Ainsworth rocks up at Shrewsbury.

The new head coach needs to give the club a shot in the arm.

Picture: Shrewsbury Town FC

As a football fan I am quietly content to watch the appointment of a new manager from a safe distance, like witnessing an unexploded bomb being defused. In the safety of the supporters’ chat forum shielded by piles of sandbags, it is possible – no, it is a requirement – to metaphorically lever open the lethal canister and mess about with the internal wiring, safe in the knowledge that the consequences will not be fatal – other than to your own reputation as a football pundit, of course. Thus, discussion of the recruitment of the coach best able to restore the fortunes of your football club can be safely detached from reality: money is no object; all candidates are willing, able, desperate to take the job on; the process of agreeing a contract is something so easy that falling off a log is quantum physics in comparison.

This is all to say, I have always been sceptical when seeing fellow fans suggesting unequivocally “Salop must appoint X as manager”, without any regard to the difficulties involved in securing the services of X, or any consideration whether X has a modicum of desire to work in the county of Shropshire. In as similar way, I will wince when seeing a comment such as “Town should appoint X, but it won’t happen because we always go for the cheap option”. To my mind a sensible club always must go for the affordable option: the reason I drive a Ford Focus rather than a Bentley is that I cannot afford to purchase and run a Bentley, not because I am tight.

During the enjoyable part of my trip to Burton last Saturday – i.e. before the match started – I was asked who I wanted to be the new head coach. My reply was that I was agnostic about the appointment, largely because I doubted the availability of a candidate with the considerable abilities required to turn things around. The name of Gareth Ainsworth had been swirling around in the ether for the previous twenty-four hours, but to my mind he appeared to be a candidate X, not worth speculating about as there so many reasons why it would not happen, not least because his trademark rock and roll showmanship was, well, un-Saloplike. We preferred our managers to be very much a club blazer and tie man.

How wrong was I! By Sunday the received opinion was Ainsworth would be announced as manager on the Monday. This was so certain, that when Monday passed without any announcement there was a mild panic that the deal was on the rocks. By the end of Tuesday, mild panic had grown into a near certainty that it had been holed by an iceberg; no news was calamitous news. Come 2pm on Wednesday, Gareth Ainsworth was unveiled as Shrewsbury Town’s new head coach.

There is a little bit of me that thinks if Salop fans are ecstatic about recruiting Gareth Ainsworth is a tell-tale of the parochial status of our club. Let us be frank, Ainsworth is not Pep Guardiola, as I am sure he would be the first to admit. His managerial career has been solid rather than spectacular: building up a team at Wycombe Wanderers that rose from the neither reaches of League Two to a taste of football in The Championship. When he did move on from Adams Park it was to Queens Park Rangers, who he had represented as a player. Under his management QPR avoided what appeared to be certain relegation, but the London club decided that he was not the manager to take them forward.

Ainsworth’s high profile as an EFL manager is not so much to do with his achievements as a coach, but his rather unconventional approach to the business of winning football matches. The rock-and-roll image, an unlikely figure in the technical area with long hair and black clothes. As a player his appearance and rock star ambitions gained him the nickname ‘Wild Thing’ and he subsequently fronted more than one band and released an album. His teams are attacking and aggressive, playing a high-pressing style: football with the raw energy of a rock-and-roll band.

Is this raucous style compatible with a rather staid lower-league club like Shrewsbury Town. At this moment in time, it looks an appointment that is an inspired one, both in the short term and the long term. Under Paul Hurst Salop were meekly sliding into League Two: the supporters knew it, the players knew it, the directors knew it – which was why the head coach was summarily sacked. It is probable that even the head coach had subliminally accepted it. Salop’s season needed a defibrillator to revive it. Ainsworth’s energy and charisma can generate the fight and optimism that the club needs to get it performing again.

When the club started the search for a new head coach it seemed that the objective was to find someone to serve in an interim capacity until the end of the season, a sensible approach given that a change of ownership may soon occur. We now know that Ainsworth has been employed on an eighteen-month contract. This would indicate that as head coach is in a position to build up the club in the medium to long term. He will go about this with the accumulated experience of eleven years transforming Wycombe Wanderers on the field, which grew the club’s status off the field.

In the space of around ten days Shrewsbury Town has regained some stability and a bit of its self-respect. The club now has a head coach who has the confidence to regalvanise the team while also understanding what is required in the longer term. There appears to be the beginnings of an understanding between the head coach and director of football that will lead to a viable working relationship. The fans are rediscovering what it is like to look forward to going to the football. All we need now is to start winning some matches.