JOHN STILL jokes that he got into his car at Braintree on Tuesday and told assistant Terry Harris they should head back to Dagenham.
Yes, his new Luton side were that bad as they slipped to a seventh defeat to a part-time side this term, and the ink probably hadn’t dried on his two-and-a-half year contract featuring ‘achievement-based extensions’.
Thirty-three hours later the 62-year-old did start driving back towards Victoria Road from his Ilford home, before remembering his 7am start was because he had to go the opposite way to Bedfordshire for his first day’s training at the Blue Square Bet Premier club, rather than his beloved League Two outfit left behind.
Frustrated
“If we’d watched them play like Real Madrid I’d be sitting here now saying I ain’t got a lot to do,” says Still. “It was probably best to see them as a Real Shower, and I said to Terry, that’s why we’ve been brought in. It showed us they do need help.”
As did Dagenham when Still was appointed for his third spell as manager in 2004. Like Luton, they were closer to the relegation than play-off zone and it took three years to win an against-the-odds promotion to the Football League.
At Kenilworth Road it is very different; a solid 6,000-plus fanbase frustrated for almost four years now by failure to return to the top 92 clubs in the country.
One of the east Londoner’s favourite sayings – “Short-term success is false economy” – leads nicely into some more stark Still Real-ism, warning fans expecting a late promotion push for the squad he inherits from Paul Buckle that it might take as long as it did at Dagenham.
“I understand that now and again you might need a bit of short-term success, but you can’t live on it in the long-term,” says Still, Luton’s fifth manager in their Conference era.
“We know that to get the success this club believes it should have is never going to happen overnight, because if it did it would have happened already.”
Like with 13 other offers during his near nine-year reign at Dagenham, Still initially rebuffed Luton’s approach.
Advised to listen to them, he opened up the meeting with Hatters managing director Gary Sweet by turning the tables.
He explains: “When clubs speak to me, I ask them one question that can really decide whether it’s going to be ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ from me. I say ‘What do YOU want? Don’t ask me what I want’.
“They tell me and I say ‘It’s not going to work, thanks very much for your time’. They go ‘hang on a minute, tell us…’ but there is no point because they’ve already told me what they want, and it isn’t what I want.
Ambition
“When I met the people here, I asked and the answer was that they wanted me to come to the club to replicate what I did at Dagenham. I said ‘Well, if that’s what you want, it ain’t a quick fix. I know you want to go up, but I can’t guarantee that’.
“They told me they don’t want a quick-fix, but for me to come here for maybe three-and-a-half years and even if at the end of that time we aren’t up, we will be ready to go up because the project is done and everything is in place.
“I told them, ‘I know you’re looking to employ me, but you know this time next year we might not be very good. The same time the year after we’ll be good though, and we’ll get better and better and better’.”
Don’t let these be seen as words of a man lacking ambition. Still – a Conference champion in 1989 as Maidstone boss – took Dagenham all the way to League One while discovering players, developing them and selling them on for big profit.
Luton can eventually get back to the Championship, he believes: “If the club was simply looking to get back into the Football League and everyone was going to go around patting themselves on the back, that wouldn’t be for me.
Expectant
“The attraction is that the club want to go again, then again and again. All the players here would be legends if they were part of that, and I want them coming forward to me saying ‘I want to be a Luton legend’.”
As does the man who was, until Tuesday, the fourth longest-serving elite 92 manager after Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and David Moyes.
“That’s what I want, absolutely. I could have stayed at Dagenham probably for as long as I wanted, but my job was done. We had other options; League clubs. But this is the right club, right time and right project to excite me.
“People say the crowd here is expectant, but I say to them ‘Well, go and play in front of 100 people then who don’t really care’. We have to include the fans who have been unhappy. I understand that.
“I don’t know what other managers have said or done. This is what I’ve said, and this is what the club have asked me to do.
“If I am here for two-and-a-half or three-and-a-half years, let’s say ‘Don’t judge me now, don’t judge me next season – start judging me the season after when everything is in place’.
“It might happen before that, but if you want a guarantee of that, get someone else in because I ain’t guaranteeing it.
“What I do guarantee is that the project will get them there and keep them there because the foundations are in place.
“No one sees them, but bloody hell, even the most beautiful house falls down on a windy day without foundations.”
