http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...h-Gainsborough-Trinity-just-days-season.html? When Little came to Leicester, we took a punt on a young manager doing very well in the lower leagues, with Darlington I seem to remember. He took a Leicester side which had whimpered to a 3rd bottom finish in the old Second Division. He transformed the club on limited revenue and we flirted with top 2 for a while before finishing a creditable 4th. It took 3 Wembley play-off finals before we were finally promoted. We had a poor start to our first Premiership season before picking up some points and climbing out of the relegation zone. Then Villa came calling and Little acrimoniously left the club he had built up from the bottom. It will never be known what would've happened that season had Little not left but history does record that we finished a miserable bottom of the table after he left. My question is this. How did a manager go from 'promising young talent' to 'not good enough to hold down a non-league job'? Surely the talent that allowed him to do such a good job for Leicester must still be within him? Or has football changed and he hasn't? I cannot think of a valid reason why he should've failed so miserably after such a promising start to his career. Any ideas?
Brian Little was a very nice bloke, I was disappointed when he left Hull, he was doing a good job, I met him a few years after he left us, in the players bar at Tranmere and he was an absolute gent(though he still wouldn't give me his reasons for leaving us). I think there's more going on than meets the eye at Gainsborough, apparently there are a lot of problems at the club, but I still can't Brian getting another job any time soon.
You could say this about a lot of managers. A lot of them do an unbelievable job at one place and then fail miserably somwhere else. That's just football. It's all cirumstantial. Also, some managers do well with a limited budget by getting the best out of players and getting them to play as an organised effective unit, but then do not know how to go to the next level with them. I'm not neccessarily saying this is the case for Little, but we were still struggling when he was the manager in the Premier League, we may have gone down anyway.
I have often wondered the same about Brian Little - He was in charge when I started going regularly home and away as a teenager. Good times! He seemed to lurch from bad to worse once he had left us...the same could be said of a certain Mark Mcgee too
When we were relegated to League One he was one of the names bandied about and I must admit I quite fancied him coming back. I cannot get my head round how he has done so badly since.
Quality for us and a nice chap - he wasn't a judas - just tried to improve his lot by joining Villa. After that nob end Pleat Little was a breath of fresh air. I wish him all the best and would suggest his departure wasnt down to his ability to do the job but was more about politics. Good luck Brian one of the best managers we ever had.
