Nigel Worthington

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ThaiCanary

ThaiCanary

Well-Known Member
Jan 26, 2011
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Where the sun never stops shining
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/14822327.stm

On a personal note I hope this does not happen. I know he did not keep us in the PL but I am not sure that was entirely down to him and when he left us it was right he did (on the back of a humiliating hammering at home to Burnley). Perhaps he did over-stretch himself in the PL but Doomcaster & co did not help our cause.
He has been the N. Ireland boss for a good few years now and think he done a good job on exceptionally limited resources. Why do people think he should be able to guide them to compete with other nations? It's like a mid table Championship side taking on a PL team on most occasions.

I bumped in to Nigel in the Dereham Tesco's a 2 years ago had had a chat with him, mostly about football of course. He was a thoroughly 'nice guy' and took the time and trouble to chat with a complete stranger (Albeit on a subject he is very passionate about).

I tried to touch on the PL experience but he was not going to say too much about it and wanted to talk more about N. Ireland. In a way I was pleased in the way he steered the conversation away as he clearly did not want to say a bad word about anything that happened. I do not know what other experiences he has had with other City fans since his departure but I got the feeling he was not expecting a Norwich fan to not show any kind of hostility towards him.
 
Sanchez what a scumbag basically saying get Worthy out cos I want another crack at it. Why do the press give self serving numpties airtime
 
Give Worthy the boot and then bring back Sanchez? That's like throwing out a tenner to make room for a fiver. Let's hope the Northern Ireland FA see straight through him.

On Worthington, it's always surprised me that there doesn't seem to have been more of a clamour from Championship clubs for his services. Whilst it went stale at Carrow Road, prior to that he'd done a great job. Let's not forget that if the board had backed him in the summer and brought in Ashton as he wanted, we may well have stayed up.
A good man, and a better manager than many give him credit for.
 
We should never forget what a good job the man did for our club. I feel that he was sacked too early and the only reason we got thrashed was due to the threat from the board to the manager. He was no where near as bad as the two managers who followed.
 
He was no where near as bad as the two managers who followed

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totally agree but the time had come for a change. he'd lost the plot for almost a year before the axe was finally wielded. he did a remarkably good job for us over the years but that doesn't mean he should have stayed longer than he did. as for the NI situation (or "cityation" as worthy usually pronounces it), i cannot fathom how well so-called experts expect that nation to perform! i'd suggest he has done pretty well to keep them in contention for yet another qualifying competition until the latter stages. check out the players he can pick from. they are ranked a long way above wales who have far superior players to choose from. who on earth do they think would do a better job? it certainly wouldn't be sanchez - his star has fallen so far that even barnet fans aren't too enamoured with his managerial abilities
 
I wouldnt say he had lost the plot we were around 14th and the fans expected too much and I would have rather kept him than the next two managers.

Agree about northern Ireland. How can you expect a country of 1.8 mill to do well. Also, the majority of their players are football league. How on earth can they compete with teams with champions league players that are available to them.
 
i'm afraid losing the plot is exactly what had happened! you just need to check out how appalling his signings were following relegation to see how much he'd lost it. tactics were all over the place, there was severe disharmony in the camp which was visible on the pitch with various arguments amongst players, and a massive lack of vision was his major problem. lets not forget that he was fortunate to fall upon a promotion winning team in many ways. he always had a decent core of players to build around in the likes of holt, fleming and mackay, but we went into that season with zema abbey and david nielson as our only strikers. when both were injured early on he was forced into the transfer market, hence the signings of crouch and huckerby, and the rest as they say is history. he was found out tactically in the premier league, getting basic things wrong, ridding us of two of our most influential characters during the prior summer, ripping the heart out of the club, which would have been fine had they then been replaced by anything other than helveg, bentley and jonsson! as i say, he did a good job for us in difficult circumstances at times, but lets not forget how poor he was at times too. we were 14th having been favourites for promotion and having spent a fortune on players like earnshaw! easy with hindsight to say he was better than the next two managers, which of course he was - but that doesn't mean it wasn't right to get rid.
 
just to add to that, knowing a number of the coaching staff from that period, i know a fair bit about what was going on inside the club at that time. he got rid of anyone who was small but technically gifted from the youth teams and replaced them with strapping giants with less mobility than a statue. he set the club back five years in their opinion, maybe more. he did more bad for the club than good in the long run. in many ways, the following two managers were left to pick up the pieces! i'm not defending them, they were terrible appointments, but i am just making the picture a little less rosy for the worthy lovers as they don't always see the truth.
 
When he first took over we wer awful and he improved us year on year resulting in promotion. You don't earn that on luck.

Who are you referring to when you say he got rid of them ripping the heart out of the club?

A better example on someone who's lost the plot is gunn.

What it comes down to is having an awful board at the time. Things no doubt would have been much better had McNally been in charge.

For the board to sack someone who could have rebuilt the club in the long term with two that effectively ruined the club was quite a dire mistake.
 
wonky, you are so wrong!

how can you forget him getting rid of iwan and malky that summer, our two most charismatic players at the time, two leaders on and off the pitch. now i'm not saying they would have played as much - the legs were beginning to go - but to take out your two most influential players from a dressing room and NOT replace EITHER of them is frankly stupid. no matter how much you argue, he did get lucky the year we went up. i totally agree he did a superb job initially keeping us up and challenging for the play offs the following season - that wasn't lucky - that was good management. however, there is so much about his regime that was poor and by the end of it it was nothing more than a shambles. in fact, i think he was incredibly fortunate to keep his job as long as he did.

i will always have time for him as he did a good job initially and is certainly one of the better managers we've had in recent times. but that doesn't mean he was the right man for the club by the end and as i've pointed out above, he was the catalyst for relegation to league one. as much as the board were at fault for replacing him with even worse managers in the aftermath, he is the one who set the ball rolling in terms of poor players on massive wages. ok, the board still have to accept to pay these, but the manager is clearly the one who persuaded them to do so.

as for gunn, i'm not sure he ever had a plot. he was so out of his depth from minute one that i don't feel its a fair comparison. gunn was NEVER managerial material and he and the board let heart rule head.
 
Definitely not! It can't be right to sack a manager after getting relegated at the end of the teams first time in the top flight for a while. Regardless of whether it was 6-0 or 1-0. So much of the blame is on the players for that day as well.

Don't know about Mackay, but Iwan chose to leave Norwich and it was his choice alone. Iwan had hardly played at all in his last season with us so it wasn't a huge deal, in terms of influence, that he left.

Mackay was replaced by Doherty who did a great job for us.

McNally thinks long term, sacking Worthington would have affected the players, would have disrupted plans and cost money.

Also, a manager can't be awful and unorganised then be hired as manager of an international team. That wouldn't make sense.

Note the good players he brought in. Huckerby, Dublin and Drury - three legends at this club. He also signed players like McKenzie, Doherty, Safri, Francis and Ashton.
 
Can't comment much about what was going on inside the club toward the end of Worthington's time because I simply don't know, but obviously things weren't right. It was clearly a very unhappy and disjointed camp. However, on balance, he did a good job for us. Should have gone sooner, but that doesn't make the work he'd done previously worse.

Malky going was a mistake, but as for the release of Iwan, I'd bet Lambert would have done exactly the same thing.
 
wonky, i don't know if you were at fulham that fateful day but i was not alone in losing whatever faith i still had in worthy. we could have easily stayed up that season yet his failures cost us. iwan DID NOT want to leave the club - i have that direct from the horses mouth so to speak. he was genuinely heartbroken and shellshocked. he played more than 30 times in his final season for us. docherty was diabolical in our premier league season. he had one good season in the championship and then was good in league one - other than that, despite being a loyal servant to the club, his purchase will go down as a mistake. mcnally acts upon the best interests of the club. he WOULD have sacked worthy following the fulham farce in my opinion. he had mis-managed all season long, and looked as though he was going to get out of jail with the signing of ashton, but overall that season worthy was a miserable failure. worthington was appointed manager of NI because he was the best candidate for them. however, i don't see many clubs eyeing him up. you've named a handful of signings over a six year spread. ANY manager could point to good signings over that long a period. however, lets focus on some of the duff ones. bentley, jonsson, helveg, charlton, stuart, thorne, louis-jean, jarrett. there are too many to mention but these were all signed on massive wages that crippled the club. i am very passionate about this because i know an awful lot about what was going on at the club under worthy and he seriously messed us up - so you'll have to excuse me for ranting a bit!
 
Exile said:
Can't comment much about what was going on inside the club toward the end of Worthington's time because I simply don't know, but obviously things weren't right. It was clearly a very unhappy and disjointed camp. However, on balance, he did a good job for us. Should have gone sooner, but that doesn't make the work he'd done previously worse.

Malky going was a mistake, but as for the release of Iwan, I'd bet Lambert would have done exactly the same thing.
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agree with most of this exile. just because he should have gone earlier shouldn't discredit the fact he did a good job in the first three years. lambert may well have done the same thing with iwan had it been recently but that dressing room at that time was lacking characters. i bet he wouldn't have got rid at that time.
 
Superman wears Grant Holt pyjamas in bed said:
agree with most of this exile. just because he should have gone earlier shouldn't discredit the fact he did a good job in the first three years. lambert may well have done the same thing with iwan had it been recently but that dressing room at that time was lacking characters. i bet he wouldn't have got rid at that time.
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I think, sadly, promotion had come a season or two too late for Iwan. He'd almost certainly have been a passenger, and probably on decent wages. It just wouldn't have been worth the outlay to have a non-playing squad member.
We know that pre-season Worthington wanted to replace Iwan with Ashton, but Doncaster said we couldn't afford it. January window came around, and suddenly we could. I certainly don't let Worthy off scot free, but Doncaster's finger prints are all over that period, and the Hamilton debacle that Worthington inherited come to that. I just think that most of the good that happened during Worthy's time came about because of Worthington.

Mind you, while we're looking back, if Chase hadn't stuffed it up with O'Neil, Worthington would have been irrelevant to us... bloody Chase... it always comes back to him in the end... I bet it's him that makes it rain whenever I have a barbecue ;)
 
It'd certainly be an interesting read!! Although, if you know about it, you know you're free to p.m. me Super... ;)

As long as Dave Stringer remains unimpeachable, all's well with the world.
 
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