'Cos we were always being boring....

It seems Reading fans are not happy with Leam Richardson as manager, judging by some of the comments on social media. I guess it could be some of the same, virtuous element of support that criticised his tenure at Latics, when he was erm, saving the club from relegation and winning titles. I do, sort of get it, but if the league table has taught us anything this season, it is that we have to dispense with such football snobbery.

Reading were not a spectacular side, much like Lincoln, Wycombe, Peterborough. They were highly functional, and yes probably a bit boring. They hit it long frequently, they were a big side and fashioned quick passes through the middle and down the flanks to attack at pace. And they scored two goals, following crossed balls into the box and got three points away from home. What more do you want, Reading fans? As for us, far from being this super attacking side as Ryan Lowe frequently promised, the team appear to have lost the ability to know how to attack completely. Our only two outballs are the long boot down the flanks and the general boot up to the forwards, with Saydee and Murray both a shadow of their former selves, and the midfield seems to get over-run no matter how we set up.

I genuinely don’t mind what style of football we play, so long as it is effective, and there seems to be some semblance of a plan.

Yet it seems historically, whoever the manager is, people will quickly take a like or a dislike to them, depending on their “philosophy”. They will then proceed to dig their trench and refuse steadfastly to move from it under any circumstances. This might seem ironic given my dislike of Lowe, but that was as much due to his personality and attitude than anything else. I’m sure he might have been a bit more likeable if he’d been any good at winning football matches, because that is by far the most important thing.

I’ve just read the excellent article by Daniel Storey about Latics, and it covers this whole situation very nicely. When a club is really, really in crisis, there is no criticism of the club at all – maybe at errant owners – but on the pitch and around the club, everyone is fighting harder and pulling in the same direction. Then, as soon as the crisis is over, the fanbase turns all Kevin & Perry “oh this is so boring!!” And repeats it so often that it generates a cycle of discontent that rapidly turns into a group think exercise. Boring is bad, boring is terrible, boring is “the worst football I’ve seen in 50 years!! I’m not coming again” Oh shut up! You know what is really boring – YOU ARE!!

We’ve seen this happen time and time again at Latics, and when we get the change that is demanded happens, then things don’t get any better for us. In fact, they frequently get worse. This is not to suggest a change wasn’t needed at Latics, the past month or two have been absolutely – here’s that word again – calamitous. But my word, we need to get that next appointment right, and whoever it is needs all the time in the world, and the freedom to be boring.

Yet this has attracted swathes of criticism from impatient fans over the years. Maloney’s football was boring, Richardson played hoofball, Caldwell “only won League One because he had the biggest budget”. If that last one was something you said, take a good look at yourself, will you? Ditto when Leam won the league, the critical ones couldn’t wait to point out that the ageing squad he assembled would struggle in the Championship. And you know what, they were right on both Caldwell and Richardson’s achievements. But could you not have just enjoyed it for a little while, rather than constantly trying to discredit some of our better managers in recent times by pointing out such first world problems?

This constant demand to be entertained is another modern football fallacy as well. Football is not about entertainment, it is about suffering. And through that loyalty and suffering, you might eventually encounter a bit of glory.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are in a slightly precarious league position at the minute, so I’ll take boring football and hoofball all day long if it means we can haul ourselves out of the brown stuff. If it continues into next season under the new manager, I wouldn’t mind either.

Whatever happened to the small matter of grinding out results? How many teams have done it to us this season? They’ve beaten us but we’ve all said what an awful side they are. How many people said on Tuesday night “I’ll take a scrappy 1-0 here” That is what real support sounds like, not screaming into your phone about the aesthetics as to how and why we played a certain way. We are sorely in need of a bit of winning ugly right now.

Fans can’t wait to turn on our managers, because they haven’t got the team where they think we should be, but we’re not that team any more, we are not funded that way. But we certainly should be better than we have been under Ryan Lowe, so in this case the criticism was undoubtedly justified.

And all is not lost, when you look at Reading and Peterborough, they have both made a good managerial appointment and climbed from the relegation zone to the top half. I don’t see it being that easy at Latics. We saw loads of endeavour on Tuesday night, but they seem to have lost the ability to defend as well as how to go forward over the past few months, and it is going to take a superhuman effort for someone to come in and re-train that in a short space of time.

I’ll take 20^th place and boring football all day long. I couldn’t care less if the opposing fans call us an awful team, so long as we’ve taken points off them. The first job for the new head coach is to make us hard to beat again, the fancy stuff can come later, if at all. We might look down our noses at clubs like Stevenage, Wycombe and Peterborough but right now, our football club is a shell and they are a model we need to aspire to, and who knows, in a few seasons, we could become a Lincoln. It’s going to be a long haul, and yes it’s going to be boring but given the constant turbulence of the last few years, it is probably exactly what is needed to get us back to some kind of stability.

In fairness, part of that is no different to what was promised when Ryan Lowe was appointed, except this time whoever comes in needs to actually buy into the plan, rather than treat the job like some personal ego trip. So, please, please do your homework this time Messrs Rioch & Guilfoyle. And just for absolute clarity, I don’t want either Maloney or Richardson back here. Gary Caldwell? He has undoubtedly evolved as a manager and his Exeter side have played some superb stuff when we’ve faced them, and on a budget, but that doesn’t happen overnight. Whether it is Caldwell or AN Other, that little word patience will no doubt come into play again.

There is huge pressure on the board of Wigan Athletic to get this right. Personally, I don’t expect miracles, this season or next, sometimes you need to go a little bit back to go forward again. Just get someone in who can keep us in this division and start to actually look like there is a long-term plan in place, rather than the chaos that continually reigns over this daft football club of ours.