Micky Adams is reserving judgment until the end of the season on whether stability has returned to Tranmere Rovers. Even his attempt at an optimistic prediction is handled with utmost care. “At this moment in time it looks as though we are not on the crest of a slump anymore, we are moving up the table, but we can’t take that for granted,” is as far as he’ll venture. It is still a significant step forward given the turbulence that 2014 brought to Prenton Park.
Caution is understandable from Adams. He is Tranmere’s fourth manager since February and change in the dug-out was replicated in the boardroom in August when the former FA chief executive Mark Palios and wife Nicola bought a controlling stake from the long-time owner Peter Johnson. They took over a club that had suspended the manager, Ronnie Moore, for allegedly breaching FA betting regulations in February, sacked him after the charge was admitted in April and suffered relegationto the fourth tier of English football for the first time in 25 years a month later as Moore’s assistant, John McMahon, battled against the turmoil.
Rob Edwards’s appointment as a first-time manager lasted 12 league games until he was dismissed with Rovers propping up the Football League for the first time in 32 years. The chief executive, Jeremy Butler, has also exited and the experienced hand of Adams was hired in October. Relegation from the Football League is not a risk the Palioses can afford as they look to implement several long-term plans at the club Mark represented 280 times during the 1970s and 80s.
Having won two, drawn four and lost nine of the first 15 matches in all competitions this season, Tranmere’s record under Adams reads won six, drawn six and lost three. A reward, or respite, arrives in the form of a visit from Premier League Swansea City in the FA Cup third round on Saturday.
“It is a good time to showcase this football club,” says Adams, a man with 18 years’ managerial experience. “I’ve only been at the club ten or eleven weeks but I’m really impressed by it. I’m really impressed by the owners and their ambition. We are trying to pull ourselves away from the bottom of the league, which we have done, and I think it’s a real bonus to be out of the bottom two coming into the Swansea game, but there is still a long, long way to go. We have sucked a lot of teams in with us and we look as though we are going one way and they’re going the other.
“What I don’t want us to do is get over-excited about playing Swansea. While it is nice and we can forget about the league for one weekend, there is a real danger for clubs at the lower end getting really excited for an FA Cup tie against the top boys and then being on a big downer the week after. The lads need to be up for Morecambe as well next week.”
Plenty is going on behind the scenes at Tranmere where the Palioses are overseeing the sale of the club’s training ground and move to a new facility, upgrading facilities at the stadium and introducing a range of extra community initiatives. The arrival of Swansea, however, is also a reminder of how Tranmere have fallen since Johnny King, whose impressive stature now resides outside Prenton Park, and then John Aldridge led challenges for promotion to the top flight and, in the case of Aldridge, to the 2000 League Cup final.
Eleven years ago Rovers beat a Swansea side containing Roberto Martínez and Leon Britton 2-1 to reach the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, with the Welsh club then in the fourth tier and Tranmere a division higher. The goalkeeper Owain Fon Williams admits: “As a Welshman I’ve kept a close eye on Swansea since they were promoted to the Premier League. It is only a few years back they were in the same league as us but they’ve had a structure and maintained that all the way through to the Premier League. We could all look at what Swansea have done, it’s amazing.”
Williams adds: “Things are definitely looking up here now. I think it’s looking positive for Tranmere. We are getting stronger each week and we are growing in confidence and that is key in football.”
