Even though his widely-fancied Stalybridge Celtic side are bottom instead of top of the Evo-stik NPL premier division, and have lost three out of four games, there are no alarm bells ringing at Bower Fold. The manager believes in his squad and feels the problem may be one of confidence rather than quality.
“I never press the panic button,” said the Burr. “What I do is give it a couple of days to mull things over and then I go again.
“It’s been a bad start to the campaign and the last three results haven’t been good — I know that — but I don’t think the Whitby and Rushall results properly reflected our performances.
“Against Whitby we played well for long periods but they got two goals at the end when we were pushing to get a win. Against Rushall we would have won if we’d taken our chances. It was only against Marine that we didn’t get going and maybe that was a confidence thing.
“I’ve never made any promises about what we’ll achieve this season, and it’s only at the end that we’ll be able to decide what sort of a season it’s been, but in 2012-13, when I was in charge at Kidderminster Harriers, we lost the first five matches, didn’t win any of the opening ten, and then turned it right round and finished only two points behind Mansfield.
“If that happened here I’d take it, but we need to start winning now. It’s when you start to win that your confidence grows.
“I don’t like the position we’re in now because that’s not what I’m used to and I didn’t come back to Stalybridge Celtic to be a failure. Wherever I’ve been I’ve known success of a kind — even here at Bower Fold last season. I didn’t keep the club up but we did start winning some matches and got off the bottom of the league.
“At Southport I got them out of the relegation area, although at the time that wasn’t enough for them, and it was a similar sort of thing with Chester.”
Ahead of the season, Stalybridge were strongly tipped as one of the favourites for promotion. It was no secret that club chairman Rob Gorski had made a generous budget available to secure a return to National League North at the first attempt. However, Burr denies that pressure has anything to do with his team’s failure to perform so far.
He said: “I have no problem with the fact that people are tipping us. Stalybridge Celtic are a big club at this level and we’ve got to accept that teams are going to raise their game against us. They’re going to try and scalp us.
“But it’s not the sort of pressure you get playing in front of crowds of six or seven thousand every week. Here at Bower Fold the fans are very supportive. They get right behind the players and I’m sure there are bemused and gobsmacked as I am at what’s happened so far.
“Maybe it’s a confidence thing. Maybe it’s because we did so well in pre-season. Maybe we just need a little bit of time to gel. Possibly we’ll have to shuffle a couple of players out and shuffle a couple in.
“I have confidence in the squad. I know they’re a capable group of players and I’m always loyal. I’ll always give people a fair chance. But if things don’t start to happen I’ll have to make changes because otherwise I’ll be changed.
“Barely three weeks ago we played Nantwich off the park so I’m not going to suddenly castigate the lads as no-hopers. But whatever happens we won’t be using 60 or 70 players as we did last season.
“It’s always tough when you’re at the wrong end of the table. I’ve not lost any belief in myself, or the squad, but having said that I can’t wait forever and a day. It’s an unfortunate fact in football that you don’t get a lot of time to get things right. Whatever the level it’s all about winning.”