Sky Sports' Johnny Phillips: A bleak week for Neal Ardley and football managers

At the time of writing, five have lost their jobs.

The most high-profile departure saw Slavisa Jokanovic leave Fulham, to be instantly replaced by Claudio Ranieri.

Yet a short hop down the District Line there was a managerial casualty that ranks as the most disappointing of all.

AFC Wimbledon have parted company with Neal Ardley after six years of service, with his admirable assistant Neil Cox also leaving with him.

It is a great shame that Ardley will not be leading the club when they return home to the borough of Merton.

The Dons hope to move back to Plough Lane, on the site of the now-demolished greyhound stadium, midway through next season if there are no further delays in the construction work.

Ardley was a wide midfielder during Wimbledon’s successful Premier League years under Joe Kinnear in the late 1990s, but also hung around long enough for the darkest days of all when the club was given permission, in May 2002, to relocate to Milton Keynes.

When the three-man Football Association panel gave Wimbledon’s owners the go-ahead to relocate 60 miles north, a group of supporters got together and formed AFC Wimbledon – the real Wimbledon in their eyes, as opposed to what had effectively become a franchise.

At the time, Ardley – still playing at the original Wimbledon – spoke out in support of the fans and agreed it was the right thing for them to do.

AFC Wimbledon applied for a place in the Combined Counties League Premier Division, nine tiers below the Premier League.

On Wednesday, August 21, 2002, AFC Wimbledon played their first competitive match against Chipstead. Watching on in the crowd that day was Ardley.

A couple of weeks’ earlier he signed for Watford, but had vowed to support the fans’ incarnation of the club. And 10 years later he returned to manage them in testing circumstances, keeping the club up in League Two after a dramatic final day of the 2012/13 season.

It has been hard work over these past six years, with the club playing at Kingsmeadow in Kingston, a few miles away from their spiritual home.

The tiny ground cannot generate the sort of income AFC Wimbledon need, but against the odds Ardley guided them to promotion to League One, via the play-offs, on a glorious day at Wembley in May 2016. It was the club’s sixth promotion since they reformed.

In winning promotion, Ardley brought about what every fan had been hoping for – the day when AFC Wimbledon could line up in the same division as the club that stole their identity, MK Dons.

Promotion was achieved playing an attractive brand of football. One particular game springs to mind from that season when the Dons went toe-to-toe with runaway champions Northampton – managed by Chris Wilder – at Sixfields, earning a 1-1 draw in a game that would not have looked out of place two divisions higher up.

Three further seasons in League One have followed under Ardley’s stewardship, during which time they have moved ahead of MK Dons, who dropped down to League Two. There has been another Wembley trip in that time too – a third-round FA Cup tie against Spurs last season.

AFC Wimbledon rightly put out a statement marking Ardley’s achievements this week and pointed out the wider legacy he leaves behind at the club.

“Behind the scenes, he was transforming the quality of the pitches and the staff accommodation at our training ground and constantly seeking additional facilities to enhance our fitness and physiotherapy capabilities,” read the statement.

At this level, there is so much more to managing a football club than sorting out a first team to put out each week.

The media demands may be fewer than they are at Premier League level, but so much time is occupied fighting fires.

Over the last few seasons, when conducting interviews at the club for Soccer Saturday, there was more than one occasion when a late call has been fielded from the media manager informing of a change of location as the club had to make last-minute training alterations to cope with a frozen or flooded pitch. These are the sort of disruptions that occur all the time for clubs on such tiny budgets.

Ardley was pragmatic and patient enough to get on with it and play the hand of cards he had been dealt.

He leaves Wimbledon in a far better state than when he walked in six years ago.

The final step in the club’s remarkable road back home is tantalisingly close.

So many people have put in so much work behind the scenes to get the club on its feet again after the appalling mistreatment it received from the authorities and its former owners 16 years ago.

It would have been a fairytale if Ardley had been the man to take them home.

It was not to be, but is to be hoped we see him back working on a touchline soon.

Nobody, not least Wimbledon’s supporters, would begrudge him the opportunity to return to Merton as a visiting manager.