Ok so its Hypothetical ... Who of the ex-saints premier league managers would you, assuming good health (not being dead) and relevance, put back into the hot seat. (Excluding Poch and Koeman) This is my list (in order) 1. Alan Ball - reason - post branfoot turned club around, amazing achievement, bought the club back to life - and played a massive role in creating and developing 'Le God' 2. Glenn Hoddle - Tactical Wizard. Made Beatty look like a world beater. Saints were top 10 easy under Hoddle every time. Massive shame when he left for Spurs. Rupert Lowe to blame possibly... 3. Nigel Adkins - two succesive promotions is exceptional and arguably NA should be top but was cut short by Cortese when promoted to the Prem so it's tricky to judge. Neverthless stunning for Saints and a worthy top 3. 4. Gordon Strachan - SFC were terrible and heading down Gray style... GS turned everything around. Had the Chairman not been RL then I suspect would have stayed. Big loss at the time 5. Graham Souness - I thought he was awesome, really smart manager and made Saints very difficult to beat and never really got going. Again RL fall out to blame I think 6. Dave Jones - Doing an exceptonal job until some some silly little idiot accused DJ of being a peado which was utter bollocks. RL should have stood up for DJ
I have a soft spot for Chris Nicholl but only because he was the gaffer when I first started watching Saints.
Chris Nicholl was an amazing manager - totally underrated and under appreciated. But it’s Adkins for me - right spoon and right bowl - he’s not been able to replicate it elsewhere because our set up was so good. Still is IMO. Agree with comments about DJ though actually RL did stick by him as long as he could - it was the banks that forced him into giving Dave garden leave to concentrate on his defence.
OK well your other options are - David Merrington Stuart Gray Steve Wigley Paul Sturrock Steve Wigley Harry Redknapp Dave Bassett & Dennis Wise .33 George Burley John Gorman & Jason Dodd Nigel Pearson Jan Poortvliet Mark Wotte Alan Pardew
Haha - I can see why you did not list them in the original post. Goodness we’ve had a lot of poor managers haven’t we!
The question is why did I exclude Poch and Koeman from this, hypothetical, exercise ? Do you want to know more?
How the **** does Souness make the list ahead of Nicholl, Pardew or even Burley? He nearly took us down FFS and then there was the Ali Dia embarrassment. Based on who I was saddest/most angry to see go it is: WGS Nige Bally Hoddle
The initial list is very odd imo with no Chris Nichol nor Lawrie McMenemy, the two managers who achieved Saints highest ever league position and who actually won a major cup ! Alan Ball was tempted by big money offered by Man City unfortunately, and this proved to be a big mistake for him personally. Glenn Hoddle was always going to go to Tottenham when they offered him the job.
Nonetheless it has to be Lawrie Mac. The problem is, though, that it took him 3 seasons to win anything and he took us down in his first season! We would all have to learn a bit of patience, but it would be worth it. The board would have to back him to the hilt too. In fact, rather than have him as manager, I would replace Les Reed with Lawrie, and give him total control over football matters at the club, including pushing the boat out to get his choice of manager.
Ah, I've just re-read his OP and it specifies PL managers, that's why Lawrie and Nicholl are not on the list as well as Pards and Burley.
Nor is Alan Ball ... been dead 11 years. Thoigh probably still Got a higher chance of scoring than our strikers.
I hear things at Spurs are not going so well for Poch.........there is a bit of a rumour that he might be going out the door. Anyone else heard this??
