Who's the new manager?

Originally published @ 10:18 am, Sun 9th May 2010

Everyone's telling me it's time to take a break and I will, honest, just once I've tapped in the returns from talking to people on Thursday.

But I did actually take the opportunity of the last Saturday of the normal full season to see Shrewsbury Town, my favourite club, play at Port Vale.

I have to say I've lost track recently. I saw them at home to Burton on the opening day, away at Notts County (when a cold had prevented me doing anything else), away at Burton in January (I'd only realised in the morning that Salop were playing so close), so this was my fourth game of the season - a record low since when I was 10.

It gets worse. I'd only found out we'd sacked the manager on Wednesday, something like a week after the fact. "Who's the new manager?" "We've not appointed yet."

It gets worse again. I didn't happen across a programme seller, so despite the names on the back of everyone's shirt, I only really knew one player, Kelvin Langmead.

So it was no surpise to me that when 4 Germans came into our end with a banner saying "Deutschers - let's have it", I didn't know which player they were referring to. Yet we are a small enough club for one of my mates to know that one of our keenest supporters works in Germany for Mercedes-Benz and he'd probably brought his mates over for a weekend, end-of-season party.

Opportunity to stress the closeness of our relations with Europe? Or draw a cheesy parallel betwen the lack of a manager and not knowing who the Prime Minister will be when Parliament meets? Perhaps, but I'm taking a break.