Wealdstone 4-0 Gateshead: 'sacked in the morning' chants ring out as Cattermole's bomb squad hits new low
Wealdstone heaped further misery on bottom-of-the-table Gateshead with a comprehensive 4-0 National League victory at Grosvenor Vale, a result met at the final whistle by chants of "sacked in the morning", followed by "time to go", from the travelling support directed at the visiting manager Lee Cattermole, whose first senior management role is not going at all well.
The Stones, kicking off fifth from bottom and managed by the 1980s QPR hero Gary Waddock, took the lead through Olufela Olomola before half-time, the goal that prompted Cattermole to visibly sag in the away dugout. Luke Norris then converted a softly conceded penalty for the second, and once it went in Cattermole sat himself down, distractedly fiddling with notebook and pen before a half-time team talk delayed by his slow return to the away dressing room. Whatever was said had little effect: a third Wealdstone goal arrived within two minutes of the resumption and a fourth just before the end.
Cattermole, the former hard-tackling Middlesbrough, Wigan and Sunderland midfielder who collected 88 yellow cards and seven reds in 271 Premier League games, has approached management in characteristically uncompromising fashion. With Gateshead bottom of the National League and on one win from ten matches, he has employed the "bomb squad" approach favoured by Enzo Maresca at Chelsea and Ruben Amorim at Manchester United — eight players are reported to be training at alternative times to the first team and have also been removed from WhatsApp group chats. Neither Maresca nor Amorim's shunning of players proved particularly successful at elite level, and being six goals down by half-time at home to Southend the previous week hardly heralded the success of Cattermole's tough-love strategy either.
"Make them work," bellowed Cattermole while his team were still level, among other, more colourful, language. Midfield anchor Alfie McCalmont, the Northern Ireland international signed in midweek after his spell with Central Coast Mariners in Australia, made bright beginnings after the 278-mile journey south, for which about 100 away fans made the trip, but was soon dragged into the torpor of his new teammates.
It fell to Cattermole's assistant, Ben Clark, to deliver the post-match verdict. "We conceded a soft goal, and struggled from there on in," he said. "The lads are struggling a bit with their confidence." The possibility of Cattermole himself being bombed out has heightened, such news likely to be accompanied by a corner-flag image on the club website.
Waddock, who as a player was not dissimilar to Cattermole — combative, a lover of a tackle — could keep quiet counsel, relaxedly leaning on a handy gatepost. Such serenity in a difficult season for Wealdstone stood in stark contrast to the portentous chants echoing from the away end.
A club of characters and a hint of City's doomsday
On the fringes of west London, Wealdstone are a club steeped in rich non-league history and last season's FA Trophy finalists. It is from Grosvenor Vale, their home in the middle of a housing estate in Ruislip, that Stuart Pearce, Vinny Jones and Jermaine Beckford began their journeys. In the digital age the club became famous for the meme pioneer Gordon Parmar Hill, aka the Wealdstone Raider, whose "you've got no fans" war cry went viral on a pandemic scale in 2014, the same year his assault on the UK Christmas No 1 with, naturally, "Got No Fans" reached No 5.
For Gateshead, Saturday confirmed there is always someone worse off. The club hosted a Football League side on the southern bank of the Tyne from 1930 to 1960 — the last team the legendary Hughie Gallacher turned out for — though extinction came in 1973, and the re-founded Gateshead that has been knocking around the non-league pyramid since 1977 has little hope of reaching the Football League anytime soon.
The fixture also offered a whimsical glimpse of a doomsday scenario facing Manchester City: plunging down the football pyramid. Instead of yawning at yet another meeting with Real Madrid, how about the exoticism of away travel to Wealdstone? In the National League, City's ownership may wish to know, there are no formal financial fair play or strict salary cap regulations, and Wrexham, Notts County and Chesterfield have taken advantage of such lax constraints to regenerate. There would be revenue opportunities, too: at a fifth-tier club, drinking in view of the pitch is verboten — the Vale club bar outside the stadium was doing brisk business before kick-off — and a revocation of the 1985 alcohol statute that the prime minister floated this week would prove a significant revenue driver for clubs of Wealdstone's size, which make considerable cash from in-game hospitality.
Should City ever drop down the divisions to alight on suburban outposts such as Wealdstone, it is already unlikely Cattermole would get the chance to face them — let alone manage them.