No, seriously... Accrington Stanley, who *are* they?

It's not so much the sacking of John Coleman after more than 22 years as their manager over two spells, but the way in which they did it.

For 23 years service, it didn’t seem like much of a send-off. You might argue that it’s bad enough that a manager who, over two periods, had been in charge of the club for that amount of time should be sacked mid-season like some sort of parvenu from the lower orders who was promoted beyond The Peter Principle and was ultimately so far from his depth that his shortcomings could be seen immediately, and from space. I couldn’t possibly comment.

But 43 words? Less than two a year? What on earth has been going on at Accrington Stanley to make this the end of such a lengthy spell. John Coleman should have been leaving the club with a carriage clock, at a time of his choosing, not cast aside in a manner which suggests that they’ve forgotten who he is already. I mean:

Accrington Stanley can today confirm that John Coleman and Jimmy Bell have been informed that their contracts are terminated with immediate effect.

Everyone at the club thanks them for their long-standing service and we wish them all the very best for the future.

Oh, errr…. okay?

Thanks for letting us know, I guess?

In football terms, John Coleman was an anomaly. Football is now less patient with managers than it ever has before. Several are on their third full-time manager this year, a number that quickly increases still further when you add caretakers as well. There’s a new name at the top of the list of longest serving managers; Simon Weaver of Harrogate Town, who’ll celebrate his 15th anniversary with the club in the summer, presuming they don’t pull a Stanley; which doesn’t seem likely.

(Three of the next five in this list for the Premier League and EFL combined make up the current top three in the Premier League, for the record, which probably says something about the pull of the biggest clubs.)

His first spell with the club, between 1999 and 2012, couldn’t have started more dramatically. Accrington were relegated from the Premier Division of the Northern Premier League at the end of the season prior to Coleman’s arrival and at the end of the 1999/2000 season, his first full one in charge, three teams were tied on points with only two promotion places available. Accrington, on +53, won the title. Burscough finished as runners-up on +46. Witton Albion, on +42, missed out.

Three years later they were promoted into the Football Conference as champions of the Northern Premier League, with 97 goals and 100 points from 44 matches. And three years later they won the Conference by eleven points from Hereford United. It all seemed to happen as if on the downlow, too, but that didn’t make the story any less incredible; Accrington Stanley, a name synonymous with failure or under-achievement, were back in the Football League, 44 years after their mid-season resignation.

Representing a small town sandwiched almost exactly halfway between two much bigger clubs, Burnley and Blackburn Rovers, Accrington were still fighting against the tide, but they held their own in the League. Coleman left for Rochdale in January 2012, after twelve and half years. He returned in September 2014, and in 2018 took them up to League One, where they held their own again for five years before finally falling victim to the reality of football’s financial gravitational pull at the end of last season. It says something for what the club had achieved that this relegation almost felt like a surprise, coming after two seasons in the middle of the division.

So, what had the manager with 22 and a half years service done that was so egregious? Losing 4-0 at Wrexham was a bad result, but Wrexham are in the middle of a promotion race and among the division’s highest scoring teams. Recent form hasn’t been great. After a reasonably encouraging start to life back in League Two, results have drifted in recent weeks. The Wrexham defeat was their fifth of 2024 in the league. But their recent form has been inconsistent rather than bad. Club owner Andy Holt, considered for years to be one of the ‘good eggs’ among football club owners, has also deleted his Twitter account.

So what is going on? We can only presume that there is much more to this than meets the eye, because none of the above feels like a consistent reason to so tersely sack a manager of such service, at this point of the season. It is true to say that Accrington Stanley have not been the team they were for the last season and three-quarters. Nine losses from eleven games from the middle of March to the end of April sealed their fate last season, and even two wins from their last three games wasn’t enough to keep them up, though they only ended up two points adrift. Add this year’s patchiness to that, and it feels as though a substantial amount of lustre has faded.

Of course, the question of whether Coleman deserved to go now is different to the matter of whether he deserved to go in the way that he did. The way in which Accrington handled their business with regard to this has proved baffling to supporters, and it hasn’t exactly shone the most positive of lights upon the club. With only two relegation places and a 19 point gap to second from bottom Forest Green Rovers, their current 16th place position is, if taken in isolation, almost a tiny bit misleading. Their likelihood of going down this season is slim to nil.

But again, that only serves as another reminder of that initial question. Why now, and why like this? If this is a season in which they’re going nowhere (they’re also eight points off the play-off places), then the last couple of months are free hits. The club could have agreed for him to stand down at the end of the season, had some sort of extended victory lap for him over the last few weeks, given him his carriage clock, and waved him off into the sunset. But they didn’t, and that they didn’t raises uncomfortable questions which the closure of the club owner’s (previously highly vocal) Twitter account indicates he’s in no mood to answer.

The challenge for the club now is picking a successor. They do have the space to be able to try someone out for the remainder of this season. Remember, this season can be treated as something of a series of free hits. But no-one will want to get through to the end of this season without an improvement on the pitch, and Accrington supporters could be forgiven feeling slightly nervous about next season, considering what a step into the unknown they’d be taking.

As for John Coleman, well, presumably one day someone will write the tribute that his time with Accrington Stanley deserves. It just wasn’t to be Accrington Stanley, at the point that they jettisoned him. The reason it was presented may well end up saying far more about the condition of that club at present than the fact that it happened in the first place.