Cheltenham Town new manager Darrell Clarke has an enormous task on hand if he hopes to keep the Robins in league one after one of their worst ever starts to a league season.
The Robins currently have just nine points from their opening 16 games this season, a whopping eight points adrift of safety.
Prior to the appointment of former Port Vale manager Darrell Clarke, Cheltenham were under the leadership of Wade Elliott who guided the side from Gloucestershire to 16th. It took until their 12th match of the season to even score a goal which came in the draw at the Completely-Suzuki Stadium with Derby County.
Furthermore, it was two games later where they managed to win their first game of the season in all competitions when Cheltenham picked up an excellent win against Cambridge curtesy of Liam Sercombe’s delightful finish and then later beat Port Vale away 2-1.
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Going on that sort of run where you go 1,029 minutes without finding the net is somewhat embarrassing and laughable. If you are to struggle as much as the Robins did to find the net, then you clearly do not belong in the division.
In fairness to Cheltenham, it has been a remarkable rise to League One when you factor in seven years ago, they were in the fifth tier, two divisions below.
They walked the Conference League (fifth tier) picking up a whopping 101 points on their way to glory. Five seasons later and they earned a place in League One after winning the League Two title with 82 points.
However, after a steady couple of seasons in League One establishing themselves just below midtable, they have not been able to kick on from this and set their sights on higher places like Stevenage have who are arguably smaller than the Robins.
You can say it was mainly down to the lack of direction the club were heading in and bigger clubs swooping in and taking key elements such as Michael Duff’s departure to Barnsley, and more recently, top scorer Alfie May joining League One rivals Charlton for just £250,000 which in today’s market is pennies!
Mark Halliwell, a local radio commentator, told Sky Sports: ‘’Everyone’s going to say losing Alfie (May) in the summer, they haven’t been able to find a way to replace him.’’
In fact, Alfie May scored a staggering 40% of Cheltenham’s goals in 2022/23 season and if they were to replace a man of that caliber, they’d have to pull their pockets out and spend all the yearly budget on a player who could supply them with ammunition.
Credit where credit is due, the Robin’s have been a little busier than others in the transfer market and recently they announced the deal for former Port Vale, Stevenage and Lincoln midfielder, Tom Pett, who signed on a short-term deal until January.
The reason for the 31-year-old’s pen to paper contract was mainly because of his relationship with the new man in charge Darrell Clarke.
Talking to Gloucestershire Live, Pett said: ‘’I was really keen to work for a manager that I trust and he knows what I’m all about, so it was a win-win.
‘’You’ll run through brick walls for him and you can see the lads are doing that last weekend because I was at the game (2-1 win at Port Vale)’’
Let’s be real though, if Cheltenham believe signing Port Vale’s scraps is going to help them achieve survival, then I believe that Cheltenham fans need to start planning for life in League Two next season.
Plus, signing midfielders is not the way forward for the red and white side as need to fix up on end product and goal scoring. They are currently averaging 0.44 goals per game which is roughly one goal per two games, coupled with the fact that they are averaging 1.56 goals conceded per game. Only two clean sheets in 16 games are nowhere near good enough for a side hoping to win games.
Funnily enough, one of the two clean sheets was against Portsmouth who are currently top, 27 points ahead of little old Cheltenham.
The reason for that result might be because both sides were doing a lot of waiting around as two linesmen suffered from injuries resulting in a 21-minute added on time period. Very much a freak result on the south coast.
Moving onto the new man, Darrell Clarke, is he really the man for the job? He walks into a team struggling on confidence, not scoring goals, with a lot of work to do if he hopes to turn around the Robins form.
His win percentage as a manager is fairly average, with 46.7% of his 403 matches across various levels ending with a win.
You do have to give a bit of creditability to Clarke, as he has collected eight points from a possible six games in League One, whereas Wade Elliott could only manifest one point out of 10 matches.
The huge question mark though is regarding the age of Clarke. For a young manager at 45 years of age, to step into a job with high pressure, and a team who are in a dog fight to survive, it is going to take real minerals to keep them up.
In my opinion it just doesn’t happen, there is no fairytale ending for Clarke at Cheltenham. The Robin’s look too poor to recover, conceding goals and not scoring many. They have only managed two games where they’ve scored more than one. Relegation seems to be the only possible backdoor for Cheltenham who are going to follow the same fate as their rivals Forest Green who were relegated with 27 points last season.
