Ian Atkins
almost kicks
over the bottle of water by his feet as he turns from his desk, sweeps his arms wide in
the office he calls his cell and says dramatically: "Arsene Wenger could not manage
Carlisle United. "He would come in here, look at that telephone and not know who to call to come and play for him. Different down here from the Premiership? You don't know the half of it."
Atkins, 43, was at Chester last season and almost rescued them, but in the end they were relegated out of the Football League.
Now he's at Carlisle, saved from going out of the League on the last day of the last two seasons.
You don't get any nearer the bottom of the ladder than that, and it all starts again on Saturday: Carlisle v Halifax .
That's if he can get a team together. "Was the Test match on this week?" he asks. "What happened? We were doing all right, weren't we? Nothing gets to me here in my bunker. The world could be ending out there and I wouldn't know.
"I've worked it out that I make 20 phone calls an hour. I'm in before 8.30am, stay until after eight at night and I'm still on the blower in the hotel at midnight.
"What's that - 240 calls a day? Nearly 1,700 calls a week. I was always good with figures."
He's had nothing to eat all day, just swigs of water from the bottle. His office, 12ft wide, high ceiling and no windows, gets as stuffy as the corridors of the FA.
"It's a good job the wife and kids are still down in the family home in Solihull because I'd never get it all done," he says. "There's one thing about me - when I'm knackered, I'm knackered. I shut my eyes and I'm a gonna. I could sleep on a clothes line. Then I'm fresh and up and back at it next morning."
Carlisle let 24 players go last season and kept 13, seven capable of playing in the first team and six kids. The wage bill has been slashed by half and is among the lowest in the Third Division, with the top earning getting wage £500.
"Massive rebuilding or what?" asks Atkins. "And just to make it worse, because there was a new board coming in, I wasn't able to sign a player until August 1. They didn't mention that when I came. I had about eight lined up but they were on their last week's severance money from their previous clubs and I could understand them not hanging on for me."
Four of them - Julian Darby, now player-coach at Carlisle, Carl Heggs, Jamie Squires and Ian Stevens - knew Atkins well enough to trust him to keep his word. "That's what I work on," he says. "My name and my trust."
He has 12 players for today, a skeleton with no flesh. "Apart from those four who showed patience, I was left with the second-string free transfers to pick from.
"The good thing is that because they haven't got fixed up, I can dictate terms to them because they're desperate.
"I'm looking to get some loans in just to see us through the first couple of months because I have been promised the budget will get better. You keep your fingers crossed, don't you? At this stage, I can't ask any more of this team than they have a go."
With another week for cheques to be signed before the Premiership season kicks off, Chelsea have spent £30million on players, Spurs £16m, Everton £15m, Leeds £13m and even Leicester £11m. Atkins has spent nothing in six weeks.
"When I watch Match of the Day I feel pride because I played at that highest level with Sunderland and Everton," he says. "But I'm watching as a fan. It's nothing to do with our football down here.
"If the managers came down from the Premiership, they wouldn't be able to do this. They would be lost. Brian Little's trying it at Hull, but I bet he's finding his knowledge of lower-league players is not what it was.
"Martin O'Neill, who I love to bits, and John Gregory haven't been away from this end so long that they have lost contact, but Wenger, Gianluca Vialli and Gerard Houllier, they wouldn't have a prayer.
"Wenger, as good as he is, would look at this cell of mine, look up at that wall chart where the names of the players we've let go treble the ones here, and wouldn't have a clue. You don't click your fingers, pay somebody £30,000 a week and get him. It's £200 a week and you get two players out of the five you want.
"The pressure the top managers have to win a European trophy or the Premiership is cushioned by the 200 grand a year they get. It's why they'll never be down here looking for a job. They've got the yacht in Malaga and the beach in Bermuda.
"I'm a young pup at 43, but I went into coaching at 32 and that's 11 years I've been doing this. They couldn't get anybody experienced to go to Chester at the back end of last season, but I wanted to work and have a platform to give my version of what happened to me at Northampton. And we nearly pulled it off. One point was the difference in the end.
"There were all sorts of things wrong at Chester. The American owner, Terry Smith, had coached the side and we were talking tactics one day. 'Jeez,' he said. 'I never read that in the book'. That summed it all up for me."
When Atkins was at Northampton - he took them from receivership to Wembley and promotion in five years - he had board members joining the crowd chanting "Atkins out" after he had bombed the vice-chairman's son from the YTS scheme.
He also chucked the local MP off the team coach for smoking and using his mobile phone.
"I heard that, about certain directors chanting," says Atkins. "And as for the MP, he can't run the country but he can run a football team. All I can say is that YTS lad is now with Bedford. What I learnt at Northampton is that a manager moves on when he's hot.
"I gave them their best years since Dave Bowen took Northampton to the top division, but none of that was remembered. I could have gone to Wolves, Sheffield United or Stoke and didn't. This is a good club, Carlisle. It smells like a proper football club, feels like one.
"There are proper stands, a gym next to the ground for the players, training pitches and football fans who care about the place.
"This is a big, hard league where you have to play the football that suits. Physically and mentally, Carlisle haven't been strong enough the last two years. But these fans will react if we can get it moving. If I were the board, I'd put the money up right away to get better quality players in and have a go straight off.
"I'm bracketed down at this level because I've been here for a while, but if I had the money and the players, I would play the game differently. I know I could adapt, but the Wengers couldn't do it here.
"If I make it so there's a next time for Ian Atkins, I'll remember to look after No1."
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