Southend United may soon be getting airs above their station, which is still below halfway in League One. On Saturday they were the top English match on television, give or take Roy Hodgson’s lot in San Marino, who might have been playing on Fossetts Farm, the new ground approved for Southend in 2008. Having drawn 2-2 at Coventry on Monday, Southend beat Peterborough 2-1 at Roots Hall for their season’s first victory after five years in League Two.
Something had to give as, in two games each, Southend had not got a home point and Peterborough not an away one. The Posh had a poor record on screen, too, having won only two of their past 12 matches on TV, discounting penalty shootouts. Dave Robertson, their manager, warned them, “There will be no hiding place. We have to deliver a display that’s good enough for Peterborough United.” For his chairman, Darragh MacAnthony, away in the US, this display was clearly not. Robertson’s three-year contract, agreed in May, was ended on Sunday. TV had done for him.
In a long statement of commitment and self-justification the chairman included: “Our players must also shoulder responsibility for this awful start to the season [four points from six games], which has now led to a great person losing his job … The current squad in transfer fees alone has cost me over £4m, so to be accused of going down the cheap route doesn’t sit well with me … Talent only gets you so far; you need an incredible work ethic and desire with a never-give-up attitude.”
That, rightly, will not sit well with Robertson’s team, in their “cherry voltage” away shirts. After the match he said: “I obviously can’t accept coming here and losing but eventually our luck has to change. We’ve had two off the line and one off the crossbar.” One off the line was at 0-0, the other at 1-0 when Jack Collison, late of West Ham and Wales, was denied by Ben Coker. Between times Michael Bostwick hit the bar. Marcus Maddison, pushed forward at half-time in support of the well-named striker Joe Gormley and never giving up, scored in the 90th minute and Southend gasped for the final whistle after that.
Robertson’s time in the sun has been brief and not inglorious. He had a career in the Marines and was academy coach when promoted to caretaker in February. He won his first four games – Darren Ferguson had won four in 19 before that – but fans may never now sing, “There’s only one Dave Robertson.” In any case there are two. Soccerbase gives their now former man the other one’s long, undistinguished record at Elgin City.
If Robertson was trying to make a name, Phil Brown is restoring one in his third full season with Southend after a slump from taking Hull City into the top flight for the first time in 2008. “After getting this win,” he said, “I think we’ll get more respect from opposition.” Southend came up through the play-offs in May after finishing fifth for the second time running. Brown added: “It’s about these players, not just those we’ve brought in but those plying their trade in League Two last year, convincing them they can play at this level.” He had written beforehand of the door opening “if we keep on knocking”, then “hanging on to the shirt tails of the early leaders”.
Through the first half, a scruffy affair of ragged passes without England’s excuse (never mind obstructing the field; in San Marino the field was obstructing the game) the giant Posh centre-back, Ricardo Santos, was hanging on to much more of David Mooney’s shirt than its tails. By the end Mooney, helped by the running of his fellow Irishman and striker Noel Hunt, had escaped his marker’s clutches. If his neck had not been compressed, he might have headed a hat-trick. They and Anthony Wordsworth arrived in the summer and, with Coker’s overlaps from left-back, Southend presented a recurring threat.
On 32 minutes Adam Barrett, a centre-back mysteriously in the front line, shot home from this source and Hunt’s header to Coker’s free-kick doubled it in the 70th. Robertson was entitled to be “disappointed” at that, more so at his dismissal. Brown, comfortable in front of cameras, could rejoice in TV’s £30,000. Fossetts Farm remains an £80m figment.
