The Fishy - Grimsby Town FC

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Stand By Your Man! - Furneaux

By: Bill Osborne
Date: 05/01/2004

TOWN chairman Peter Furneaux said do not panic and declared that the board will not be sacking manager Paul Groves. Instead they will be talking to him to see if they can help him.

In a direct and forthright statement Furneaux told the Grimsby Telegraph; "I hope there's a reaction on Saturday. There are still 22 games to go as there was when Paul first came into the job two years ago. We need to be finding out where we go from here and find a way forward.

"We don't have panicky board meetings over things like this. I know the trend has not been good. We need to have a chat with Paul, which we would do in any case, to see if there is anything that we can do. We need to establish if there are problems that we can assist with from a board point of view."

"We're doing all we can to make the players comfortable - but we need to check if there are any underlying factors which we're not aware of that are contributing to the current form."

"From that conversation we'll listen to the manager. That's the way we work. We don't work by threats. Everybody has had a go at me this weekend but everybody in the club is disappointed with the run of form."

On Tony Adams he said; "Their manager said that he wished he had a squad as strong as ours".


Paul Groves said "Of course my job is under threat. That is part and parcel of football management and there are people in the boardroom who make the decisions. The decision is theirs and I can only do my job to the best of my ability to try and get those football players to play."

"They (the players) basically haven't turned up and have been overturned by a team that had more enthusiasm. For me, that is not acceptable because they are footballers. They get paid to play and it is a great job and they should turn up looking forward to a battle."

"We haven't done the basics, and that is fight and scrap, win the first and second ball and turn them round and play in their half. We invited them to push us back and get themselves in front."


Billo Says: As one of those calling for the head of Paul Groves, I think Furneaux's statement was honest and sensible. Let us hope that they can turn the situation around. I think we would all like to see that happen.




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