Shields’s flair will be badly missed at the Fleet

It may be the case that there is a Sean Shields at every club; a player that is immensely popular with supporters but falls out of favour with a succession of managers.

With 137 appearances since joining the club in 2014, Shields was the Fleet’s longest serving player but it was announced last month that his contract will not be renewed.

This is not exactly a surprise as he has spent the majority of the season on loan at Notts County, and indeed much of his Stonebridge Road career was spent being loaned out to a variety of clubs including Chelmsford, Hemel Hempstead and Margate.

Shields was one of Jamie Day’s first signings in his short-lived managerial stint at the club as he joined on a loan deal from then-football league side Dagenham & Redbridge. Later in the season, Shields was signed on a permanent basis to the delight of Fleet supporters.

The 2014/15 season was a time when the Fleet were really flexing their newfound financial muscle, signing established football league players such as Kelvin Langmead, Stuart Lewis & Danny Kedwell. However, despite Day’s attempt to turn the Fleet into the Harlem Globetrotter’s of the National League South, it was the relatively unknown loanee who really caught the eye, scoring a delightful lob on one of his first appearances in a 5-1 win at Chelmsford City.

His skilful wing play was highly entertaining as he turned defenders inside and out with endless stepovers. Whilst one could safely assume that Shields’ showboating wasn’t quite what he was being instructed to do by the management, the Fleet fans were delighted to see a player with such flair playing for the club.

Day’s somewhat overenthusiastic behaviour in the transfer market, combined with the owners own enthusiasm for recruiting new players (and giving Day a blank cheque for which to do this) meant that, at one point, the Fleet had a squad of thirty-eight players.

As a result of this, many of the signings Fleet brought in did not turn out to be great additions to the squad with players such as Kelvin Langmead, Tyrone Marsh & Mark Gower all quietly moving on before the start of next season. However, Shields showed enough to suggest that he could well be a crucial player in seasons to come.

Although, as it would turn out, Shields would be in and out of the team for more or less the rest of his career, never truly cementing his place on the left-hand side in the same way that his predecessor (and later team-mate when he returned to the club) Anthony Cook had done in his first spell at the club.

To the average paying punter, it was bewildering why a player with Shields’ quality was continuously left out of the team; an immensely skilful winger with a superb cross, he impressed whenever he played but seemed to get the label of ‘impact player’, a term that appears to have succeeded ‘super sub’ in the ever-evolving football lexicon.

In fact, it was ex-Fleet manager Garry Hill who used the term impact player to describe Shields at a fans forum last August when pressed on why the ex-St Albans player wasn’t getting much game time (At this point, the Fleet had lost all five of their opening league games).

This wasn’t the first time that Sean Shields had been brought up at a fans forum; over four years previously Day had talked jocularly about his pre-match nerves to the delight of those packed into the club bar that evening.

If there had been a recall clause in his loan deal with Notts County, it’s likely he would’ve been in a Fleet shirt once again, not only due to a threadbare squad but because Myles Weston’s sudden departure from the club had left the Fleet particularly short on wide players who could float crosses into the box for Ugwu and Umerah to attack.

Of course it seems somewhat redundant to press home the importance of replacing Shields as more or less all positions will need strengthening when the time comes to build a squad for 2020/21 but there is no doubt that Lovell bringing in players with Shields’ level of creative flair would be most welcome.

Follow Henry on Twitter @Fleetontoast