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Who are the worst ever league managers?









Stumpy Tim

Well-known member
Graham Rix was spectacularly poor where ever he went. He also fiddled with children.

Jimmy Case also did the worst job of football management I've ever seen, but sensibly didn't go back into management afterwards
 




timco

Well-known member
Jul 5, 2003
1,692
Birmingham
Lawrenson managed somebody didn't he?

Oxford United

Poor chap could not even manage to get in a pub successfully.

When he was sacked film crews followed him out the ground he wanted to go in a pub but found the door locked.
 




Oct 25, 2003
23,964
chris hutchings seems to be an absolute GRIM REAPER of a manager


Bradford- 21 games, 7 wins
Wigan- 13 games, 2 wins
Derby- 1 game, 1 win (against Forest Green Rovers)
Walsall- 98 games, 31 wins
 


Lady Whistledown

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Jul 7, 2003
47,639
But I think my vote would go to Alan Ball, for the way in which he shared his managerial uselessness with a variety of clubs.

-Got Pompey promoted, true, but also relegated the next year. They had a team of utter thugs back then, as I recall.

-Joined Stoke, spent loads of money- by their standards- and relegated them, before being fired the season after with them in the lowest league position in their history (15th in the third tier).

-Joined Exeter, who were also relegated. Walked out just before the inevitable happened.

-He had a role in Graham Taylor's England administration for the 1992 European Championships, in which England lost all three group games, finished bottom of their group, and went out in the first round. So, sort of a relegation too.

-Breaking the trend briefly, he got the Southampton job, and (presumably by mistake) they stayed up on the last day of the season. Thanks more to Le Tissier than him.

-Moving on to Man City, and perhaps the most infamous moment of his relegation-magnet career, when, in stoppage time and with the game at 2-2, he told his players to keep the ball by the corner flag, thinking a point would keep them up, when in fact they needed a win. Relegation yet again.

-Finally he moved back to Pompey. Where he was, true to form, sacked in the end.

Surely, SURELY old squeaky voice should be up there?
 


Stumpy Tim

Well-known member
there's probably a website with managers win % etc.

but hinshelwood must be up there.......12 league games, 1 win, 1 draw, 10 losses

I feel sorry for Hinsh. He started well with 4 points from the first two games, but then Zamora got injured and he was forced to play Marney, a young Dean Hammond, and basically a load of crappy youth teamers. Mourinho wouldn't have had a much better record given the stuff that went wrong.
 






Oct 25, 2003
23,964
I feel sorry for Hinsh. He started well with 4 points from the first two games, but then Zamora got injured and he was forced to play Marney, a young Dean Hammond, and basically a load of crappy youth teamers. Mourinho wouldn't have had a much better record given the stuff that went wrong.

i do as well (kuipers was also injured for much of the run), but his record WAS poor

another thing was that he wasn't given much of a pre-season....it was a bit of a shambles that summer as we scraped around looking for a manager and I seem to remember Hinsh being given the job quite late in the summer
 


waterhouse

New member
Feb 22, 2009
208
somerset
It's got to be Steve Claridge was hired and fired in the same month by millwall and before that I think he managed Weymouth and got sacked.
 




Oct 25, 2003
23,964
It's got to be Steve Claridge was hired and fired in the same month by millwall and before that I think he managed Weymouth and got sacked.

-he wasn't sacked at weymouth
-the millwall thing was due to changes in the boardroom, not really his fault

his only record in the football league was when he was player-manager at portsmouth (2000-01)

22 games, 5 wins, 8 draws, 9 losses

a lot of managers in this thread will have a poorer record than that (despite it being quite poor)
 




simmo

Well-known member
Feb 8, 2008
2,787
But I think my vote would go to Alan Ball, for the way in which he shared his managerial uselessness with a variety of clubs.

-Got Pompey promoted, true, but also relegated the next year. They had a team of utter thugs back then, as I recall.

-Joined Stoke, spent loads of money- by their standards- and relegated them, before being fired the season after with them in the lowest league position in their history (15th in the third tier).

-Joined Exeter, who were also relegated. Walked out just before the inevitable happened.

-He had a role in Graham Taylor's England administration for the 1992 European Championships, in which England lost all three group games, finished bottom of their group, and went out in the first round. So, sort of a relegation too.

-Breaking the trend briefly, he got the Southampton job, and (presumably by mistake) they stayed up on the last day of the season. Thanks more to Le Tissier than him.

-Moving on to Man City, and perhaps the most infamous moment of his relegation-magnet career, when, in stoppage time and with the game at 2-2, he told his players to keep the ball by the corner flag, thinking a point would keep them up, when in fact they needed a win. Relegation yet again.

-Finally he moved back to Pompey. Where he was, true to form, sacked in the end.

Surely, SURELY old squeaky voice should be up there?

Yep, I was thinking of Alan Ball, how did he ever continue to get a gig somewhere.

Someone else not listed that comes to my mind is Iain Dowie, he seems to have bounced around a few clubs and very soon their league position has plummetted.

In a similar vein I heard that Wolves latest interest is Gary Megson:laugh: Well if he goes there, that is Championship football guaranteed for them signed, sealed and delivered.
 




ROSM

Well-known member
Dec 26, 2005
6,776
Just far enough away from LDC
Alan Ball told the man city players on his first day 'I'm a winner. I always win. I won the world cup. None of you can match that yet, but if you listen to me you can get better and then who knows?'

My own vote would be for Jeff Wood in Brighton terms. Globally, got to be John Sitton especially when you think what Chris Turner achieved without him.
 






Kumquat

New member
Mar 2, 2009
4,459
Blimey. 37 post and no one has mentioned Gazza. Souness for me though for continually coming back and being shit. oh and Terry Butcher.
 




Seagull58

In the Algarve
Jan 31, 2012
8,516
Vilamoura, Portugal
Blimey. 37 post and no one has mentioned Gazza. Souness for me though for continually coming back and being shit. oh and Terry Butcher.

Gazza was the first name that came into my head. Sacked for being too pissed to work. What an amazing footballer though. Tragic that we didn't go to the 1994 World Cup and then he was on the bottle before the 1998 World Cup and Hoddle dumped him.
 


andybaha

Active member
Jan 3, 2007
737
Piddinghoe
I give you a Uruguyan manager named Danny Bergara.

He was manager of Doncaster Rovers during the 1997-98 season when they were relegated to the Conference. They set the record for getting the least points, winning the least games and having the worst ever goal difference of -83.

There was a documentary called They Think It's All Rovers which documented this momentous season. In it Danny Bergara is shown as being somewhat confused with only a basic understanding of English. In one scene he comes up with the idea of the players wearing their shirts (1-11) out of sequence to confuse the opposition. The only problem is that he didn't actually know the players by their faces only their numbers, so the most confused person in the ground was DB himself and he ended up substituting the wrong player.

He should be regarded as an Albion legend because if Donny weren't so shite that season we'd have been odds on to go down to the Conference as we only picked up a few points more than them.
 


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