He talks about “a team of men” (the opposition) as if corralling a kindergarten himself. He talks about confidence not being great and players in a rut. He mentions that we’re “light in forward areas” and “need pace” and yet the very man who offered that, Ryan Graydon, was gift-wrapped to League Two rivals’ Salford City for around half a million quid.
Pete Wild, Fleetwood Town head coach, once defiant, once rousing in a League Two kind of way, now appears not stoical, but glum – at the mercy of that biannual call from prison, a victim of former chairman Andy Pilley’s trickery and money laundering, and his current desire to keep the club afloat while jammed behind bars.
Fleetwood Town was always a selling club, a feeder club, a club which harnessed talent and sold it on – proud of its record in developing players by the coast (David Harrington, Phoenix Patterson, Brendan Wiredu, Promise Omochere, Carl Johnston, Cian Hayes, Josh Earl, Paddy Lane, Shayden Morris, James Hill, Wes Burns, Jay Matete) – but now it feels like a ‘50% off’ clothes store, the place to go for bargains or slightly-out-of-fashion garb.
“We’ve gotta roll with what we’ve got,” Wild told the BBC on Saturday 17th January, post-Cambridge United, post their fourth consecutive defeat in all competitions, acutely aware of the Sisyphean reality and the now unlikely flirtation with promotion. Once optimistic, Fleetwood has become, in many ways, an oppressed housewife keen to go to the ball but denied the necessary sexy dress.
The wardrobes that sit inside Highbury and Poolfoot Farm still house doggedness and skill in the form of Harrison Neal, Elliot Bonds, Ethan Ennis, Kayden Hughes, Mark Helm and Ched Evans, but too many players are underperforming, or dispirited by the ‘sell and survive’ strategy dressed up as ‘evolutionary wonder’.
What hopes this club had of once again treading the turf as League One players, chests puffed out, seduced by the magic of the third tier with its sense of being someone, have well and truly disintegrated as if FTFC is now twinned with HM Prison Service. Key personnel are missing, yes (including James Bolton, Denver Hume, Will Johnson, Lewis McCann, James Norwood and Finley Potter), but the midfield is still the midfield, yet with the seeming responsibility of a six-year-old child.
Elliot Bonds and Mark Helm, in particular, need to take a hard look at themselves and ask: What is it that I want from my career? To coast or dazzle. Both have been supplied with ample, God-given ability, yet neither have really excelled this season. Bonds needs to be braver, forward thinking and leadership-inclined, even when playing alongside the more mouthy, adopted son of Wild, Harrison Neal. Likewise, Helm, oozing skill and flair when ‘on it’ needs to consistently believe that he will always be one of the more capable players on the park and thus produce.
Without this thrust, this solidity, in front of the defence and behind the attack, Fleetwood is a shadow club, blocking out the light, feeble in its forays, apathetic and ailing in its adventures. A club has to believe in order to make strides. Who provides that belief? The gifted handful within it that demand 100%, that don’t accept trudging and shuffling around; the few greats that lead by example.
Fleetwood Town is, granted, down to the bare bones. It has used three or four defensive lines this season. It has had to contend with the inevitable departure of goalkeeper David Harrington who had the potential to really re-build this club with his extraordinary Spiderman-like presence. It brought in the experienced and canny midfielder Jordan Davies from Wrexham who has been plagued by injury. It also brought in Will Davies, a striker from Sutton United, who was deft and delightful early season, but then nonchalant and idle. As for Toby Mullarkey, he looks the part, physically strong, a glider, but never seemed to find a consistent place in this team or earn Wild’s respect.
Why? Why do these ‘mistakes’ happen? Is it the pot luck of free transfers, clubs now bathing in the availability of players, most of whom are ‘suspect’ if their contracts run down? Or is it simply a club on its uppers claiming to still be a ‘going concern’ but frantically re-arranging the chairs on the Titanic?
I still believe that this club four miles from my house is capable of greatness. I still recognise potential when I see it in the form of defenders Conor Haughey and Will Johnson. I still love the thrill and prospect of a new striker coming through the ranks or an up-and-coming midfielder not held back by overthinking the game.
See what you’ve still got, Pete, but make them run. Make them earn every last pound of their salary. Make them fight for the badge as Jamie Vardy did, as David Ball did, as Wes Burns did, as Carl Johnston did.