Sibbick on Struber relationship and Belgian exile

I never thought we could stay up last season. At no point throughout did I think it was going to happen until the final whistle was blown on the final day. Massive credit to our players for the work they put in and for following the instructions of our manager. They ran their blood to water. They did an amazing job. But it was Struber who masterminded it.

I don't think any other manager in the world could have saved us. What he did was phenomenal. I will always give him credit for it, he performed superbly.

But I don't like him. I'm glad we let him go. I think our current manager is a million times more likeable and is getting far more out of this squad of players than Struber could ever do. Struber performed unbelievably in the face of adversity. We didn't start this season in the face of adversity. We only sold one player. He acted like he'd been fK*ced on. He hadn't. As much as I don't particularly like our board, what they've done through the Covid crisis is pretty bloody cool. OK, they sold Jacob Brown, and I really liked Jacob Brown, but they got a good price for him, he wanted to go, and we've signed umpteen players using that money, and many more more besides.

We've got a genuine legend managing us now. Struber is definitely worthy of credit. But he's not a nice bloke, and ultimately that would have affected us negatively. And I would argue it already had, hugely, before he left.

 

The vast majority of the players really liked Struber. I’m not sure where this idea has come from that he wasn’t a nice bloke.

There’s always players who aren’t happy as they’ll want to play more but he did a cracking job.

In the end like most of our managers he wanted more from the board which he didn’t get & subsequently wanted to leave. The same will probably happen with Val at some stage if he keeps been successful. It’s just the way it is for a club of our size.

 

Another illustration of how well this season is going. Jacob Brown was fantastic last season, and I was pretty unhappy we'd sold him (understood it, the model and all that).

However, I'd completely forgotten about him until reading this.

 

It doesn't make great reading if what Toby says is true. It might not be though, not because I doubt Toby's integrity, but simply because there could have been misunderstandings down to language gaps, culture gaps and just plain bad timing when Struber was busy, flustered or down. I'm sure there are people at work who think I'm an ar5e due to my morning grump and illegible Barnsley mutterings.

Toby's thoughts shouldn't be discounted mind you. I hope Val handles things well, even when he doesn't favour players, like Simoes. I hope none of our players feel they no longer have a chance if they work hard enough. The returns of Victor and Toby into the first team reckoning make me hopeful that Val does the right thing here.

It has to be said, I'm fairly sure football coaches/managers are not the most professional a group of people as a whole. There is still a whiff of jobs for the boys about football management. In what other industry would yelling, swearing and throwing things at your staff be considered normal?

Has anyone listened to the Clive Allen interview on Undr the Cosh? At one point he talks about when he was showing Harry Redknapp around the Spurs camp, Harry taking over as manager, Clive in the capacity as caretaker manager. It turned out that the previous manager, Ramos I think, had fallen out with the majority of the squad, sending many highly rated players to play with the development squads with no route back into the first team. Allen reckons players were playing in fear, knowing one mistake would cost them their career.

I mean, what the actual flip. If supporters knew this kind of thing was going on at the time. How common is this in the game? We know that coaches/managers have their foibles when it comes to tactics and their favourites when it comes to team selection, but we assume there is a basic level of management competence in place. We assume they aren't acting against the interests of the club and players due to personal disagreements and vanity.

If this sort of thing is rife, no wonder the new manager bounce is so ubiquitous. Players are so relieved to get rid of the poundland dictators.

 

No doubt that we owe a lot as fans to Struber and the way he galvanised and inspired the team to stopping up last season.

He’s left me with a lot of happy memories that season but there’s no smoke without fire when it comes to rumours about his man management skills.

I’d too been told that he just froze players out the team he didn’t like without proper explanation. Wouldn’t be honest with them.

Apparently his reasons for outing Wilks was that he couldn’t play Strubers style and couldn’t cope with the demands. The jury would be out on that one for me.

That aside, it won’t ever tarnish my view of what he did for us last season