigate indiscretions with startling regularity. There was a fine for having made payments to Chesterfield players via an academy owned by the former chief executive Chris Turner. A club official was fined for the falsification of emails involving the transfer of Paul McGinn from Dundee. Joe Rowley, an academy graduate, played 39 games over the past two seasons without being a registered player. And in May, the FA was moved to look into a bet placed on Allen being the next manager by the son of director Ashley Carson — though no irregularity in the £520 win at odds of 25-1 was found, it should be said.
Carson, Allen’s long-term business associate, continues to oversee the day-to-day running of the club and in the owner’s absence has become a figure of blame. He became embroiled in some rather unedifying exchanges with supporters, including the former team mascot, Chester the Field Mouse, on social media.
All in all it has been a baffling and sad saga and evidently the nadir may yet be some distance away. Yesterday Chesterfield were full of industry and endeavour but their lack of quality in the final third was abundantly clear.
“I think the players are giving everything they’ve got in their locker, for the shirt, for the club, for me,” Allen said. “When you’re a manager of a club who’s had to save £21,000 a week, sold your top goalscorer for a hundred grand, sometimes you’re left to fight fires and build a team as quickly as I did.
“I’ll be the first to admit some of my signings have not worked, which is down to me, not anybody else in this football club. But we’ve cut the costs and at times you’re going to get performances like we’re getting and we’re going to have to see it out. Whether the owners are happy with that, that’s their decision.”
Allen, though, insists he is the man to turn this listing ship around. “I think I manage people quite well. I look after people to the best of my ability,” he said. “And there’s another manager who’s won Champions Leagues, who hammers his players day in, day out in public, you can tell the players don’t like playing for him and they hate him and it certainly ain’t like that here . . . If they’re just turning their back on me, and don’t bother, and don’t give a ****, then we’ve all got a big problem. But they’re not showing those traits.
“It hurts. But I have a lot of resilience. Good things will come with hard work.
FA Cup wins against Fylde and Billericay Town briefly broke the cycle of draws but defeat by Grimsby Town in the FA Cup second round at Proact Stadium yesterday ended that faint glimmer of light amid the gloom.
It is back to the league where, after starting the season with three consecutive wins in August, Chesterfield have failed to triumph in 19 games. High-flying Salford City visit the town with the crooked spire on Saturday.
If we step back for a moment, it is a bizarre and depressing stretch and yet, strangely, it almost feels befitting of a club at risk of a third successive relegation, rooted in a seemingly interminable malaise.
The FA Cup, of course, kindles memories of the finest moment in this proud club’s history, 21 years ago, when Jamie Hewitt’s memorable header at Old Trafford brought a semi-final replay with Middlesbrough. Until May, Chesterfield had been a fixture of the Football League for almost a century.
Martin Allen’s arrival in the summer was meant to shake the club from its torpor and spearhead an immediate return to League Two. His arrival felt like a breath of fresh air and Chesterfield fans, like many on social media, were quickly enamoured by the brevity of Allen’s quirky first-person press releases, always beginning with a cordial greeting and signed off with, “Take care, Martin.”
Yesterday, though, when the 1,700 travelling Grimsby fans, gleefully celebrating their 2-0 lead, aimed a second-half chorus of “You’re getting sacked in the morning” towards Allen, a significant contingent of the home support joined in. Chesterfield, fourth from bottom in the National League, look more likely to follow Stockport County, Darlington, Torquay United and York City into the regionalised realms of the sixth tier, than make a return to League Two. “Take care, Martin” may soon be his epitaph.
To lay the blame squarely at the door of “Mad Dog”, however, would be short-sighted given the events of the past few years. Indeed, without a change of ownership, it is becoming reasonable to ask who exactly can arrest their decline?
Dave Allen, the owner since 2009, has presided over two League Two titles, an EFL Trophy triumph at Wembley and the move from the antiquated Saltergate into the 10,000-capacity Proact in 2010. But, since November 2016, when the Sheffield casino owner — to whom the club are indebted to the tune of more than £12 million — stormed out of the club’s AGM after the refusal of directors to forgo interest on their loans, he has only been seen when appointing Allen and denouncing his predecessors as “total failures”.
The former Sheffield Wednesday owner has repeatedly stated his desire to sell the club. A series of interested investors — including a Chinese consortium reportedly willing to part with £10 million — have come and gone as the club’s decline continues. Allen would be lucky to get a third of that now and what bewilders supporters is why a successful businessman has accepted such staggering incompetence as the value of his investment nosedives.
The origins of the club’s atrophy can be traced back to the departure of Paul Cook, the former manager, to Portsmouth, a matter of days after leading the Spireites to the League One play-offs in 2015. Dean Saunders, his replacement, had been relegated with Doncaster Rovers, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Crawley Town in his previous three posts but was hired and fired by November before he could add No 4.
Danny Wilson saved them from the drop but was unable to arrest the decline. Gary Caldwell won three games in 29 as the club were relegated to League Two with a whimper. Club legend Jack Lester — appointed in the hope of inspiring a miracle while appeasing growing fan unrest — could not stop them hurtling out of the Football League.
Off the field, the category of transgressions would be comical were it not so tragic. A raffle for a place on the club’s 2016 pre-season tour to Hungary yielded just four entrants and the news that a winner was subsequently invented drew widespread ridicule. The FA, meanwhile, has been called in to investigate indiscretions with startling regularity. There was a fine for having made payments to Chesterfield players via an academy owned by the former chief executive Chris Turner. A club official was fined for the falsification of emails involving the transfer of Paul McGinn from Dundee. Joe Rowley, an academy graduate, played 39 games over the past two seasons without being a registered player. And in May, the FA was moved to look into a bet placed on Allen being the next manager by the son of director Ashley Carson — though no irregularity in the £520 win at odds of 25-1 was found, it should be said.
Carson, Allen’s long-term business associate, continues to oversee the day-to-day running of the club and in the owner’s absence has become a figure of blame. He became embroiled in some rather unedifying exchanges with supporters, including the former team mascot, Chester the Field Mouse, on social media.
All in all it has been a baffling and sad saga and evidently the nadir may yet be some distance away. Yesterday Chesterfield were full of industry and endeavour but their lack of quality in the final third was abundantly clear.
“I think the players are giving everything they’ve got in their locker, for the shirt, for the club, for me,” Allen said. “When you’re a manager of a club who’s had to save £21,000 a week, sold your top goalscorer for a hundred grand, sometimes you’re left to fight fires and build a team as quickly as I did.
“I’ll be the first to admit some of my signings have not worked, which is down to me, not anybody else in this football club. But we’ve cut the costs and at times you’re going to get performances like we’re getting and we’re going to have to see it out. Whether the owners are happy with that, that’s their decision.”
Allen, though, insists he is the man to turn this listing ship around. “I think I manage people quite well. I look after people to the best of my ability,” he said. “And there’s another manager who’s won Champions Leagues, who hammers his players day in, day out in public, you can tell the players don’t like playing for him and they hate him and it certainly ain’t like that here . . . If they’re just turning their back on me, and don’t bother, and don’t give a ****, then we’ve all got a big problem. But they’re not showing those traits.
“It hurts. But I have a lot of resilience. Good things will come with hard work.
