How Tim Flowers turned Solihull Moors into the National League’s surprise package

Updated: 12/12/2024

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With the end of the season in sight, the race for promotion from the National League looks to be heading towards a tense final day. In amongst the predicted title challengers – Wrexham, Leyton Orient and Salford City – are Solihull Moors, the division’s surprise package. Avoiding relegation was the aim, but Tim Flowers’ side have exceeded all expectations.

“We stayed up on the penultimate game of the season last year and clearly we wanted to steer clear of that. But results-wise we got off to a really great start with three straight victories. Following on from last season we had momentum,” Flowers, the former England international and Premier League winner with Blackburn Rovers, tells i.

“Confidence has grown that we can hack it at this level. We’re in a good place, which is way beyond what anyone could have imagined, inside or outside the club.”

Remarkable turnaround

Following a 2-1 win over Braintree Town last Saturday, Moors currently sit second in the table, level on points with the leaders Orient, who have a game in hand. It’s a remarkable turnaround from where the club found itself when Flowers first arrived, as assistant to Mark Yates, in November 2017. They were rooted to the bottom and in danger of being cut adrift.

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“When we came in it was poor. It was a poor standard,” recalls Flowers. “The club was trying hard but it was misguided, I thought. The quality wasn’t good enough to make a fist of this level. This is a tough level – it’s a professional level – and if you’re not ready, or you’re not quite up to scratch, you can get brutally found out.”

The new coaching staff raised standards. Players were told in no uncertain terms that they had to train harder. There would be no more evening sessions on an astroturf pitch at a local school.

Greater professionalism was needed. With improved fitness and belief, Moors won 11 of their remaining 27 league games to finish 18th.

Taking the division by storm

Their impact didn’t go unnoticed, with Yates offered the manager’s job at Macclesfield Town, newly promoted to League Two. He went, while Flowers chose to stay and build on their good work.

Playing unashamedly physical and direct football, Moors have taken the division by storm – and reached the FA Cup second round for just the second time in their short history.

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“You look at clubs that do well, and how they do well. What sort of style of football do they implement, and what sort of personnel do they bring in? I looked at it, and for me, this division and the one above, is still very much about power.

“Lots of teams do try to play, and that’s their prerogative, but I look at Lincoln, who are sitting pretty at the top of League Two, and they are big, powerful, well-organised, and excellent at restarts. They know exactly what they’re doing in and out of possession. That’s how we’ve tried to go,” explains Flowers.

“It’s very difficult to pretty your way out of this division. It’s very difficult to play through the thirds because people just run straight over the top of you. If you haven’t got good players on good money you can get badly found out by doing it, so we try to get the ball forward to big, mobile strikers and then get bodies up to support quickly.”

‘I don’t care what people think’

Tim Flowers in action for Blackburn Rovers in 1996 (Getty Images)
Tim Flowers in action for Blackburn Rovers in 1996 (Getty Images)

Although Moors’ approach may not appeal to the purist, Flowers isn’t remotely concerned. “I don’t care,” he says flatly. “Ask the Solihull fans if they like it, because we create chances galore most of the times we play. We play attacking football and we’ve got very attacking full-backs who bomb forward and look to deliver with quality. People pay money to watch goals and goalscoring opportunities and we provide that. If other people don’t like it then I’m not bothered.”

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The strategy has yielded impressive results on a budget far smaller than that of their promotion rivals. The money spent by Salford has raised a lot of eyebrows but others competing for the title have big crowds and Football League pedigree on their side. By contrast, Moors are the inexperienced upstarts. Founded in 2007 by the merger of Solihull Borough and Moor Green, this is just their third ever season in the National League – which is one reason why Flowers isn’t getting carried away.

“When you see the teams we’re up against, how can Solihull Moors be arrogant enough to say we’d be disappointed if we weren’t promoted? But you’d have to say it’s been a monumental effort from the whole football club. The infrastructure’s improved massively.”

‘Harder than anything else I’ve done’

This is Flowers’ second stab at management , after a disappointing 11-game spell at Stafford Rangers came to an end in 2011. His CV also includes coaching roles at a variety of clubs higher up the pyramid, including Coventry City, Fulham and Nottingham Forest.

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“Being a former goalkeeper I got my badges and went into that side of the game, specifically coaching goalkeepers, but I’ve covered a lot of different briefs. I hadn’t really thought about whether management was my aim but I happened to be here when that opportunity arose,” says the 52-year-old.

“I took it and I’ve enjoyed it. It’s a lot harder than anything else I’ve done. You’ve got to think of everything. There are all these things bouncing around your head and you can wake up at four in the morning and think, boom, ‘I need a centre-half.’

“Nevertheless it’s probably the nearest thing to playing. That matchday feeling that you get because at the end of the day it’s your neck that’s on the block.”

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