Relegation certainties to promotion hopefuls

Darren Kelly on his appointment as manager.

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THERE were more firings than in a typical episode of ‘The Apprentice’ and every bit as much bluster.

Athletic could have done with Sir Alan Sugar’s famed hard-man Claude Littner in the room when the power of Darren Kelly’s words landed the Sunderland age-group coach the first of his three managerial roles inside six months.

Kelly wooed the room, but lasted only seven league games before being ushered away, an abject 5-1 loss to Peterborough sealing the affable Derry man’s fate. He later moved to Halifax and then Hyde United.

ADVISED

The football brain of Karren Brady may well have advised against handing the post-Kelly reins to another rookie in David Dunn. For all his hard graft, superior career and contacts book, the ex-England midfielder found victories harder to come by than a diplomatic comment from the mouth of Katie Hopkins.

Chaos reigned and supporters found themselves alienated.

The heavily delayed North Stand encapsulated the bedlam, as promised deadlines for the big opening came and went. Dunn’s remarks against fan chants at Chesterfield went down as well as the news to would-be revellers standing outside the gleaming (but not yet safety-certificated) £6million structure that Christmas was cancelled.

At Crewe, fans fed-up with their turgid diet took out their understandable frustration on the players. That 1-0 loss to the worst side in the division came with well over half of the season remaining ­— yet it was difficult to find reasons to be optimistic that Athletic would not be relegated to League Two for the first time in nearly 50 years.

The power-brokers realised it was time to turn to experience and turned to the past to inspire the present.

A meeting at Oldham’s version of the ‘Bridge Cafe’ saw John Sheridan challenged by chairman Simon Corney to move North from Newport and lift an ailing club from 22nd in the table to safety.

He succeeded not only in saving Athletic from relegation, but also giving supporters an emotional stake back in their club.

Never go back, they say. “Unfinished business,” Sheridan said. Matt Palmer, Aaron Amadi-Holloway and Curtis Main were unheralded but brilliantly inspired loan signings.

“I can’t prepare a team to keep making individual errors,” Dunn had said. “How do I do that? I don’t think Sir Alex Ferguson could do that. Get Jose Mourinho in here and he would not be able to sort that out.”

The answer was Anthony Gerrard. The arrival of the hardened Scouser saw his colleagues ear-bashed into stopping those calamitous breakdowns that saw the club leaking terrible goals.

Two defeats at the tail end of Sheridan’s remarkable 23-game stint were useful in highlighting deficiencies present within the squad that may have been obscured for some by the terrific run that had saved the club from the drop.

With the top six the aim, coasting won’t be allowed next season. Not for this candidate.