Guilt at letting down the manager

HAPPIER TIMES . . . Robbie Simpson gets a hug from Paul Dickov after Athletic’s 2-0 win at Colchester United in early December.

The Latics star writes every week for Chron Sport
I AM gutted the manager has gone. Paul Dickov was the main reason I stayed at Athletic in the summer.

And I am also gutted that as a player, I couldn’t do more to have saved his job.

The 2012-13 season has been stop-start for me. Injuries have taken their toll and I haven’t been able to find the form I managed last season.

There is guilt that I let the manager down — and I know other players feel the same. Ultimately, results build pressure; the bad run we were on forced him to leave.

The past couple of weeks have been very strange. Even before the Liverpool game, both the manager and players knew that the pressure was on — especially after the three members of staff were sacked.

We all felt that pressure to some extent.

In the days after the game, with the papers concentrating on the manager’s future rather on our win over the Premier League giants, the writing was on the wall.

In all my time in football I have never come across a harder-working manager — particularly so when his staff were taken away. He took on all their tasks and more. I am sure he will go on to have a very successful career elsewhere.

He said his goodbyes to us when he came to the club to collect his things.

He told us that he didn’t hold anything against the players and that things just didn’t go his way.

But I hope his departure serves as a wake-up call to the squad. We need to get out of the hole that we find ourselves in sooner rather than later. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get moving.

Our job is simply to go out and perform and concentrate on football.

We have to rally together even more to try to get wins in the bag, starting with the visit of MK Dons on Saturday.

Paul Murray has a vast number of games under his belt and big Chris Iwelumo is also well-versed in the game. The leadership they offer, along with Cliff Byrne as players over the age of 30, will help the squad as a whole.