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Saint's managers of the last 20 seasons


NickG
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As the season concludes we have had 20 managers over the last 20 seasons.

 

What order would you rate them? For how they did for us only (not other clubs before after, how they left etc) Maybe top 5 in order, worst 5

 

There are

 

Branfoot

 

Ball

 

Merrington

 

Souness

 

Jones

 

Hoddle

 

Gray

 

Strachen

 

Wigley

 

Sturrock

 

Wigley (ok 19!)

 

Rednapp

 

Burley

 

Gorman

 

Pearson

 

Poortvliet

 

Wotte

 

Pardew

 

Wilkins

 

Adkins

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Just missing from that list is Chris Nicholl, who i thought did a great job in the five years he was in charge after Lawrie left. We will get to see him tomorrow, as he on the Walsall staff.

 

In the 36 years from 1955 to 1991 Saints had 3 managers, in the 20 years from 1991 to 2011 Saints have had 20 managers!

 

I wonder what might have happened if he wasn't replaced by Ian Branfoot...

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1. Strachan - Cup final, 8th in the PL, hilarious little man.

 

2. Pardew - People will disagree with me but the bloke constructed a team from nothing with zero confidence and won a trophy.

 

3. Hoddle - Had us playing the best football of them all

 

4. Adkins - Cracking manager, but so far his achievement of 2nd was the least we expected really. His harder tests are yet to come.

 

5. Ball - "Give it to Le Tiss"

 

Would be my top 5.

 

To choose a bottom 5 is difficult because the other 15 all deserve to be in it ;)

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As the season concludes we have had 20 managers over the last 20 seasons.

 

What order would you rate them? For how they did for us only (not other clubs before after, how they left etc) Maybe top 5 in order, worst 5

 

You need to have a look at that list again, you need to either include caretakers or not (as you haven't go them all).

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For me:

 

Best

1. Ball - team was fit to go down when he took over, turned it around and understood what we had in Le Tiss

2. Strachan - great times and our team was so hard to beat under him and he signed M Svensson and Niemi

3. Jones - kept us up on a Lowe budget with Le Tiss past his best years, signed Beattie, Pahars, Kev Davies and Marsden for peanuts and laid foundations for Hoddle and Strachan

4. Adkins - first promotion I've ever witnessed!!

5. Hoddle - played some great footy

 

Worst

Branfoot

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Can't count Wigley the first time, Gorman or Wilkins, who were all caretakers for a few games (wouldn'r we have to include Dave Bassett & Denis Wise?)

 

So - best

1 Hoddle - mad but class. Rock solid defence

2 Strachan - would be no1 apart from his team selection in the cup final - putting out a team to lose 1-0

3 Ball - legend. Some of the most enjoyable football since he was playing for us with Keegan & Channon

4 Adkins - but let's see how he does in the transfer market

5 Pardew - turned it around

 

Worst

1 & 2 - Poortvliet & Wotte - how did those clowns get to manage anything????

3 B*stard Redknapp - great with everybody else. Useless with us.

4 Wigley - hopelessly out of his depth

5 Branfoot - hated his whole football philosophy. It was like my team being under enemy occupation. However - he wasn't useless. Kept us up - unlike nos 1 to 4

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Hoddle - turned us into proper contenders

Strachen - over achieved but should have stayed and seen it through

Jones - best pound for pound manager on the list

Adkins - has over-achieved with auto, give him another 2 years and we will back in the Prem

Pearson - we'll never know what might have been

 

Best manager we never had? Warnock CHDAJFU!

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Best:

 

1. Strachan. 8th in the prem and a cup final, says it all.

2. Nigel Adkins. Maybe a tad influence by my joy at promotion but he's produced he most consistent and determined Saints team I can remember.

3. Hoddle. Judas bastard, we hate you because we loved the football you had us playing.

4. Pardew. The JPT win and putting the foundations in place. Some wonderful performances in his reign.

5. Ball. The Matt Le Tissier at his peak memories will stay with us all forever.

 

Worst:

1. Wigley. Utterly out of his weight division.

2. Jan Portvliet. Wigley mk. 2. Poor sod never had a chance.

3. Redknapp. Demotivated mercenary ars*hole. Destroyed any confidence our players had.

4. Branfoot. Anti football.... but he kept us up.

5. Burley. How to waste money and infuriate people.

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Surprised no-one has Gray in their bottom 5. Absolute utter and total disaster. And how anyone can have Sourpuss in the top 5 mystifies me. Apart from the 6-3 against 10-man Manure his record was appalling. And who can forget Ali Dia? We played like crap and looked relegation certs until his assistant (whose name escapes me) more or less took over near the end, and pulled off the greatest of escapes.

 

Good:

Ball

Nicholl

Adkins

Strachan

Pearson

 

Ok:

Pardew

Sturrock

Hoddle

Jones

 

Borderline incompetent:

Burley

Merrington

 

Appalling:

Souness

Branfoot

Wigley

Dodd/Gormless

Gray

Wotte

Poortvliet

Wilkins

Rednapp

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1. Strachan, self-explanatory

2. Hoddle, he really did build on Dave Jones team, and laid the foundations for Strachan

3. Nicholl,an't remember that much about his reign but the players he had Wallace, Shearer, Le Tiss, Case etc ensured a few good years

4. Jones,a vetran for a Saints manager..perhaps the one manager who put up with Lowe long enough...some very astute signings as well (Pahars, Beattie, Marsden, Richards, Jones)

5. Ball,

6. Adkins, 7. Pardew,8. Souness, 9. Sturrock, 10.Burley, 11. Pearson, 12. Merrington, 13. Wotte, 14. Branfoot, 15 Redknapp, 16 Poortvliet, 17 Gray, 18 Wise/Bassett, 19 Wigley, 20. Dodd/Gorman.

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1. Strachan, self-explanatory

2. Hoddle, he really did build on Dave Jones team, and laid the foundations for Strachan

3. Nicholl,an't remember that much about his reign but the players he had Wallace, Shearer, Le Tiss, Case etc ensured a few good years

4. Jones,a vetran for a Saints manager..perhaps the one manager who put up with Lowe long enough...some very astute signings as well (Pahars, Beattie, Marsden, Richards, Jones)

5. Ball,

6. Adkins, 7. Pardew,8. Souness, 9. Sturrock, 10.Burley, 11. Pearson, 12. Merrington, 13. Wotte, 14. Branfoot, 15 Redknapp, 16 Poortvliet, 17 Gray, 18 Wise/Bassett, 19 Wigley, 20. Dodd/Gorman.

 

Pretty fair order

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1 wgs - for reasons already made

2 hoddle - if only spurs hadn't come in or if only lowe had the ****** for a 2nd chance

3 ball - maybe luckiest manager ever mlt was on a mission for him

4 jones -ruined by false claims, great signings helped 1&2

5 ?

pardew - rebuilt team last season but then departed

adkins - promoted with pardew built team

souness - found claus, egil, berkovic, kev davies

merrington - as lucky as ball was dm was unlucky mlt was injured, ball had spent what little cash there was but we stayed up even with mrs m in intensive care

pearson - what could have been?

 

rest fight relegation

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Just missing from that list is Chris Nicholl, who i thought did a great job in the five years he was in charge after Lawrie left. We will get to see him tomorrow, as he on the Walsall staff.

 

In the 36 years from 1955 to 1991 Saints had 3 managers, in the 20 years from 1991 to 2011 Saints have had 20 managers!

 

I wonder what might have happened if he wasn't replaced by Ian Branfoot...

 

Nicholl was a bit of a miracle worker. He kept us in the top division on a real shoestring budget, I'm not sure if he bought a player from a top flight club the whole time he was manager. Replacing him with Branfoot was fairly typical of the incompetent Askham.

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Really liked Nicholl.

 

Wonder if people are rating Hoddle lower as he was a ******?!

 

He came in we were doing poorly, kept us up and then the next season we were storming along until he walked out. I had much more optimism when he was here than WGS

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1. Strachan - Cup final, 8th in the PL, hilarious little man.

 

2. Pardew - People will disagree with me but the bloke constructed a team from nothing with zero confidence and won a trophy.

 

3. Hoddle - Had us playing the best football of them all

 

4. Adkins - Cracking manager, but so far his achievement of 2nd was the least we expected really. His harder tests are yet to come.

 

5. Ball - "Give it to Le Tiss"

 

Would be my top 5.

 

To choose a bottom 5 is difficult because the other 15 all deserve to be in it ;)

 

Pardew above hoddle, bally and adkins??/

Hoddle got great results but the fottball was functional rather than pretty imo.

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I'd say Burley probaby wins the title of biggest under achiever (relatively speaking) considering the resources that he had available compared to the others. Though you could argue that getting relegated is a pretty massive under achievement!

 

A bit hardsh considering he had the best points per game total before Pardew and Adkins came along and made the play offs in his only full season. He couldn't build on that season as he had his best players sold from under him and the whole thing went to pot after that. Certainly not the best, but his teams did score lots of goals and win games and that was something we had lacked for a while.

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Ball, Adkins, Strachan, Jones, Hoddle, in that order.

Hoddle has us winning games, but I can't think of a decent transfer he made. I can think of a few bad ones though, eg Mark Draper in for 1.5m, Boa Morte out for peanuts.

As Dark Munster points out, the 'appalling' list is disturbingly long.

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Probably on my own here but I never rated Nicholl. I didn't think he was the man to build on Lawrie's legacy and he didn't. I feel we gradually went backwards under him and he failed to make the most of the fine young talent he inherited.

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For me

 

Strachan - great achievements

Ball - great season, great memories, great to see Matty in his plomb. Should be number 3 but...

Hoddle - ...can't forgive him for up'ing and leaving when he had the chance to be a true legend IMO

Pardew - Can't believe the stick he gets. Don't know what went on but we had a brilliant season last year and built an entire team and squad from a standing start

Adkins - only manager in my lifetime to win a promotion so a great achievement, just below Pardew at this stage as i think he's only finished his job off. If he gets promotion back to the PL in the next two seasons i think he'd have to go top of the list.

 

Not sure why Dave Jones is appearing in as many top 5 lists. The claims made against him were horrible but after the great first season i think he got it all wrong, a number of poor signings (though some good ones too) and terrible tactics. Not the worst manager out of that list but surpirsed to see him feature so heavily in people's top 5.

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Probably on my own here but I never rated Nicholl. I didn't think he was the man to build on Lawrie's legacy and he didn't. I feel we gradually went backwards under him and he failed to make the most of the fine young talent he inherited.

 

We had our highest finish since 84/85 season McMenemy under Nicholl??? 2 cup semi finals as well. We went backwards a bit towards the end but he generally did okay and we played some great football.

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1 wgs - for reasons already made

2 hoddle - if only spurs hadn't come in or if only lowe had the ****** for a 2nd chance

3 ball - maybe luckiest manager ever mlt was on a mission for him

4 jones -ruined by false claims, great signings helped 1&2

5 ?

pardew - rebuilt team last season but then departed

adkins - promoted with pardew built team

souness - found claus, egil, berkovic, kev davies

merrington - as lucky as ball was dm was unlucky mlt was injured, ball had spent what little cash there was but we stayed up even with mrs m in intensive care

pearson - what could have been?

 

rest fight relegation

 

 

It wan't Lowe that bottled Hoddle's re-appointment, it was the board. They bottled it because a noisy minority of fans put a petty vendetta before the good of the club. The vast majority of fans, as reflected in the above statements, would have been happy for Hoddle to come back because they knew it was the best bet to secure our Premier status.

The scandal remains and worse is that some fans have done their very best to deflect their role in the near destruction of SFC.

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Nicholl inherited some excellent players but didn't bring in the same quality players that Lawrie did. I still think we should have brought in a more experienced manager to take things on but there you go. A backward step to me but I did say I was probably on my own here.

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Nicholl inherited some excellent players but didn't bring in the same quality players that Lawrie did. I still think we should have brought in a more experienced manager to take things on but there you go. A backward step to me but I did say I was probably on my own here.

 

TO be fair he was always going to be on a hiding to nothing following on from Lawrie who did an unbelievable job in terms of league finishes and players he attracted to a club of this size. Looking back it would have been better to get an experienced manager in but under Nicholl we played some great football, that 89/90 season where we finished 7th was a great season, a team playing great football, scoring loads of goals.

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For me

 

Strachan - great achievements

Ball - great season, great memories, great to see Matty in his plomb. Should be number 3 but...

Hoddle - ...can't forgive him for up'ing and leaving when he had the chance to be a true legend IMO

Pardew - Can't believe the stick he gets. Don't know what went on but we had a brilliant season last year and built an entire team and squad from a standing start

Adkins - only manager in my lifetime to win a promotion so a great achievement, just below Pardew at this stage as i think he's only finished his job off. If he gets promotion back to the PL in the next two seasons i think he'd have to go top of the list.

 

Not sure why Dave Jones is appearing in as many top 5 lists. The claims made against him were horrible but after the great first season i think he got it all wrong, a number of poor signings (though some good ones too) and terrible tactics. Not the worst manager out of that list but surpirsed to see him feature so heavily in people's top 5.

 

Spot on

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TO be fair he was always going to be on a hiding to nothing following on from Lawrie who did an unbelievable job in terms of league finishes and players he attracted to a club of this size. Looking back it would have been better to get an experienced manager in but under Nicholl we played some great football, that 89/90 season where we finished 7th was a great season, a team playing great football, scoring loads of goals.

 

Have to agree with this to be honest. I think Nicholl made a decent go of it, but one of his problems was that he had to follow in the footsteps of probably our greatest manager ever (only Bates could give Lawrie a run for his money). I can certainly remember some very attacking displays, but his handicap was that people were used to "success", "star signings" and a huge "ego & personality" under Lawrie, so Nicholl sometimes suffered and came across a tad bland!

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