If you get a bloke around to do some plumbing and he floods your house, you bin him off and get a new plumber. If you get a sparky in and the first time you switch the lights on you get a shock which makes you look like the bloke out of Beetlejuice, you get a new electrician. Course you could I suppose say "Tell you what Pavel, give it another crack mate" but few of us would do it given the option.
It's much the same with football managers. Once a fella has mucked it up to a lesser or greater extent, that's normally that. Even when the team being rubbish isn't really their fault, the manager normally bites the bullet when things go pear shaped.
Rewind to the end of last season. After one win in nineteen games I'd say the vast majority of fans would have pulled the plug on the manager. He HAD mucked it up, there WASN'T to my mind any sensible excuses for a run THAT bad, and it seemed only a matter of time before there was a picture of the mythical "Cowley brothers" holding our scarf aloft on the OS.
The fans forum came and went. I'd say anybody who was there couldn't help but feel a bit of human sympathy for the manager. It wasn't just that he'd lost his better players in January, it was that we got a picture of the structure surrounding him. I spoke with him myself afterwards. I'd been impressed by his bravery in showing up, taking it on the chin. Under some quite extreme questioning from the floor (some from me) he retained his dignity, spoke with conviction. During the quick chat afterwards I told him that I would personally have pulled the trigger, but now that the club had backed him, so did I. I said I wanted to properly get behind him, but "Sheesh Johnnie you gotta win some football matches mate". He knew the score, he knew that he had a few weeks at the start of this season to avoid the chop.
And now this season. Imagine if THIS season had been his first. A trip to and an excellent performance at Chelsea, a cup win against Coventry. Some brilliant performances in the league, the team looking (to me anyway) to be in with a great chance of the playoffs. Just imagine this season had been his first, infact don't "imagine" it, pretend that it actually is his first, forget about last season altogether.
The reason I say that is that I still sense there are those who are struggling to fully row in behind Johnnie Jackson. Perhaps there's a reluctance to be proven wrong, I get that. The thing is though, I'm not sure that those of us who said last season was a disaster and nowhere near good enough WERE wrong. It WAS both a disaster and nowhere near good enough, but once the board decided to roll the dice and stick with the manager, it became irrelevant. If you're gonna back the manager, you've got to back the manager.
And people who say "I just can't take to him", once more I get it. His public stuff last season, from the no socks Zara clobber to the hands in the pockets demeanor to the prickly, defensive interviews were almost as bad as the results on the pitch. Once more though, that stuff is a million miles away from where he is now. It's club gear these days, he spends half the game squaring up to the fourth official with veins on his neck the thickness of hosepipes. I love that. In interviews he is more engaging, in person he is living up to the "tell you what, he's a lovely fella" billing that those who know him tell me.
Most of all though, I've always liked an underdog story and this a classic example. I thought it was a bonkers decision to keep him on, but as soon as we'd made it I wanted him to succeed. It can't have been easy coming into work when he knew the fans were against him, and when the players let him down not just on the pitch but at the end of season do as well, he must have wanted to lock himself in a dark room. It would have been really easy for him to walk away, go back to coaching, but he didn't. He stuck at it, he kept going and I like that.
And here we are today. I'm only a recent Wimbledon convert but the Johnnie Jackson story reminds me of when they were in the Premier League, beating the big boys with players that everyone had written off. He was damaged goods at the end of last season, had he gotten the bullet he wouldn't have gotten another gig anywhere else as manager. But he kept going, he kept listening to the fans, stayed humble and this season he is doing a fine job.
Whether or not you think I'm right about him getting a new contract is by the by. More important than that in the short term is finding a place in your heart to appreciate a fella who has dragged himself off the canvas when everybody thought he was finished. I think he gets AFC Wimbledon now, and I think he deserves every scrap of success he gets.
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