Or head coaches. Are we the unmanageable club? Are we just bad at picking them? Do we not appeal? Are we unlucky? I look at the overly long list of top men in my lifetime and wonder why we dont do better with managerial appts. Alan Brown Bob Stokoe Jimmy Adamson Billy Elliot Ken Kneighton Alan Durban Len Ashurst Lawrie Mac Dennis Smith Malcolm Crosby Terry Butcher Mick Buxton Peter Reid Howard Wilkinson Mick Mcarthy Roy Keane Ricky Sbragia Steve Bruce Martin ONeil Paulo Di Canio Gus Poyet Dick Advocaat Sam Allardyce David Moyes Simon Grayson Chris Coleman Jack Ross Phil Parkinson Lee Johnson Alex Neil Tony Mowbray Mick Beale I havent included caretakers or I would still be typing... Which of these were a success? Stokoe, Smith, Crosby (cup run alone is a fond memory), Reid, Keane, Bruce (at a push). How many had success elsewhere? Lawrie Mac, Wilkinson, Butcher, McCarthy, Bruce, ONeil, Poyet, Moyes, Coleman, Neil (longevity at Norwich). We dont half get through coaches. Sometimes we land on a real good one and it doesnt feel like we are patient enough. Smith, Reid, Bruce, Mowbray and we seem to want them out too soon. Then we get good ones who jump ship on us, Advocaat, Allardyce, Neil. Maybe even Keane, who I cant stand, but he walked away. We dont half seem to be a rough old gig to manage dont we? Is it us the fans? Are we ultra attractive because of the fans but the players always a bit short? Do we just lack that bit of money? If nothing else a bit of patience may be what is really needed, somewhere, for someone.
It's only a pretty recent thing that we have a high turnover over gaffers though isn't it? Maybe since Reid. Before that we had a very low turnover of managers in comparison to other clubs.
We’ve had some ‘right man wrong time’ and we’ve had some ****e. In the main, we have had owners badly advised by their ‘football guy’.
I remember Jimmy Adamson as the first manager in my memory. He was a good manager too. But we ditched Brian Clough for him which to this day saddens me.
Some grim names there mind. I think a lot of the failures come down to ownership and club structure at the time. Whether that be an owner who can't spend, an owner who won't spend, an absent owner, a club with no structure or a club with a structure that the coach disagrees with. Some of them names on the list would've been great under the current structure of being purely the coach but when they were here they were asked to do everything.
The amount of awful decisions made under Shorts tenure made it extremely difficult for managers to succeed during that time. We had a huge advantage financially in his early days but the wheels fell off for me in Bruce’s last two windows. Losing bent, gyan, Henderson, welbeck and then replacing them with a lot average players some of which had just been relegated halted the decent progress we made under Bruce. O’Neil surprisingly flopped and then style of managers just were just so inconsistent that players at the club didn’t suit their style of play and then a new overhaul took place each summer. The manager that pissed me off the most was moyes because allardyce had miraculously built some decent foundations for us to actually steady ourselves in the prem and that squad was ripped apart and filled with past it ex Moyes players. All the managers that followed Moyes had massively difficult jobs, the club was really on its arse once we were finally relegated, only recently have we recovered from those days
I remember posting a list of all the terrible decisions that were made on here. It was really long. People think things are bad now. They must have short memories.
We were run like a parody of a football club. The Alvarez thing would be funny if it happened to any other club! The people Short let loose on the top jobs with no experience and no reason to get the job other than they were about when hiring ffs! I'm sure he would never ever ever employ someone with such a lack of experience for any other role he hires for! He wouldn't be a billionaire if he did! Short put money in so I'll give him that but he was so hands off he was mugged off!
How many of those managers were out of work when we appointed them? There's a boring narrative being pushed by the usual podcasts about Beale being the "cheap option" and how the club only went for him because we didn't have to pay compensation, but I'm not seeing many names on there who were enticed from another club. Maybe Jack Ross and Steve Bruce? Wilkinson was employed by the FA. Any others? Was Smith poached from York City? All of the ones we'd deem a success (Reid, McCarthy, BSA, Neil & Mowbray) were all out of work at the time. Durban was the 1st manager I remember, so memory of the early days is a bit sketchy but most on that list were unemployed when we appointed them. Sort of kills the narrative doesn't it?
I don't think we're too bad for sacking managers. We've had 41 managers (excluding caretakers) in our history. Compare that to Palace who have had in excess of 65 or West Ham who've had 18 and we come out somewhere in the middle. I think the sporting director/head coach model will see us go through them more quickly because of the nature of the set up. That might mean we have to look to foreign head coaches, who are more accepting of working that way, in the future. It is possible that we'll run out of British coaches who are happy to give it a go, simply because it's not the traditional way of doing things here. It has become more common to sack football managers as time has gone. Of our 41 managers, only 6 of them came between the founding of the club and the Second World War. That's possibly because as the 20th century went on and we entered the 21st century, people's ability to exercise patience has decreased massively. It might help though, if the general public had a better understanding of the role of manager/head coach at a professional football club. They might then see that the constant cycle of hiring and firing is futile. They seem to forget that two of the most successful managers in recent history were in post for excess of 20 years each and both were shown patience by their clubs.
