Brabin had to go

Gary Brabin was rightly sacked after Friday night’s damaging result capped off a recent run of dire form, but he should have gone before things were allowed to get this bad.

It was clear for weeks, if not months, that Brabin had lost all sense of perspective in the job. His team selections and in-game decisions became more baffling the longer his tenure went on. It seemed as though, in the end, Brabin was all out of ideas as he gambled with players in unexpected and unnatural positions appearing desperate to find a formula that would work.

Against York, Kovacs’ stray pass to the phantom man (aka no-one) on the overlap in the dying minutes symbolised much that was wrong with Brabin’s dysfunctional team. The side had been chopped and changed so often in almost every department that it was not suprising there was little understanding between the players.

In most of our games since the turn of the new year the team looked far from a cohesive unit and crucial partnerships all over the pitch were unable to form as a result of the persistent changes.

Brabin’s use of Fleetwood on the left wing drew much criticism over the course of the season, but on Friday the widely-held disbelief intensified as first Danny Crow was deployed in that position, then too was Craig McAllister (both in the second half).

Like most, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw McAllister taking up position a position on the wing, but then I remembered, Emile Heskey had been used there as had other supposed ‘target-men’. It is an unashamedly ugly, direct tactic that places an emphasis on hitting diagonal balls out to the wing for a target-man to take advantage of the fact that full-backs are often shorter and weaker in aerial duels than centre-backs.

This was the sort of football, or anti-football, that Brabin was trying to employ at Luton.

Most teams play a long game because they simply don’t have the resources to play football. We do. Yet Adam Watkins, the player who could have provided the much needed link between midfield and attack, was used for 90 minutes in a reserve game in the blistering sun rather than our biggest game of the season. That alone was telling of the youngster’s season under Brabin.

Not only was the reliance on direct tactics embarrassing, the failure to make them work effectively was humiliating. Were we essentially a poor-man’s Stevenage Borough?

It is a shame things turned out the way they did for Brabin. He seemed a very likeable man at the beginning and we all wanted him to succeed, but his performance as manager soon invoked a lot of anger and resentment in fans who wanted him gone.

It was the 3-0 defeat at Forest Green which seemed to be the final tipping point for the last cluster of patient fans and from that point on followers of the club were united in calling for Brabin’s head.

David Pleat’s comments in midweek may have made us think again about Brabin’s position, and Steve Keane’s resurgence at Blackburn offered a real-life reinforcement of those sentiments, but nothing we witnessed in recent games suggested Brabin was capable of a similar turnaround. The game against York proved that to be correct as again we suffered the same old problems and threw away another lead.

Looking forward, today’s events on and off the field have instantly renewed play-off hopes after the dejection we all felt when leaving Kenilworth Road on Friday. Southport’s shock defeat to Hayes & Yeading means we are still only three points behind the Sandgrounders, but we now have two games in hand. Furthermore, both Gateshead and Grimsby have practically been eliminated from the play-off race after both were beaten today.

With Brabin gone, rumours about the identity of the next manager will gather pace as Alan Neilson and the much-maligned Paul Carden ready the team for Tuesday’s trip to Gateshead.

For me, the permanent appointment of Alan Neilson would not be a big enough change. We need a complete overhaul of this regime under which confidence and enthusiasm appeared to be decaying day-by-day.

Whoever it is, we need a manager that will come in with an entirely fresh approach. An early appointment would be ideal; it would give the new man the chance to assess a squad which has played its part in such a dreadful period of results.

Let’s be honest, while Gary Brabin is mostly at fault for this team being a staggering 31 points behind league leaders Fleetwood, the players are clearly not innocent either. This crop of players need to know that they are all now vying for a place in next term’s squad.