Adkins.Baraclough.Daws.Knill. The Season so far.....Part 1

I know this is a little bit late in the season to start a blog like this,but the next three weeks contain four of the most important games we've had for a while. Can we pull it off and get the points we need to give us Championship football next season,a few weeks ago you would have said no but now i'm not so sure that we're as doomed as the bookies think. The only answer is who knows,the only thing i can say for sure is we've got as good a chance as anyone else and if we play like we have for the last couple of weeks then i think we just might do it.
Any Iron fans out there will know how they felt last year, when Scunny boy Matt Sparrow scored that scruffy goal, on a barmy tuesday night, against Reading that secured us Championship football against the odds for another year. I get the feeling we might see something similar between now and the 7th of May. Last year was full of up and downs, the highs were high but the lows were equally as low. Who can forget the two Martyn Woolford goals that put Newcastle to the sword at Glanford Park, crazy days you will agree.
Who would have thought in the summer that by the end of this season we would have had four different managers in the hot seat. It was easy to see that Nigel Adkins had done all he could at Scunny, not replacing Hooper and Hayes was his biggest problem, and that he would move on as soon as a decent offer came his way. That offer came from Southampton early in the season, and one of Adkins' coach Ian Baraclough took the step up into the Managers seat. To be fair to him he was left with a very thin squad, Adkins' plan to ask Jon Forte and, the untested at this level, Chris Dagnall to replace the 50 odd goals that were lost to Celtic and Preston looked like a plan destined to fail from the start. We kept hold of the ball well at times but never looked like troubling the scorers charts to much effect, so it was no surprise that Bara brought in Lee Miller and Joe Garner during January tranfers madness.Both players looked better than what we had, but sticking two better strikers in a team that was still not creating much didn't make much difference and Bara was on to a hiding to nothing from the off.
Bara was relieved of his duties after a dismal tuesday night performance against Preston. The leagues bottom team were poor but we made them look like the 1970 Brazil team that night. When your own fans are singing "Your getting sacked in the morning" at you thats when you know its time to get you coat !
I was there that night to help out a fellow Telegraph photographer meet his deadline, so had the chance to watch both the Manager and Chairman in the last 10 minutes. Bara cut a lonely figure in the dug out, a bit like a boxer who knew the fight was nearly over. Usually at the final whistle he would be on the pitch and shake the hands of every single man as they left the pitch, on this night he was down the tunnel as soon as the whistle blew. I kind of sensed that it might be an important night so stuck around in the small Glanford Park press room, waiting to get a couple of pictures of him in his post match press. He looked tired.
Even after that i was surprised to get an early morning text from a fellow photographer saying he'd gone as Manager. Most other clubs i would have expected it, not at Scunny though,never did i think we would get rid of him that quick.
Tony Daws took over as Caretaker, always saying he didn't want the job full time. His one and only game was the trip to Ipswich. A game where we made the knackered knees of Jimmy Bullard look like Zidane in his pomp. Certain players looked like their heads were elsewhere, not on the task at hand. it was clear to see that whoever took over permanently had a big task to turn us around, a few heads needed banging together and the odd hair dryer was required. Pride in the shirt was what was needed. Standing in the photographers pit at pitchside i thought this was as low as we could get, how wrong was i, that delight was still to come !