They say football matches are won and lost on fine margins and it was never better illustrated than that, Robbie Weir in the 93rd minute finally grabbed the points for us, if he hadn’t taken that chance Chesterfield would still have been in the relegation places, along with our visitors Barnet.
After the game speaking to our birthday boy and match winner was an enlightening and sobering experience, he actually criticised his own game and said he wasn’t good enough. When I asked how he felt when Ian Evatt put him through to score, Weir suggested that with the way he’d played, most people would have expected him to hit the corner flag.
Compared to the bland nonsense coming from players and managers on TV that we see week in week out, it’s a refreshing change to hear some honesty. Robbie Weir also said that he thought The Blues could still mount a play off challenge, well it’s nice to hear some confidence coming from the dressing room.
So why were we so bad under Gary Caldwell?
Football is a closed world, as it should be, us non-football folk don’t expect to have to justify our performance at work in front of journalists. Steve Eyre’s interview on Peak Fm this week was nothing short of a revelation about what had gone wrong for Gary Caldwell. In our naivety many fans, myself included, simply assume that football people must know what they are doing, as it is their industry.
It looks as though Gary Caldwell wanted Graham Barrow to be his assistant all along, and the decision-making process behind the scenes really wasn’t the best. Eyre also suggested that Guy Branston had “infiltrated” the club by talking to both Gary Caldwell and Ashley Carson and playing them off against each other. Branston appeared to have taken the transfer decisions out of Gary Caldwell’s hands and signed “too many substitutes” according to our former assistant manager, who described Branston’s 2 match managerial tenure as “A PR farce,” harsh but true.
It’s also disturbing to know that Gary Caldwell thought that the team were super fit, but that Steve Eyre didn’t think the players were doing enough work on a daily basis, and that the tactics and player selections were often not right.
Robbie Weir says his fitness has improved and so has the whole squad body shapes have changed and they can last longer in a match. Surely it's just taken as a given that players are fit enough to do the job? It's what us fans expect, Barnet for example, were out on their feet for the last 10 minutes of the match. Jack Lester said that our fitness got us through the game, it's amazing to me that the previous regime weren't good enough to get players up to scratch, but of course Gary Caldwell dispensed with the last fitness coach. Stroll on, talk about amateur
Still mistakes will always be made in the game, Chris Turner has secured a new job in football and I’d like to wish Port Vale the very best of luck with that. Also ex-manager Gary Caldwell has commented that he thinks Kristian Dennis can play at a higher level of football, he did do Gary, before you got us relegated from League One remember? Anyway it’s nice to have Jack Lester in charge isn’t it?
Nearly Christmas we had a brass band at half time, it snowed near the end and got three points
https://www.barnetfc.com/news/2017/december/reckless-guide--chesterfield/
Check out this utterly hilarious Vlog from a Barnet fan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxySOgYMs54&app=desktop
