the hatred we have for mackemenemy knows no bounds
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Lawrie McMenemy (Sunderland)
Tom Cowie will go down as one of the worst chairmen any club have been inflicted with. After Sunderland's promotion in 1980, Ken Knighton and then Alan Durban had been sacked despite the sporadic promise shown by their teams. Like Charles Amer over at Middlesbrough (who sold Craig Johnston and co and bled the club dry), Cowie suffocated Sunderland and became highly unpopular with supporters.
The crowning turd of all, following relegation in 1985 (in which they had lost the League Cup Final) was the appointment of Lawrie McMenemy as manager. Now McMenemy had been a highly successful manager at Southampton, with an FA Cup win as a Second Division side, and then finishing runners-up to Liverpool in 1984. But he relied too often on ageing players to get the job done for him, and there was always the belief that he was an overrated manager.
So what happened then? Cowie appointed McMenemy as manager and made him the highest paid manager in English football at the time. McMenemy then proceeds to buy a host of has-beens with the assumption they would get Sunderland out of the old Second Division. Despite high hopes, it would be an utterly devastating false dawn that
wrecked the club, and he was sacked by Bob Murray as they were descending towards relegation to the old Third Division for the first and only time ever. And McMenemy's reward for his hatchet job? Assistant manager to Graham Taylor for England! Oh deary deary me...