So, if Friday's rumours are to be believed, Jim McNulty is set to be hired as Rochdale manager. Fold the club and start again, this is apparently a catastrophic hire the proportions of which will never be seen again at Spotland again. If some quarters of Twitter and the messageboard are to be believed, we've just signed on the dotted line for relegation to the National League North.

But before we start sharpening our pitchforks and planning trips to Banbury and Farsley, should we all perhaps take a minute to view this appointment for what it actually is and consider whether we might want to, you know, give our backing to a man who's applied himself to the cause for the last eight years and clearly cares deeply about Rochdale AFC?

I know that people are desperate for experience, for someone with non-league contacts and for a proven track record and I understand that. It feels like those things give some guarantee of success but as our history - and that of other National League clubs suggests - it simply doesn't.

Since the turn of the century, we've made just two inarguably successful managerial hires. One was when we promoted our youth coach from within to the first-team role. The second was when we re-appointed the same man a few years later. In that time we've hired experienced managers, unexperienced youth coaches and promoted other staff from within all to no effect.

What can we glean from this? We can glean that every managerial appointment is a risk. Just look at the previous appointment. In hiring a a man who'd spent the majority of his career as a manager keeping Morecambe in League Two against the odds, he seemed to have the perfect level of experience for the task in hand last season. And look at how that ended up. (And before anyone calls me a happy clapper for getting behind McNulty, I said at the time I was unhappy with the Bentley appointment!)

Even success at other clubs doesn't necessarily translate. Environments are different. Dynamics are different. Most importantly, players are different. Success with Gateshead or Chester (or indeed Accrington, anyone?) doesn't immediately equate to success at Rochdale.

That doesn't necessarily mean that you should always hire the cheapest option. But in Jim, is there not potential for a real manager to emerge? He's been on the coaching staff under the last four managers at the club, who are all fairly different characters with varying ways of operating. You'd hope in that time he'd have picked up a couple of ideas on what does work and a hell of a lot of ideas on what doesn't.

Herein lies a key point for me. A lot of supporters seem to think that because he was part of the coaching staff under three failed managers that he is 'a part of the problem' but is that fair? Brian Barry-Murphy was part of Hill's coaching staff, but that doesn't mean he had the same ideas on how to play football. Indeed, for anyone to suggest that McNulty's footballing 'philosophy' will mirror that of Bentley, Stockdale, Barry-Murphy and Hill seems odd to me, given that all four of those managers have quite different personalities and different ideas.

Basically, McNulty is his own man and will have his own ideas on how to recruit and how to set his team up for success. It may seem like a continuation of what's come before, but does anybody really expect McNulty to be in the Jim Bentley mould? He wasn't a Barry-Murphy hire, or a Stockdale hire, or a Bentley hire. Although we're not privy to what goes on behind the scenes, one suspects he was carrying out instructions as a coach rather than implementing his own ideas given that he wasn't brought in by any of those managers for a specific role.

There's also a lingering feeling that McNulty may be too lenient when it comes to the upcoming released and retained list and look to reward some of his 'mates' in the dressing room with undeserved extensions. But is this really likely to happen? Given how precarious life as a football manager can be, and given that if a manager fails at Rochdale it's highly unlikely they're going to be given a chance to succeed elsewhere, do we really think he will potentially sabotage his own brief chance of success in such a viciously competitive field by using what is likely to be a very limited budget on contracts for undeserving players?

It feels to me like people have started to make a judgement on McNulty before giving him the chance to make his own decisions. When it comes to contract negotiations, pre-season plans, his contacts and recruitment ideas, a lot of fans have formed an opinion based on what they think might happen. It's guesswork, and it's unfair to jump to conclusions about his suitability before he's even given the chance to do the job properly.

The only evidence we can actually look to is McNulty's performance as caretaker manager for the final eight games of the recently completed League Two season. But before we do, two huge caveats.

Firstly, when McNulty took the job, we were 10 points away from safety. Anyone who felt we had a realistic chance of survival at that stage was simply deluded. Secondly, this is not Jim McNulty's squad. He did not sign a single one of these players. So let's take a look at those eight games.

AFC Wimbledon away was not by any means a vintage away performance. However, what it did show was a certain steel that had been lacking under the three consecutive previous managers. There may have been the odd smash and grab away win that came before, but after the Crawley debacle a week earlier, to produce a performance like that and for the players to defend like they did in the final throes - particularly the much maligned Ethan Ebanks-Landell, gave me a little hope.

That was followed up with what was, in my opinion, a terrific performance in the home win over Walsall, where we played to our strengths in allowing Lloyd and Odoh to run at defenders and made sure Brierley saw as much of the ball as possible in midfield. After that came a handy 1-1 draw at Mansfield, in a game I'll admit that I missed but everybody seemed relatively impressed with our efforts in retrieving a point, even if we rode our luck at times with some big saves from Richard O'Donnell.

We can say that when the pressure was really on, when there was a glimmer of hope and we took on Bradford City at home, the players crumbled under the pressure. But did they? Henderson and Odoh missed guilt-edged chances in that game with the score at 0-1 to the Bantams. After those misses, the visitors were well on top - but was anybody really expecting anything different? They'd gone 10 games unbeaten at this point and were the most in-form team in the league. And in case anyone had forgotten - our squad is absolutely shambolic, and had been for the entire season. To me, you can only really crumble under pressure if you're expected to win. Anyone who expected us to win this game obviously hadn't seen us play very often this season.

People can suggest the next two games there was still hope - but for me there wasn't really at this stage. A 2-2 draw with Tranmere earlier in the season is not seen as a terrible result and although the performance at Stockport was flat to say the least, everyone was fully aware that our fate was sealed at this stage. Players are looking ahead to next season and potential moves, not wanting to get injured. Plus, Stockport are quite good aren't they? I'm not going to dig McNulty out for losing to a team that hadn't lost at home in five months and possess players we could only dream of affording when you consider the players he had at his disposal.

I can't in all good faith suggest that the games against Stockport and Tranmere were dead rubbers and then by the same token read into the last two matches when relegation had already been confirmed, so I won't. I will stretch however, to saying that I was impressed with some of our build-up play and quick passing in attacking areas in patches against an admittedly woeful Sutton United.

In the end, McNulty's eight game spell yielded three wins, three draws and two defeats, leaving a total of 12 points from an available 24. Stretched over the course of the season, earning 50% of the available points would've had us finishing 8th in the table. We lost two games - to two teams that are now in the play-off positions and were in very good form prior to playing us. I think that's actually pretty impressive, when you again consider that motivation can't have been high with relegation already all but confirmed by the time he took the job and, again, this wasn't his squad in any way shape or form.

I know some supporters were unhappy with some of Jim McNulty's comments in some of these post-match interviews, but in my view he was prioritising protecting the players first and foremost. Whether they deserved to be protected or not is another argument, but a moot one as he had to try and keep them on side in order to pick up the best results possible in his short audition for the job. He was hardly going to throw players under the bus to get supporters on side and then ask those same players to try and win him matches to get him the job a few days later. People read far too much into manager interviews anyway, but to expect Jim to prioritise the fans' feelings over the players' when he was in need of performances and results to try and earn himself the job was naïve at best.

But really, all of this is conjecture. Some fans are unhappy now, but I don't really understand what they're unhappy about. There's a feeling that there needed to be a 'fresh start', but for me, Jim represents that as much as manager coming from elsewhere. Just because he was here under the previous managers, doesn't mean he'll be the same. Just like BBM wasn't the same as Hill. Just like Hill wasn't the same as Parkin.

The fact is, when it comes to it, results on the pitch are what will define McNulty's time as Rochdale manager. If he wins the first four games of next season and three of his new signings are looking like superstars then he'll be the best manager since sliced bread. Equally, had we hired Mike Williamson or Callum McIntyre, and they'd lost their first four games of next season and all of their signings were looking like James Ball and Toumani Diagouraga reincarnated, we'd be wondering if another relegation was a real possibility. All of which makes it difficult to understand why fans have already decided that this is a terrible appointment, three months before a competitive ball is kicked. Before we've even made a signing or published the released and retained list. Hell, before it's even been confirmed that Jim's got the job!

And when it comes to results, three wins, two draws and two defeats in incredibly difficult circumstances with a squad that finished rock bottom of the table suggests to me he might not actually be that bad at getting results. Alright, it wasn't enough to keep us up, but I'd wager that no manager was keeping that team up by the time McNulty took the reigns with the side ten points adrift. And since people have decided to make judgements on other areas of his management before he's had a chance to showcase them, I'll make some too.

I suspect McNulty might be exactly the kind of personality who can galvanise a dressing room full of young players with room to develop. I suspect that he'll look to marry an attractive possession-based style with quicker attacking players to make us more of a threat going forward. I suspect, as a central defender, he'll place more importance on being able to defend set pieces than previous managers have. Of course, I'm basing all of this on very little evidence, but then so is everybody else with their negative assumptions of what McNulty will be as a manager.

The difference being in this case, that rather than an outsider coming in from elsewhere, Jim McNulty is a man that cares about this club and it's community and deserves a chance to prove his doubters wrong. Of course, it may not work out and we may find ourselves looking for another manager in a few months time - but that's the case with any hire we make, regardless of previous experience. We just don't know.

So, rather than catastrophising and fearing the worst, perhaps we as a fanbase could do worse than to take a second, take stock, realise where we stand right now and at least give this loyal servant of the club a chance to show us what he can do before we publicly lynch him and decide he doesn't have what it takes to be a manager. Who knows, it might just work out?

Photo: Action Images

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