Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. You can follow his progress and read every article (so far) here
Surely there can be no manager in English football who has experienced a wider range of football emotions than Rob Edwards. In August 2021, Edwards managed his first ever Football League match having been appointed by Forest Green Rovers and promptly won a league title in his first season. Three days after that achievement, Edwards was made Watford manager in the Championship.
Edwards is not the only Watford manager to struggle, but he was sacked after only 11 matches. When their greatest rivals Luton Town, mid-table in the Championship, offered him a quick route back into the division, Edwards took the chance.
Fast forward another six months and he was walking, dazed and enthused, around Wembley Stadium. Against all expectation, Edwards had taken Luton to the Premier League for the first time.
Then came relegation. Luton competed fiercely in the Premier League, with comfortably the lowest budget and the lowest revenue, but ultimately succumbed to relegation. To labour the point: three years, three jobs, three divisions, three promotions or relegations.
“I’m not a new coach – that’s worth pointing out,” Edwards says, when i asks him about the three-year rollercoaster.
We are sat on a bench outside Luton’s gym building at the club’s training complex, players and coaches buzzing around, saying hi to the gaffer as they pass.
“I retired when I was 30. It took me eight years to get my first managerial job. I think if I started now, at the same age post-retirement, I would probably get in a lot quicker. But I was one of the first of the younger ones coming through and we probably weren’t trusted. All of a sudden those younger coaches have become more en vogue.
“But then all that makes you. I’d never change those eight years. I’ve got so many great experiences, from youth teams at Wolves and Manchester City, to working with the first-team at Wolves, to a few years at Telford in non-league and with England too. From getting that job at Forest Green to now has been an amazing journey, a rollercoaster, but one that I was prepared for.”
Luton Town earnt admirers in the Premier League. Their route from non-league and financial abyss to the top-flight was held up as an example to all, the provincial club that slowly and then quickly got everything right and fulfilled their ultimate dream.
They excelled through scoring late goals and fell down through fine margins, 13 defeats by a single-goal margin including against Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea, Tottenham and Manchester United.
Edwards became the de facto ambassador for that spirit. He was thrown into the limelight because the cultural dominance of the Premier League demands it. Across the world, he was the face of the semi-patronising “little Luton” coverage with its infinite images of the entrance to the away end.
Luton Town 1-4 Burnley (Monday 12 August)
- Game no: 2/92
- Miles: 176
- Cumulative miles: 296
- Total goals seen: 9
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: The move for the fourth goal. Sweeping. Burnley look seriously dangerous.
And then something happened that Edwards, nor any other manager, could adequately prepare for. On 16 December, 2023, Luton’s captain Tom Lockyer collapsed on the pitch during an away game against Bournemouth, having suffered a cardiac arrest.
Supporters, teammates, staff all feared the worst as the game was abandoned. Lockyer, who had also collapsed during the play-off final, later revealed that he had technically been dead for 160 seconds. It created incredible strain on the club and its manager.
“When you talk about the three years that I’ve had, you have to add that into the equation because it made it a challenging year for us all. It was incredibly difficult for us to deal with and, if I’m honest, I think it still affects people here.
“The day itself was clearly hugely emotional, especially that relief when we found out that Locks was okay. We did the lap of the ground to thank the supporters, including the Bournemouth fans for their respect.
“What then made it a little easier was going to see him that night, seeing him sitting up in bed. There were so many wires attached to him, but he was up and awake and that put me at ease, not that it was about me.
“The best thing for me to do was to speak to them all. We got everyone in a room and I just talked about Locks, what he meant to me and us all. I told them that I didn’t want to use him as motivation, because that felt selfish in some way. But Locks wanted us to win, so we had to embrace what he was as a person.
“He’s not the biggest, strongest, quickest or best footballer in the world, but he has dragged himself from National League to the Premier League, captaining a team and scoring in the top flight. So we embodied what he is, his spirit and his bravery. I got emotional again in front of the players.”
Emotion is something that comes up a lot over the course of our interview, because Edwards clearly wears it close to his chest. His wife and children regularly tease him gently for it too.
After defeat at West Ham all-but confirmed relegation last season, Luton’s manager was in tears on the pitch. What made him go, he says, was not the event itself but the manner in which the away end sang and cheered his and his players’ names long after the final whistle.
That emotion always needs to be managed, but it can be a significant strength, particularly at a club that has always aimed to punch above its weight. Edwards namechecks Jurgen Klopp’s ability to unite Anfield, the 12th man principle, but it can be replicated elsewhere. If you unite a fanbase behind players and reduce the gaps between the myriad elements of a football club, you can move mountains.
“The supporters are the most important people at any football club,” he says. “They’re here well before us and they will be after us as well, and that it’s something that I’ll never, ever overlook. Win, lose or draw, I will always say thank you to them.
“But that goes across the club. I’ll be honest with people. I want to know how they’re getting on, what they’re doing in their lives and try to be very open. Whether they’re a starter who plays every single week or someone who hasn’t played for six weeks, I’ll always try and speak to them as much as possible, say hello, shake their hand in the mornings and be there and visible.
“I just want to try and be a good person. I want to try and help people when I can. If that’s someone who is unemployed coming in to see what we do, we’re open to that. If that’s Jacob Brown bringing a young lad in to come in and raise some awareness and raise some money for his charity and for a hospital up in Sheffield, we have to do it. Do you know what I mean? I want us to be good people.”
In those for whom emotional openness is clearly authentic, football can take its toll. Scratch that: football does take its toll. You work for years and years towards an unspecified goal, invest entirely into that journey at the expense of everything else.
And then, when you get there, there’s always another hill to climb because no manager ever gets to complete football. To that we can add addiction. As Edwards says, nothing can ever replicate the feeling of a win. And so he is full committed to the next goal: taking Luton back to the Premier League.
Edwards is a quiet, private man who was thrown into the maelstrom of the Premier League ahead of supposed schedule. He was required to deal with an extraordinary – and extraordinarily stressful – event that nobody ever wants to face.
Perhaps it would be easier if you could remove the emotion out of the sport, but then, as Edwards alludes to, that’s the point of the whole thing. It creates an impossible balance.
“I want to be a good husband and a good dad and make sure I do get time with my family,” he says.
“Something that really strikes me in the Sir Alex Ferguson and Sir Bobby Robson films is when their children say ‘Dad wasn’t there’.
“But these two were incredibly successful football managers, amongst the best we’ve ever seen. So there’s a part of me that I want to aspire to all that, to aim to go as high as possible, but not at the expense of missing too much.
“Three and a bit years ago, I wasn’t even in first-team management at the time, Everything I was doing was trying to get there. I feel incredibly lucky.
“And if I never achieve anything again, to have won a league title and won at Wembley in a Championship play-off final, under the most pressure I’ve ever felt, I’ll be incredibly proud. But I don’t want to just accept that. I can’t.”
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/aOU4Wzi
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