JOHN LOMAS STAGS BLOG: End of an era as Paul Cox is rightly praised

For all the hurtful criticism Paul Cox suffered in his final weeks as manager, many fans have thankfully been quick to come forward and thank him for what he did for the club since he walked on Friday night.

He may not have advocated the prettiest style of football and he may have made mistakes along the way, but without him Stags would probably now be a run of the mill Conference club with little prospect of getting back into the League.

Cox was the right man at the right time to grab the club by the scruff of the neck and make things happen. He will always be a club legend.

Looking in from the outside, his departure is a shock to many around the country who think he has done a really good job at a small club with a tight budget.

Outsiders are also baffled as to why he has been subjected to protests and abuse in all four seasons he has been here when you look at his finishing positions of Conference play-offs, Conference champions and 11th in a first season back in League Two.

During that time Cox has had to keep his cool as he has taken a barrage of abuse from the terraces for poor mid-season runs, begging fans to keep the faith.

That abuse has run as far as morons trying to attack him on more than one occasion and being spat at, for which there were no excuses.

But almost all football managers seem to have a sell-by date and supporters recently decided that Cox’s had arrived with what had been a vocal minority suddenly becoming a vocal majority last week against Conford.

A run of nine winless games, combined with what they saw as too much long ball did for him in the end.

Sensing he was being hounded out, he chose to leave with dignity and Cox’s departure on Friday came as a shock to me and everyone else.

Cox left with the second best managerial record in the club’s history, as measured by win-ratio in league games.

His critics have scoffed at that, saying many of those were in the Conference. So what? That is the league Stags had sunk into so you have to play who is put in front of you.

Cox had Conference standard players, same as the opposition, and his team selection and tactics bore fruit. So it is a ridiculous thing to belittle that.

To then come into the League and almost steer the club to the play-offs in his first season was fantastic.

In the summer Cox warned fans that, with his budget cut by half, this could be a very long, hard season and he needed fans to stick behind him.

That budget makes Stags one of the bottom two or three in the entire League and should therefore realistically put them in a possible relegation battle.

But Cox did bring some decent players into the club this season like Fergus Bell, Simon Heslop and Rakish Bingham along with some we have yet to see the best of like Alex Fisher. Meanwhile, his two marquee summer signings – Luke Jones and Liam Hearn – are unlikely to play this season with serious injury as they led the way for up to 11 players to sit it out from a squad of 22.

Even Brian Clough and Alex Ferguson would have struggled with that scenario.

Had Jones and Hearn been fit and Stags had just had average injury problems, I feel convinced they would be flirting with the other end of the table right now, something they had no right to do on the budget. And fans would have been much happier, despite the style of football.

So I feel very sorry for Cox that we will now never know how his first choice side might have fared.

But football management is a brutal business with little room for sentiment or past achievements. You are as good as your last game.

A run of nine without a win and no sign of a change in footballing style was the final straw for a growing band of fans.

Cox was always adamant you can’t play your way out of this division. So it will now be very interesting to see if Adam Murray takes the job full time and tries to do just that. It was certainly a breath of fresh air to see the players in a different formation and keeping the ball on Saturday.

But I’d like to add my words to the salutes already given to Cox and say he was the best manager I’ve worked with journalistically, so free with his time and his openness both on off the record.

He has been down to earth, approachable and honest and a pleasure to deal with.

Hopefully now he has gone, so have the clouds of doom that hovered over the ground and matchday can become a nice experience once more like last Saturday.

But, even if he wins his first 10 games in charge playing Barcelona-style football, the equally-likeable Murray knows the tide can change very quickly and, like George Foster before him, a club hero can quickly turn into a club villain.