Whats happened to Fairclough?

[First Half Only]

Sacked?

Moved upstairs again and waiting to take over again next season.?

Any news

[DerekRocholl]

Presumably he is returning the full focus of his considerable abilities to his important job as Director of Football Development.

[ShankBee]

Allen met Director of Football Development, Paul Fairclough, who was acting as temporary manager, today to agree the terms of his contract until the end of the season and the players were then told about Allen's return.

[hoofer2]

A good effort to Paul Fairclough for at least steadying a sinking ship, however in recent weeks our tactics have been very one dimensional with no change to formation etc. even when things were not going well.

[Golf Delta]

He did steady a sinking ship, but then sadly, lost the plot.

[Jon83]

As mentioned above, Fairclough steadied the ship and then TK should have replaced him. TK should have got rid of Stimson earlier than he did and the same applies to Fairclough.

[John_Carp1]

The fact remains that he is one of the most successful managers in non-league history. And we are very likely to be a non league club once again, come May.

[jerroll]

Agreed John but maybe at his age he does not want the fulltime job. Hopefully he can carry on the good work that appears to have been done with the youth setup, having seen the HSC games the trainees out performed some of the senior players (not dificult I suppose!)

[John_Carp1]

My 'sources' tell me he does want the manager's job full time, but that is family doesn't want him to do it. So you might have a point.

[lfolfo]

As mentioned above, Fairclough steadied the ship and then TK should have replaced him. TK should have got rid of Stimson earlier than he did and the same applies to Fairclough.

cobblers. He didn't 'steady the ship' he completely regained the trust and effort of some seriously demotivated and embarrassed players. Even with a couple of signings, they did not have the ability to play in any other way so Fairclough’s initial direct approach didn’t achieve much better results than trying to play ‘possession football’ and dominate games (which we also failed at miserably).
How many chairmen would sack their manager in the first half of the season? TK did the right thing in trying to give Stimson time and PF was the obvious man to take over. I'm not sure who people think we could have got when PF took over but it would either be another unemployed man with a mixed record and who would probably want a longer contract than to the end of the season (ie Stimson v2) or a complete novice/ex player (ie another Cottee.)Allen falls into the former category but was obviously happy to give it a go until the end of the season-I doubt he would have done this a few weeks ago when there was more risk to his reputation. Appointing Allen won’t make much difference in my view but is a gungho roll of the dice in the hope that another ‘change’ will fire up the players. It has little reflection on Fairclough who was working with some severely limited tools.

[JayB]

The fact remains that he is one of the most successful managers in non-league history. And we are very likely to be a non league club once again, come May.

PF is tactically niave unfortunately, if she stayed in charge we would have gone down and not faired much better in the conference.

[John_c]

A simple answer would be the points per game ratio for stimson compared to PF. Does anyone know it?

[jerroll]

Giving PF the benefit of not including game at chavs he was 15 points from 15 so 1point per game & MS was 19 from 22 so would have been around 39 points over a full season.

[Jon83]

18 managers were sacked/resigned prior to Stimson getting the boot on 1st January. He should have been sacked by the start of December at the very latest although I assume that TK had to wait until January because of contractual issues/compensation etc...

Fairclough is not beyond criticism - Im not knocking the job he did when he first came in however, and this is perhaps more of an issue with TK, why was he never confirmed as being manager until the end of the season etc - TK never publicly backed him after his initial statement when Stimson was sacked - if TK had full faith in Fairclough, why did he not appoint him as manager until the end of the season after the first 5/6 games of Fairclough's latest reign - was he trying to get someone else in or did he simply let matters drift?

For what its worth, I think TK has made the right decision in replacing Fairclough but he has simply left it to late.