By David Sindall
February 10 2025

Last week our Chairman put out a statement explaining that Nigel Adkins would remain as manager. Apparently our perception that changing managers mid season will improve results is a misguided one. It seems that every club that does this is wrong. We are foolishly indulgent to think otherwise.

I have read Mark Palios’ words many times and each time I am left with a sense of despair. ‘In Nigel’s case, we have a manager with huge experience, a track record of many successes in his career, and a genuine passion for a club he has supported all his life’. It’s worth looking at the evidence behind that statement.

 

Nigel Adkins may have huge experience but that doesn’t justify his retention. Week in week out we see a team that is struggling, team selections that lack coherency and team tactics that make little sense. Quite how this huge experience is being applied to the massive disaster that is taking place is shrouded in mystery. He took Reading down from the Premier League to the Championship . He has flirted with disaster elsewhere. Aside to Southampton, he is rarely mentioned in affectionate terms. 

 

Then there is the ‘track record of many successes’. Adkins has managed at Bangor City, Scunthorpe Utd, Southampton, Reading, Sheffield Utd, Hull City, Charlton Athletic and now Tranmere. Only his period at Scunthorpe can be deemed a success. He was there for 4 years and was successful. However, this was 15 years ago. He has never repeated the early success. In his other jobs he has repeated a pattern that has emerged at Rovers, early success followed by failure. He left Charlton in October 2021. Two years later he joined Rovers. A manager of such vast experience was not snapped up by any other club until he joined Rovers. Given his many success it seems odd he was out of the game for so long, but maybe his ‘achievements’ with our club offer evidence as to why this is?

 

We were also told that Nigel has ‘a passion for a club he has supported all his life’. Most home matches you will find about 80% of the crowd are the same. Passionate people who have supported Rovers all their lives. That’s not a qualification for being a manager of anything other than a pub team. Yet the words of our chairman are all that matters.

 

‘I cannot see what is to be gained by gambling on a less experienced/successful manager, with no real connection to the Club and who would be brought in to manage a squad that he has not chosen’ explains Mark. Odd that this didn’t apply to any of the other managers who have been dismissed by the current owners, including Keith Hill sacked before the play offs. Is this a confession of past failure? Or is it an abdication of our Chairman’s responsibility as owner? Worse still what does it mean in practice? Adkins will manage us in the National League and then the National League North? After all he is passionate about the club and vastly experienced. He has more than 2 years on his contract to run. 

 

In my open letter I tried to give Mark Palios the benefit of the doubt. That was a mistake. There can be no doubt. It would seem that Adkins serves Palios well, a yes man, a useful idiot who will run the shop until the new owners take over.  The argument for the retention are just a further  demonstration of the smoke and mirrors we have become used to. We will sue the Football League,; We dream of taking the club to the Championship; We will build a new stadium; We will establish a golden share. The list is endless. 

 

The  club will be sold for 50 pieces of silver. It feels like  the Chairman is abusing the trust supporters have placed in him. Nothing is achieved by sticking with a failing manager. We are hurtling towards the National League. A club without a manager capable of changing our situation, a club with a chairman unprepared to act. This is a disaster in which supporters are being treated as fools. We are being failed,  treated with contempt. 

 

54321, that’s your club gone.