Lee Clark Archives

After just 11 months in charge Simon Grayson has become the latest manager to be shown the exit door at Huddersfield Town. Despite engineering Town’s return to the second tier of English football for the first time in 11 years and an initially encouraging start to life in the Championship, recent performances have meant that the decision to sack Grayson has come as little surprise to many.

In fairness to Grayson, he was exactly what Huddersfield needed to get over the finishing line in the race for promotion last season. Grayson’s coolness in the successful play-off campaign represented a marked contrast to predecessor Lee Clark. In the 2010-11 play-offs Clark let the emotions and the occasion get the better of him. After the semi-final victory against Bournemouth it almost felt like Town had already been promoted and this was mirrored by Clark’s jubilant celebrations during the post-match lap of honour. As a result there was a huge sense of expectation at Old Trafford among Town fans and it almost felt as if Town only had to turn up in order to get promoted. Under Clark, Town would be partially undone in the play-off final because they ‘played the occasion’ rather than the game itself. Grayson on the other hand was much calmer after the two-legged victory over MK Dons and the subsequent celebrations were much more restrained. Grayson gave the impression that there was still a job to be done and his calmness under pressure allowed Town to stay more focussed on the job at hand against Sheffield United in the final, and there was a greater air of realism among Town fans at Wembley than had existed 12 months previously at Old Trafford.

The play-off final victory was followed up by an encouraging start to life in the Championship with Town climbing as high as second in September. Grayson had Town playing genuinely good football, performances away against Sheffield Wednesday and Blackpool particularly stood out, and there was a general consensus that Grayson’s Town team were playing the best football since the Steve Bruce team of the turn of the century. With this in mind it might seem strange that, within four months of all this Grayson now finds himself out of a job, so where did it all go wrong for Simon Grayson?

Though Town were never realistically going to be able to maintain this form throughout the season, Town’s performances have tailed off alarmingly since mid-November and the buck must ultimately stop with Grayson. Increasingly erratic team selections gave Town an unbalanced and unsettled look. As a result the attractive football evident in the early days of the season gave way to aimless long ball football which isolated Town’s most creative players, particularly Oliver Norwood who had been instrumental in Town’s positive start to the season. Perhaps the most bizarre of Grayson’s team selections – or non-selection – was his reluctance to play Scottish international left-back Paul Dixon. Despite performing well for Scotland, Dixon’s form did admittedly start to fade for Town. However, the way Grayson dealt with the situation was poor. Dixon was dropped from the team altogether for a number of weeks and instead Grayson chose to play young centre-back Murray Wallace at left-back. Decisions like this became more and more frequent as Grayson struggled to arrest the slump in form and only served to strain the increasingly fragile confidence.

By Grayson’s own admission, he had never been in a position where he’d had to manage a team on a long winless run before. This was particularly evident in recent weeks and with Grayson at the helm there were real concerns about where the next win was going to come from. The team were low on confidence but more alarmingly the players did not seem, at times, to be putting in the requisite effort or commitment. There have been claims that Grayson had lost the ‘dressing room’ and this would explain why performances have deteriorated so rapidly and so drastically. Instances like the Paul Dixon one outlined above suggest that everything behind the scenes were not completely as they should be. Grayson’s departure from Leeds came amid similar allegations and though it is just speculation that behind the scenes problems were impacting on performances, it does seem hard to deny that Grayson’s questionable man-management and team selections led to the team losing its confidence and consequently the poor run of results.

At this stage it is worth pointing out that I think Simon Grayson has been good for Huddersfield. The calmness and honesty he displayed, especially in post-match interviews, were a breath of fresh air in comparison to his predecessor. Furthermore, when he was appointed his remit was to get Town promoted from League One and established in the Championship. Though Grayson achieved the first part of this by gaining promotion, recent performances have brought Town’s Championship status into jeopardy. In a way Grayson has been the victim of his own success. The performances at the start of this season raised expectation levels and this served to further emphasize the poor performances that have become all too common since November as Town fans know that the team is capable of much better than has been seen recently. I do believe that Grayson has been, to an extent, let down by his players. As they proved earlier in the season, they are more than capable in terms of ability, but in recent weeks both performances and effort levels have been lacking.

A run of 12 games without a win in the league and the nature of the performances that accompanied them, meant that, even though Town were still 7 points above the relegation places when Grayson was sacked, Dean Hoyle had little choice but to sack Grayson. Grayson should be praised for his success, after all Grayson is one of only 9 managers in the clubs entire history to actually win something, and I am genuinely disappointed that things haven’t worked out for him recently. However, with no sign of form improving the decision to make a change had to be made before Town slipped even further into trouble. The early season panache has disappeared and performances against Leicester (6-1 defeat) and Watford (4-0 defeat) were quite frankly unacceptable and it is the nature of these defeats that really set the alarm bells ringing. Town also struggled in home matches against Sheffield Wednesday and Blackpool, who they had beaten so comfortably at the beginning of the season, and it was evident that something had to give. It was impossible to say where the next victory was going to come from and after having to fight so hard to get back to this level Dean Hoyle simply could not afford to let the current slump continue and risk an immediate return to League One – especially given the clubs recent financial figures.

It is obviously not a given that Town’s form will dramatically improve when a new manager is appointed, but history shows us that new managers often do provide struggling teams with fresh impetus. With regards to the next manager, Nigel Adkins is a name currently doing the rounds and would be a great appointment, however it remains to be seen if he would be prepared to go from managing a Premier League team to a side struggling at the wrong end of the Championship. What is crucially important is that Town look for a long-term replacement. Whoever Town end up appointing, they must choose someone who will help push them on to the next level and buy into Dean Hoyle’s vision for the club, rather than just a temporary stopgap who will help Town avoid relegation, if not the club will find itself in the exact same position in 12 months time.

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The sacking of Lee Clark at Huddersfield Town has sent shockwaves across the world of football, with observers from Henry Winter to Wayne Rooney expressing their shock and dismay at the decision. To the uninformed spectator the decision may seem bizarre, however Huddersfield fans have been far from disappointed at the decision, and some have actively welcomed it. How did a man with only 3 defeats in 55 games come to be sacked? And why have so few fans been unhappy with the news?

At the start of Lee Clark’s tenure there was a positive vibe among the fans, after an encouraging end to the 2008-09 season. The feeling of positivity was matched by the performances on the pitch over the following year. Clark assembled a talented young squad which played a genuine brand of free-flowing attacking football and would eventually finish 6^th in the table, racking up 82 goals in the process. Nevertheless, Huddersfield’s soft underbelly and lack of experience would be cruelly exposed by a resilient Milwall side in the play-offs.

The defeat against Milwall would have a terminal effect on the style of play Lee Clark would adopt for the rest of his tenure. Huddersfield clearly needed experience and graft to accompany the undoubtedly talented youngsters at the club. This was reflected by Clark’s signings before the 2010-11 season, with the arrivals of Ian Bennett, Gary Naysmith, Damien Johnson, Joey Gudjonsson and Alan Lee all examples of the experience Clark felt necessary. On paper these signings looked to be exactly what the club needed. However as the season progressed it was clear that some of Clark’s signings were over the hill and simply happy to collect one final pay-packet. This left Town with a squad of youngsters and has-beens with very few players at the peak of their footballing ability.

Despite a promising start to the new campaign Town’s football would become increasingly negative as the season went on. The final blow to Clark’s attacking football would come after a 4-1 mauling at promotion rivals Southampton in late December. This result led Clark to implement a 4-5-1 system for the remainder of the season. Town would subsequently go unbeaten for the rest of the season, and were admittedly unlucky that they were competing against as talented a side as Southampton for the second automatic promotion place. The problem with 4-5-1 was the negativity that accompanied it. Between January 1^st and the end of the season, Town won only five games by more than 1 goal and became the divisions draw specialists. Four games at the end of February where Town picked up just 4 points from a possible 12 seriously dented their promotion chances and meant that Town lost too much ground on Southampton to recover.

The play-off final against Peterborough was arguably the crippling blow from which Lee Clark would never really recover. His decision to play 4-5-1 with the 18 year old Benik Afobe as the lone striker ahead of Jordan Rhodes perplexed many fans, even if Rhodes’s form had not been as mercurial at this point. Clark’s tactical shortcomings in this game were not the only thing that annoyed Town fans though. The Peterborough squad had been assembled on a fraction of the budget that Lee Clark had to spend and highlighted just how much money Lee Clark had squandered on players. Clark’s transfer record was a real mixed bag with the signings of Jordan Rhodes, Anthony Pilkington and Lee Peltier seemingly showing he had an eye for a player. However, Clark would sign enough players to have four separate teams in his time at Huddersfield but never one good enough to secure promotion. Signings like Dominik Werling, Alan Lee and Robbie Simpson have been monumental flops in their time at Huddersfield. In addition Clark has never been able to address Huddersfield’s problem area of central midfield, despite a host of signings aimed at addressing the issue.

Clark was rarely able to re-create the feel good factor around the club in the 2011-12 season as fans struggled to recover from the play-off final defeat. There was a growing sense of apathy around the club due to the prospect of another season in League One, with empty stadiums and long ball football. Again, Huddersfield were victim to drawing too many games and sacrificing winning positions and there was a growing feeling that this was down to Clark’s tactical shortcomings. Despite Town still riding high in the table fans were disillusioned with the brand of football they were being made to watch. At the end of the day, football is a form of entertainment and in a time where fans are, more than ever, struggling to justify the high prices of going to watch football, Huddersfield have simply not played an attractive enough brand of football to warrant extortionately high ticket prices.

Furthermore Clark’s man-management skills have come under scrutiny and generally been found wanting. Donal McDermott and Anton Robinson had both impressed for Bournemouth, but were never able to show their ability under Clark. Indeed, as the season wore on, it appeared that some players were scared of playing for Lee Clark. This was in part due to Clark’s increasingly strange team selections, which prevented players from gaining confidence. From one week to the next it was as if the selection was random. Players would go from not even being in the squad for months on end to suddenly being plunged into the starting eleven, Danny Cadamarteri for instance. This scattergun policy to selection prevented Huddersfield from gaining any real consistency and confidence, and this is reflected in the quality of football and entertainment towards the end of Clark’s regime.

Despite all this Clark would probably have kept his job until the end of the season if he had handled his public relations and the media better. At the beginning of his stint as manager Clark talked a good game and his handling of the media helped to raise the club’s profile. However, the 2011-12 season in particular, has seen a markedly different media handling style adopted by Clark. His post-match interviews have been increasingly bullish and have alienated the media and supporters. His refusal to rule himself out of the running for the Leicester job left a sour taste in the mouth for all concerned, and potentially soured the relationship with the board. Poor performances after Christmas combined with him again refusing to rule himself out of vacant managerial positions led to growing disillusionment among the fans. This alienation of supporters led to a lack of confidence in Lee Clark’s ability, and it is this deterioration of trust, more than the results on the pitch, which led to Clark’s position becoming untenable.

Lee Clark should be praised for his 100% commitment and enthusiasm to the cause. Nevertheless Clark has been heavily backed by an ambitious owner and has ultimately failed in his remit of getting Huddersfield to the Championship. The major gripe among Town fans was how much the quality of football has decreased since the beginning of his reign. Though the sacking came as a surprise to many pundits, those who have followed Clark and Huddersfield this season understand the sacking was justified. His comments to the media have made him seem, at times, deluded and desperate – especially in the wake of the defeat to Sheffield United. Dour football combined with a deteriorating media relationship have meant that, bizarrely, despite a 43 game unbeaten run, Clark’s sacking is understandable. Despite the claims of footballing contemporaries Lee Clark’s sacking is not an example of ‘football gone mad’ and the actions of an egotistical chairman, but instead the actions of a man well within his rights to call time on a failing regime.

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Tag Archives: Lee Clark

Why Huddersfield Town Had to Sack Simon Grayson

Why Lee Clark’s Sacking Is Justifiable