In hindsight I thought ME pulled the trigger a little early with Jim. For a rookie manager did very very well without money and to be fair didn't improve us after spending lots of money but after the consequent 10 years he didn't do a bad job. I was a big Jim fan.
Keane I hated the appointment from the off, he's just a tw*t and it was the complete opposite of what you would describe as an itfc manager. Is the worst ITFC manager in history, some of the decisions he made defied logic and put us back years, despite getting Sunderland promoted the warning signs were there on what he'd be like as a manager.
Jewell didn't do a good job but I think the majority of managers would have struggled after Keane. What we needed to lift the darkness initially but tried to build a champagne team without the foundations in place and over 1 summer. Think a manager like Jewell could of had success here if he was appointed after Jim rather than Keane, a manager for the good times not the tough. Tried to get us to run before we could walk.
I never have liked McCarthys attitude on the game, even before he came to town his actions really annoyed me but he is a good manager. After the attempted Champagne football of Jewell he did the polar opposite. If Jewell tried to get us to run before we could walk Mick only ever tried to get us to walk even if we'd been able to for years. He replaced the Champagne footballers with workhorses and it worked and he managed to put together a pretty talentless squad and get them into the playoffs. After this his recruitment policy changed for the better he managed to recruit some young fairly talented players for peanuts and had a number of talented academy players at his disposal, unfortunately despite the improvement in recruitment we went backwards on the pitch with a more talented squad and were trying to play the same way with more talented players and this made things more frustrating as they weren't as good at it as the limited squad we had in the playoff season. He had to go and should have gone alot earlier as he forgot the most important people at the club, the fans.