How Large do we go on Little this year?

Non-league / Gary Boswell / 08 July 2008 / Leave a Comment

Gary Boswell wecomes the arrival of Brian Little to non-league football at Wrexham with open arms. But what's the deal when it comes to betting on them?

-The tennis is finished and, as the football season fast approaches, The Boz resumes his role as Non-League betting guru by taking a look at one of the most famous fishes ever to land in the Non-League pond.....

There's a story in the show business world that tells of the biggest groan ever elicited from a theatre audience. It came at the Scunthorpe Apollo when the MC announced that one half of that night's headline act - Eddie Large - had been taken ill and would not now be performing.

The groan was followed by a gasp of incredulity as the MC went on to announce that Eddie's comic partner Syd Little would perform the show on his own!

Eddie Large was hot property in the 70s and early 80s and he goes down in the Hall of Fame and in the Boz's list of the top ten most admired celebrities ever not because of his Deputy Dawg impersonation but because he consistently turned down every attempt to prize him away from the comic partner who many saw as his 'Weakest Link'.

There's no doubting that Syd Little was a pile of pants as a performer. He played the traditional role as double act fall guy who has the rise constantly taken and you could argue that his awfulness fitted that role. That wasn't the point though. The point was that Syd and Eddie found success as a comedy double act. They did their apprenticeship in the harsh world of light entertainment as a comedy double act. The act worked as a double act and not as two solo performers stuck together. Moreover, it was an act that had become successful - Eddie believed - because they trusted each other.

When the attempts to prise Eddie away became ferocious, toes were dug in even deeper. Eddie stayed loyal to the partner with whom he found fame. Without Syd Little, there was no Eddie Large. That edict was stuck to throughout. It makes Little and Large more memorable in showbiz history than their act was ever likely to!

I was reminded of that story because of the way that such natural loyalty is fast disappearing from the world of football and because, bizarrely, the football manager who has just been rewarded for bringing his team down into non-league for the first time in their history with a new two year contract shares the same surname as the great Syd!

Brian Little is part of a continuing trend of top notch managers achieving the accolade of losing his club's prized place in the Football League - following in the wake of the Bald Eagle Jim Smith who brought down his beloved Oxford United and hasn't yet managed to get them back up.

Little has pedigree though. Arguably more than Smith ever had. Little already holds the record as the only manager ever to take a team down to Non-League and get them straight back up as champs. Anybody remember who it was with?

The answer is Darlington in 1989-90. It was Little's first job in management and he showed his colours early on by following the Conference Championship with winning the then Division Four title the following year.

No surprise that he was snapped up by Leicester City, achieving promotion with them, and then really hit the big time following into Big Ron's shoes at Aston Villa.

Because of the later innocuous reigns at West Brom and Stoke, it is easy to forget that Brian Little did a fantastic job in his three and a half years at the Villa. They finished in fourth and fifth in the Premiership - what would Martin O'Neill give for that now? - had their time in Europe and boasted the strike partnership of Yorke and Milosevic that might really have etched its name into the annals of football history had it been imbued with the kind of double act loyalty illustrated above.

Dwight Yorke moved of course (setting a record transfer fee of £12.8mil) to form his partnership with Andy Cole and it was Manchester United and Alex Ferguson that went on to create the dynasty.

Brian Little stays on the smaller stage and will be a fascinating acquisition to the world of non-league football this year in charge of Wrexham - a proud club who have the remarkable claim to 45 Welsh Cup Final appearances in their 87 year history.
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The Boz has a betting maxim that he has spouted in the press consistently since his arrival on the non-league scene. Lay the team relegated from the Football League.

It's a pound to a penny that they never bounce straight back up as champions.And so they haven't in the eight years that I've been professionally covering the scene. Some big clubs have come down too. Carlisle, Shrewsbury, Exeter City. All had to clamber back up through the play-offs. Only Chester and Halifax have gone back up as champs in my time and both after a year or so languishing in the nether regions.

Brian Little and Darlington was before my time but it's a stat that has made me take a step back. Dare I Lay the Robins (or the Red Dragons as they are now nationalistically known!) this season? Trading at around 10.0 in the outrights and prime candidates to be taken on, The Boz is calling a timeout to consider. Going to get myself down to the Racecourse Ground to check out how the land lies. See what Savo Milosevics and Dwight Yorke's that man Little has got swirling round in the current Wrexham ranks.

Watch this space in the weeks before the season starts to see whether The Boz comes down on the side of Laying Little Large or doing an Eddie and staying loyal to the man who has already taken a relegated team straight back up on top of the pile.