There is a minute’s silence at most games these days. If the authorities ever run out of people to mourn, perhaps they will adopt my suggestion of a minute’s silence for all clubs who have been visited by Ian Holloway and are now, as a consequence, on a respirator, the clock ticking.
The latest mugs to buy into the man’s idiotic, grandstanding spiel are poor old Grimsby Town, who are desperate to consolidate in the Football League rather than rejoin those gently declining northern sides that will soon make up the entirety of the National Leagues.
Holloway arrived with the usual fanfare in December 2019. This was a superbly run club, he said. Not only would he be manager but he’d also take a seat on the board, invest £100,000 of his own money in their future and move house from Bristol to Lincolnshire. The fans — and you can blame them for this, given the bloke’s track record — were very optimistic. In the summer Holloway went about his important and familiar work of getting rid of all the good players and replacing them with people who were not any cop at playing football.
The results, as you might expect, bore testimony to his unique managerial approach. Down and down Grimsby went. Holloway did not put £100,000 of his own money into the club and still less did he up sticks from Bristol. Instead, he gave a series of ever more bizarre and querulous press conferences after the defeats piled up. Among other things, he blamed Covid for Grimsby’s lack of success, perhaps believing that — contrary to popularly held opinion — the virus afflicted not the entire world but just a small area of northern Britain immediately to the south of the Humber estuary.
Holloway left exactly one year after he had arrived (and three days after he had said he wasn’t going anywhere) with Grimsby deep in the relegation battle, third from bottom having played more games than the two clubs beneath them. They are now bottom, seven points from safety in League Two. After yesterday’s defeat at Bradford City they seem sure to be travelling to Boreham Wood next season.
Advertisement
They have my unrelieved sympathy. Holloway managed my club, Millwall, for a short time and was — by both common assent and indeed the stats — the worst manager in the club’s history. He pretty much ensured we would be relegated. Fans of Plymouth Argyle and Queens Park Rangers might wish to add their own reminiscences of Holloway at this point. He will be on the lookout for another side to ruin, as we are speaking. “By the pricking of my thumbs/Ian Hollowhead this way comes.” Beware all of you.
Of the clubs above poor benighted Grimsby, Southend United — who have also had a horrid time of it recently — look most likely to succumb. Colchester United and Barrow (promoted last season) sit just above them but keep your eyes on Walsall, who have been sliding downwards for some time. The worst form of the clubs towards the bottom is owned by Barrow’s promotion partners, Harrogate. But 50 points should be enough to give them another year in the Football League.
There is a certain bourgeois feel to the top of the division, with the table being led by Cheltenham Town and Cambridge United — and yet, compared to some of the big spenders in the division, they are but paupers. Both have managers who have not managed before, Mark Bonner at Cambridge and Michael Duff at the club for whom he played for eight years, Cheltenham.
Both are feeling the pressure a little right now. Cambridge owe much of their success to the goalscoring exploits of Paul Mullin, who has hit the back of the net so many times this season that the club have named a stand after him. The scouser, a product of Liverpool’s academy, has hit the form of his life at the age of 26, with 28 goals so far this season (a club record). Cheltenham are well drilled by the Northern Irishman, Duff, and in Alfie May, a former Millwall youth player, have a striker who, while not as spectacularly fecund as Mullin, is playing better than at any time in his career.
It’s still all very tight at the top, though, with seven points separating Bolton Wanderers in third from Exeter City in eighth. Among that chasing pack, Bolton have risen like a phoenix on methamphetamine from successive relegations and financial oblivion.
Advertisement
At the end of October, the Trotters lay 19th and fans could probably hear the siren voices beckoning from the likes of Stockport County and Altrincham, near neighbours from a division below.
But Ian Evatt — prised bodily from National League champions Barrow last summer — has overseen a revival which is likely to get them in the play-offs, at least.
Nice to end on a positive note, isn’t it? Few clubs have suffered as Bolton have suffered these past few years.
