With Division Two football secured for a further season, we are now at liberty to lift the lid on the goings on at Oakwood B this season. PLUS the club's hierarchy can exclusively reveal why they’ve been forced to let Ian Tussie go.
A club spokesman told JC Sport: Things haven’t been right since the summer to be honest, Danny. A lethargic approach to transfers (“they can come to me”) coupled with a style of football that could only be described as Neanderthal set alarm bells ringing. (I still shudder thinking back to the season opening 0-0 draw against Blizzard Storm. I think we had 8 centre halves playing. The horror.)
Tus has tried to weather the storm, but it’s got on top of him. Anyone who’s been around him knows he’s just not been himself. At the recent curry club social he only ordered 250 poppadoms for the table. Last season during the thrilling Division Three title race he was ordering well over 300. He’s taken it to heart. His team talks have gone from withering and critical to, frankly, downright depressing. Asking the question ‘what’s the point in all this, you’re all going to let me down anyway’ hasn’t been a successful managerial tactic since Brian Clough was in his pomp. And he ended with relegation and a drink problem. We were determined that wouldn’t happen to Ian. So the club did everything to make sure he didn’t get relegated and bought him a bottle of Baileys for those lonely Sunday nights.
It's all such a shame. He used to be so good with people. But with each crushing defeat he became increasingly ratty and disconsolate. What happened to the happy-go-lucky smiley bloke that lit up the sidelines on a Sunday morning? It’s a total mystery but that’s what pressure can do I suppose.
It's the stress of the job, DC. No-one here has a bad word to say about Tus (apart from loads of the lads, me, Schocky, his dad, etc.), but his behaviour this season has forced our hand. We’ve had to let him go. He’s moaned about transfers but we’ve got more players on our books than City did under Frank Clark and Casino Joe Royal. The finances are stretched to breaking point. Some of the lads are playing without shorts on a Sunday. But Tus still feels hard done by.
He's got his favourites in the media (you) who’ve championed his cause but the results haven’t been there. We had to bring Ben ‘Pol’ Polak in to steer the ship back on course. He’s done a magnificent job. Grade A. He’s young, he’s learning but already we’ve seen an improvement. He’s the Dave Mackay to Tus’s Brian Clough and it’s been refreshing. The lads have responded magnificently.
It's the end of an era no doubt. We’ll be sad to see him go - but that fence at the Hive won’t. Week after week, beating after beating it took as Tus ‘tested out his hammy’ with wayward free kicks. He owes that fence an apology.
