After countless days of speculation, misleading tweets (some of them mine) and fretting over potential managers, Lee Clark has ended speculation and has committed himself to the club.
"I want to put an end to this speculation - I am not interested in the Leicester vacancy. All I am interested in is moving forward with the job at hand at Huddersfield Town.”
"My sole focus is on taking Huddersfield Town forward and achieving the goals that we are all so desperate to."
Very encouraging stuff coming from our Geordie manager there and it is nice to see that he has committed himself to the foreseeable future. However I think that there are several factors at play with this recent speculation. I’ll start from the beginning, Leicester’s interest, and the media. I think there would have been no interest for Clark had the unbeaten run been sullied with one defeat. Furthermore, the recent media coverage of this feat has raised the profile of Lee Clark and of the club, increasing speculation in the manager and players alike. Now to the media, and their consistent misinterpretation of the facts, I was sickened by the amount of times I saw Lee Clark portrayed as a ‘talented manager working on a shoe-string budget’. A talented manager he may be, but a shoe-string budget he certainly has not had. And there is the crux of the matter, had there been one loss in the past 41 league games, then I’m almost certain there would have been no interest in Clark, and that he would be portrayed rightly, as a decent manager on a learning curve.
However, I think I’ve been far too morbid and cynical in the earlier part of this blog, so I’ll switch to the positive. We’ve got a manager that has rejected the very appealing lure of championship football and a very healthy pay-packet. We’re second in the league, unbeaten since last year and look very well set indeed to gain promotion at the end of the season. After a fantastic end to last season (barring OT) and a good start this season, it is apparent that we’ve got the right man in charge, and a fantastic chance of achieving our goals this season. It’s fantastic to see that the speculation is over and hopefully it won’t have any effect on the players, and we can record a victory against Walsall this weekend.
As for Leicester it looks likely to be a two-horse race between Mark Hughes and Roy Keane, for their sake I hope they choose the former, although I doubt they’ll be entirely happy with anyone other than Martin O’Neill. So fingers crossed for 3 points at the weekend, ‘till next time...
No comments:
Post a Comment