Despite the enormity of the task, he sees Steve Burr as the man who can achieve the seemingly impossible and save the Bower Fold outfit from relegation to the Evo-stik Northern Premier League.
And if the nightmare becomes reality, Burr will be given the money he needs to get Celtic back into Vanarama North at the first attempt.
“A lot of things have been said about our wage bill this week, so I want to make it clear that Paul and Steve were given a budget that was much, much bigger than anything Keith Briggs had, and even bigger than Liam Watson had,” said Gorski.
“We kept telling the two of them to go out and sign a prolific striker — which I realise is difficult. They were never short of financial backing.
“If we do go down, I’ve already said to Steve Burr that we won’t be slashing the wage bill. We won’t be raising the white flag. We’d want to come straight back at the first time of asking.”
Gorski accepts that Phillips and Halford were presented with a very difficult task when they took over at Bower Fold at the start of September, and he agrees that they had improved the team. Even so, results were not improving, goals were not being scored in sufficient quantity, and when a manager of Steve Burr’s quality became available he had to act.
He explained: “Contrary to certain speculation, I had absolutely no idea Steve was going to part company with Southport. All the talk about a deal being agreed with him two weeks ago is utter nonsense.
“Steve has always retained contact with Stalybridge Celtic and he showed his class when he attended the funeral of our kit man, Mark Storah, a few months ago. He’s attended several fund-raising events too.
“He’s a Conference Premier manager and when he became free I couldn’t give up on the opportunity of getting him, given his position and previous history.
“Yes Paul and Steve inherited a very poor squad and were unlucky to have the longest list of injuries, but if anybody takes a step back I think they’d agree their record wasn’t good enough. I had to view the situation objectively and what I saw was poor football statistics.
“We couldn’t score, and although we’d started to shore up the defence a lot of performances just weren’t good enough. We did show improvement and I was genuinely pleased for the two of them, but whichever way you look at it, football is a results business and ours weren’t good enough.”
Gorski concluded with an appeal to the squad, and especially to any players feeling unsettled after the managerial change: “For any of them who aren’t aware of Steve Burr, I want them to know they’re incredibly fortunate to have a guy who is in all but name a national division manager.
“He plays fabulous football and has a reputation for being one of the best managers around.
“My message to the players is that they should seize the chance to learn and to soak up the information Steve passes on, because this really is an opportunity to kick on as individual footballers. For their own sake they should grasp this opportunity.”