Ian Won't Allow His Saints To Be Sinners This Time Around

His phone has not left his side. The sensible thing would probably be to switch it off and place it safely out of sight in the drawer.

The Arsenal legend is almost expecting it to ring. If it does, just like those famous white judges’ panels on the BBC ballroom show, his number is almost certainly up.

Saturdays nights weren’t much fun for the Saints manager last season.

More often than not his side had underperformed at the weekend. And it got to a stage where he could have received a call from the owner to give him his marching orders.

The guillotine while watching the battle for the Glitterball would be no way for a man of his standing to go.

But the phone never rang.

“Last year was a tough year, very tough,” he told us in our latest special summer feature.

“We weren’t good enough, it was as simple as that. We didn’t score enough goals. The confidence fell away very quickly. We weren’t consistent enough.

“I never thought of stepping down but with football as it is now, you do go home some weekends and wonder if you will be getting a call on a Saturday night from the owners.

“I was lucky that they stayed very loyal to me, and hopefully the loyalty I have shown to them goes both ways.

“I could have got that phone call at any stage. Especially during the first few months of the season. I was one phone call away from knowing that I would have lost my job.

“They have always been very good to their managers here and I have always been quite confident in my own ability.

“But I am very keen to make sure that feeling doesn’t return and I can start enjoying the weekends again.”

With a rotten home record and a first five months to quickly try and forget, the Saints who dabbled with the play-offs in the two seasons before were shot.

Finishing third from bottom of the National League South, they scored only 41 goals.

Some fans wouldn’t have been broken hearted to see the curtain coming down early on their error-ridden campaign.

But things were getting better, and some big away wins in the final four or five weeks showed St Albans were turning a corner.

“It’s been a good period of time to think about what we had to do and where it went wrong last time,” he told the National League’s Oli Osborn in a Zoom chat.

“I don’t want another season like last year - I had dark hair at the start, now look at it! This is my 31st season managing. I have a lot of experience, and a lot of grey now.

“You can’t look back too much, only forward - I’m at the stage now where I’m looking at how many years I’ve got left!

“2019-20 made me a lot older than what I look. You were going home and having sleepless nights not knowing where your next win was going to come from.

“You don’t want your weekends ruined. You get knocks, you get highs and you get lows. But as John Still told me a few years ago, never get too high and never get too low.

“The lows actually take a little longer to get rid of now. Sundays are never good, Mondays are a bit better and Tuesdays you are back with the players.

“Towards the close we were getting to the level we wanted to be at. Although our home form wasn’t great we had gone to Havant, Weymouth and Bath City and won. All those teams ended in the play-offs.

“When we went into lockdown we had the best side we’d had all season. I felt comfortable that we would turn it around. We did in the end, but it took longer than I expected.”

This year, the ambition is clear.

On Tuesday, a 4-0 friendly win over last season's champions Wealdstone provided grounds for genuine optimism.

But they have to make sure three key players are replaced - including run-away top scorer Joe Iaciofano.

Deals to bring forwards Shaun Jeffers, Chid Onokwai and Joe Chidyausiku in were all done early and the manager says they have settled in superbly.

“At the moment we’re pleased with how we are,” he adds. “We did most of our work earlier on. We lost a few players we didn’t want to lose, but that’s football at this level.

“We lost Joe. He scored 18 of the goals we scored, that’s around 50 per cent of them. Sam Merson has also gone. We’re losing goals and we need to replace them.

“It’s difficult, you want to help the players move on but you have to rebuild every year!

“We want to be in and around the play-offs by that March/April time. We will soon know how good we are going to be, and we want to bring the crowds back. We need to get them back on board.

“We have a new badge, new signings and an excellent new sponsor in rock group Enter Shikari.

“I’ve had to look up their music, and they are actually pretty good! The band are all St Albans based and there’s so much that we’re going to do together.

“It’s great to have all these ideas but we can’t have a season like last year.

“Every year you want to go into it wanting to win the league. Are we good enough? Well, we’ll probably know that within the first few matches.

“Dorking and Havant will be in and around it. Can we compete with those two? You never know, but we just need to be better.”

PICTURES BY ROBERT WALKLEY