Farewell then Richard Money – my pick for the job when Mick went, but who didn’t lead us to the glory we needed. The performance on Saturday was dire and things had to happen. Fair play to RM that
he didn’t stick it out to the bitter end.
I’ll miss his press conferences – I’ll miss his complete re-interpretation of events I had witnessed with my own eyes. I’ll miss his incessant tinkering and his predilection for buying countless strikers and wingers. I’ll miss everyone having to come back for corners without leaving anyone up.
I won’t miss the dross we’ve been playing recently. He had – to use the common parlance – ‘lost the changing room’. The players weren’t playing for him or for anyone really.
They need a kick up the backside from an angry Scouser – fortunately, we have one waiting in the wings.
What I’d like to see:
Hatters play football: fast, high tempo passing football, closing the opposition down in their own half.
Some goals
A settled team
A settled formation
Some creativity in midfield
Some decent wing play and crosses
A genuine poacher in front of goal
Youngsters blooded instead of going into the market place.
But most of all promotion.
Money’s record was: P83 W45 D21 L17 – too many losses and not enough wins – even though that ratio is very high in the scheme of things. But let’s remember he inherited a team that was evicted from the league – not because we weren’t good enough but because of the arbitary and unfair points deduction by the FL and FA. We should have murdered this league, and perhaps now we will.
One final point, will they have changed the programme notes in time for tomorrow’s game?
I wish Richard Money well. As I said before he is complex, sometimes frustrating, sometimes confusing, slightly antagonistic man, but a man who I think is honest and likeable and passionate. Whatever he did on the field, at least he was man-enough to fall on his sword off it.
davidmosque.wordpress.com 
“I’ll miss his press conferences – I’ll miss his complete re-interpretation of events I had witnessed with my own eyes. I’ll miss his incessant tinkering and his predilection for buying countless strikers and wingers. I’ll miss everyone having to come back for corners without leaving anyone up.” They’ll be the things that I REALLY won’t miss. Along with the dross being served up recently. Let’s be honest, now it’s retrospective, this has been a pretty sour episode even in Luton’s chequered history – a manager completely at odds with the philosophy of the club, and a group of fans completely at odds with the philosophy of the manager. Entertaining it has not been. Let’s hope we manage to build something from this rubble by May, the season is far from over!
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Thanks for your comment Rob – I was trying to use irony – and failing….
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I suspected so, don’t get me wrong! I always enjoy your writings, and you (as I) always err on the side of optimism and fairness towards the team and management. I’m just so glad that this particular episode is now over (we had become ‘The Richard Money Show’), and feel no regret about Money’s departure – back to optimism and fairness rather than blind faith and sheer “shut your eyes and hope” with any luck.
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Is Joe Kinnear still available?
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I think it was our only chance to salvage something from this season, with Money at the helm I couldn’t see us making it through the play offs. The players need a boot up the backside, along with his tactics they deserve to shoulder the blame for this situation, lets hope Brabin has been frustrated in the last few months putting forward the view everyone else could see and getting knocked back by Money, so now he has the chance we gain the drive and impetus to push on and win the play off’s.
I just hope Carden doesn’t become a permanent fixture! as he most likely will….
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Carden won’t become a fixture – he’ll become Assistant Manager here instead of Cambridge! Imagine that…
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My feelings entirely David, especially about what needs to happen.
I’ve been sort of expecting this since the dismal draw at Cambridge. It was steadily becoming obvious the players just didn’t want to play for RM any more – something seriously wrong in the dressing room seemed the only cause. Saturday, we hit the depths. I had the misfortune to listen to the Southport match on 3CR, whilst under orders to tidy my shed. When Claude got substituted on 35 mins, it confirmed everything I feared. OK, Claude was playing badly, but so was everyone else in a Luton shirt. Not waiting till half time told everybody just how detacked RM had become. Making a public example of an individual is poor man management in any walk of life, and just about the worst thing to do when morale is a problem. That was the point I knew he had to go, and thankfully it has happened sooner rather than later. At least he had the decency to go before things got worse.
Let us hope the team will want to play for Eddie Brabin, and that the qualities that made him BSP manager of the year 2009 quickly become visible.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Mistakes are history. It is now up to everyone that calls themselves a Luton fan to get behind the new manager and the team. There is no reason why we can’t win the play-offs, and see the back of this awful league.
I’ll just add one thing to your “like to see” list, if I may. That we go down to Gatwick and stuff the pretenders in their own back yard
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David, always enjoy reading your blog. There are several hatters faithful here in North America and I am one of them.
It’s interesting that this happened now although from your take on the teams playing maybe it did not happen soon enough. Since I have been following the Hatters (say 1970) they have always challenged the fans faith. No lead is ever safe and in a nutshell, as I see it, that is their problem. The talent is there but what about the intangibles aka killer instinct?
Their is still time to build for the playoff run with Brabin and I will be listening to Three Counties via the net.
Keep up the excellent blog…
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I shall give ‘Brabs’ every chance to get things moving in the right direction, and won’t be calling for his head after one dodgy result.
And if he gets us promotion then the end justifies his means. I fear he is not quite in tune with (or even cares about) the Luton Town philosophy of quality passing football. As a player he was a midfield destroyer with an appalling disciplinary record, so it is unlikely he will come on like David Pleat the Second. However, if he gets us out of this wretched league we will thank him, and one day in the future we can start being purists again!
The other Rob (above) reckons Money was not in tune with the Luton philosophy, but I disagree. RM never resorted to long-ball football and in many ways he was unlucky. However, recently they did look dire, so something was going badly wrong.
No doubt Kinnear, Newell and the all the rest of them had their own private opinions about the moaning sections of our crowd, but only Money tried to retalitate in such a public way, and he ultimately paid the price. For some reason Luton fans never took to him: I remember when he was introduced to the crowd (in a very low-key way) in his first week – I seem to think it was raining around 15 mintues before kick-off, very few people were paying attention, and he wandered around looking too embarrassed to wave enthusiastically, and likewise the crowd reaction was very quiet. It all went downhill from there really.
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I refer to Money’s philosophy in two ways. Firstly, the football on the pitch: we have never been a side which plays negative football either home or away, certainly not when chasing a promotion berth at any rate. Survival first has unfortunately been Money’s primary instinct for much of his reign. Last year we stumbled across an impressive loan signing in Heslop and that gave the team the dynamism it had been lacking previously. Remember we were playing 4-5-1 with the strolling Nicholls before that, and Gallen up-front on his own home and away? This year has seen the addition of Owusu which has made much of our play more direct and one-dimensional, of course we lost Drury, but still, the football has been direct under Money of late. It has been negative and long-ish aswell, let’s be honest. Unfortunately no Heslop has materialised; just a Carden.
Secondly, football off the pitch: Money has discouraged a fair amount of up-and-coming players (e.g. Ed A-A and Poku), by using more ‘experienced’ pro’s at their expense. We’ve always been a club which has got fully behind our young players, and enjoyed seeing them thrown in to see their abilities. We’ve seen good and bad – for every Pembridge, Hartson, Foley and Davies, there’s been a Campbell, Farrell, Fraser and Douglas. But these guys have been given consistent chances, and this has been one of the joys of following the Hatters when so much else has been pretty depressing.
Money made his own luck I’m afraid – he’s signed players and not played them, he’s moved out players it may have been wiser to have kept, and he alienated himself from the supporters. He strikes me as one who might live and die by the sword, and I’m sure he will accept his fate as the decent bloke he comes across as. When all is said and done though, his reign has been a messy failure and that’s very much the reason he’s gone today.
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Great blog as usual. Now I’m all up for given Brabin an oppurtunity and as rightly said he was conference manager of the year 2009. My only slight concern is the last time a very good #2 became manager, a la Harford, we all now what happened there and from what I hear with Brabin taking training and doing more work with Team then Money did, it was the same with Big Mick under Big Fat Joe and Newell I just hope it goes better for Brabin then it did Harford.
I know a certain Danny Wilson is on the doll at the minute!! Food for thought
Come on the Hatters!!!
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I’m not convinced that now was the right time to get rid of the manager, have 2020 been panicked into making this decision by the supporters?
Our form at the moment reminds me a lot of Oxford at the same time last season, inconsistent and unconvincing (whilst we were looking like champions and hammering teams 7-0). Did Oxford panic and sack their manager? Just look where they are now compared to us.
I just hope us supporters can now all get behind the team and give them the belief that they can get us promoted.
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The Oxford issue was pointed out to me yesterday Mick and for me is a totally valid point. Oxford evidently learned lessons from their time in the BSP. Ones which I believe we still need to learn. There is absolutely no logic in sacking the manager at this stage of the season. We are not going to do any better than finish second. We are guaranteed a play-off place. One cannot legislate for Crawley. They have spent a lot of money and spent it well. The sacking of Richard Money was pointless which will have no bearing on our respective success in the lottery that is the play-offs. For Gary Sweet to suggest it will enhance our chances of going up is complete nonsense.
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The way I see it, there’s actually a lot of logic in “parting company by mutual consent” with RM. (Like Harford, he wasn’t sacked, remember.) For whatever reason, the man had obviously lost the dressing room. The players’ attitudes had become negative, and this must have been festering for some time. The remedy? Let someone else run the team who can hopefully motivate them and restore the positivity. A team that believes in itself achieves things. Big spenders or not, the Gatwick crew believe in themselves. Stevenage believed in themselves last year – enough to maintain the momentum till the last, thus preventing us from catching them up. And you can bet your last penny they’re believing in themselves right this moment, to win an automatic promotion place to League 1. This self-belief is what we need to re-establish, and the management couldn’t have had sufficient faith in RM to do it, and neither, I suspect, did RM. It’s all very well to say we’re guaranteed a place in the play-offs – I’m not so sure. Kidderminster are “on fire”, and York seem to be mounting a last minute dash. Apart from which, we do have to WIN the play-offs! Brabin is well aware of this, and knows that he has 10 games in which to shape the team for the challenge. Last year, I think we just assumed we’d win.
There is a lot that goes on behind closed doors, so take the PR hype with a pinch of salt. There again, the board could simply be panicking…
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