Garry Monk and death by a thousand cuts

No, cuts isn't a typo

On January 4, Cambridge United suffered a damaging 1-0 home defeat to Bristol Rovers in a dreary match that should have spelled the end of Garry Monk’s dreary tenure as head coach.

Fast forward six weeks, and Saturday saw the U’s turn in a remarkably similar - and equally damaging - performance in losing by the same scoreline to Exeter City. On both occasions, United looked flat and uninspired, and despite getting into some good positions failed to trouble the opposition goalkeeper. And on both occasions they were undone when their limited opponents found a bit of extra quality at key moments.

Monk did not survive for a second time, with his departure - which comes days after director of football Ben Strang left the club - announced on Sunday evening. The six-week delay, which saw the U’s pick up six points from a possible 21, has probably ended any realistic hopes of avoiding relegation, and means Monk’s replacement will likely be planning for life in League Two.

Monk’s disillusionment

While factors outside of his control - many of which were outlined by the U’s board in their statements here and here - have hindered Monk throughout his year in charge at the Abbey, there’s no escaping the fact that even though he was dealt a bad hand, he played it about as poorly as he possibly could. Nine wins from 49 games in charge is not a record he will be proud of.

Since Plan A, the glorious tiki-taka future we were promised back in the summer (we’ll always have the second half against QPR), was consigned to the bin, it feels like Monk has been flailing around trying to hit on a winning formula seemingly at random. In recent weeks, our entire attacking plan has seemingly come down to defending with seven players and hoping Josh Stokes conjures up a goal for himself or one of the forwards. Stokes is a gem of a player, but that is a lot to ask of a 20-year-old with 17 Football League appearances under his belt, particularly as he is increasingly being singled out for special attention by opposition players and managers.

For United to survive at this level the team needs to be greater than the sum of its parts, and Monk has manifestly failed to make this happen. The summer recruitment was a disaster, but even allowing for that and the many, many, injuries suffered by the squad, his constant chopping and changing of personnel has not helped. Many of our fans will point to our lack of goals as the team’s main issue, but this neglects the fact that our defending has been consistently found wanting when it matters. This is perhaps not a surprise when you consider Monk has only named an unchanged back five on three occasions in the league this season. How can partnerships, often the hallmark of a successful team, form when players are constantly in and out of the side, or asked to fulfil different roles?

Despite all this, the season has not felt like a lost cause until recently, and you can sort of see the logic of sticking with Monk for so long. If nothing else, the players have been putting the effort in, and United often felt like they could be on the cusp of turning things around. But looking back, it now seems we’ve been suffering death by a thousand cuts, with every valiant draw or narrow defeat combining to form the bleak position in which we now find ourselves.

In August I wrote that we appeared in danger of sacrificing our previous defensive solidity in pursuit of style of football we didn’t have the players to achieve. The gamble didn’t pay off, and Monk has now paid the price.

Strang out

Strang’s departure, announced last Thursday, is perhaps more significant given his long association with the club and his role in building the promotion-winning teams of 2014 and 2021.

Despite the many successes of his tenure, the time feels right for a change given our much-discussed issues in recent transfer windows. I’ve never tried to sign a player outside of Football Manager, and as so much of the work on transfers goes on behind the scenes it feels harsh to dig the recruitment team out too much when none of us really know what goes on. That said, it does seem like there has been a failure of planning ahead of the most recent window.

In an interview on the club YouTube channel published in December, Strang outlined the need for midfield reinforcements, saying “We probably are crying out for a central midfielder. I think everyone can see that and fans will be able to see that.

“At the moment that’s the area we look most short so I think there will be definitely be an intention to add in that area.”

Despite this, we didn’t add a midfielder to the squad until January 30, days before the window closed. To me this indicates bad planning, because we didn’t have targets in place, or bad execution, because we weren’t able to land the players we wanted quickly. Either way it’s not a good look, especially as, in the meantime, Korey Smith, who was forced to play every game because there was literally no one else available, picked up what could be a season-ending injury.

More generally, I would say it’s questionable whether Monk and Strang, as the two most senior figures in the club’s football department, were ever a good match. The successful teams Strang has helped to build have, at their heart, been solid units composed of players like Tom Champion or Paul Digby, with a bit of stardust sprinkled on top by Kwesi Appiah or Wes Hoolahan. Monk clearly had very different stylistic aspirations, and perhaps Strang was not the right man to recruit the players needed to meet them. On the flipside, Monk has proved that he is not a manager who can create a functional team that can do the basics right and become hard to beat when faced with a relegation battle.

With two big vacancies to fill, it is vital United recruit a director of football with a clear vision of how they want the club to develop, and allow them to put a head coach in place who can make that vision a reality. Whether this will happen quickly enough to have any influence the outcome of this season remains to be seen, but should be an interesting few weeks ahead.