I love you too big boy, for an old man how come your posts are so immature?!
If that's what he'd done, and all he'd done, you might have a point. His overall record is not as rosy as you’d selectively put it. I know I’m not telling many people on here what they don’t already know, but it certainly points to a trend that shows up flaws in the chairman rather than the managers. A history of backing then sacking…
Dalglish - 4 British leagues and 2 cups to his name on arrival and on paper a good manager, shame he went to an extreme in trying to shore up Keegan’s team, but a choice few argued with (I never liked him personally and didn’t agree with it at the time, but this is embarrasingly negated with how much I did support the Gullit appointment). He gave him 17 months, and sacked him with win/lose/draw percentages of 38/33/29. He sacked a proven manager after just 2 games of a new season having given him £15million to spend. Bloody Genius.
Gullit – 1 cup to his name on arrival. Great player but had proved nowt as a manager before and hasn’t since, his performance on that celebrity game was bad even by Sunday league standards. I loved the appointment myself and a lot of people would argue that Shearer’s position in the club needed bringing down a peg or two. No one player bigger than the club? Bollocks. 3 weeks into the season he resigned, You guess he would’ve been pushed otherwise. His percentages were 35/38/27. I’m not sure what he was given in the summer that year, but it was thirty or 40 million in his time at the club.
Robson – Too many trophies to name, a legend and an appointment no-one could argue with, the fact that Robson would have filled the dugout with hot coals and stood on them through every game to manage us, leads me to question how much work was done by the chairman to attract him. After diminishing returns from each of the previous 3 managers, this one pulled it out of the bag for us all. His percentages stand up as a vast improvement and the best of his appointments (47/28/25). Another manager sacked in August (surprise surprise), for an unacceptable start to the season, but only after giving him £10million to spend in the preceding months
Souness – 4 leagues and 8 cups. Any manager who looks at a chairman and thinks “you sacked Bobby Robson” knows he’s going to have to perform to an almost impossible level to keep the bloke happy, the expectations of the board being so high scared off any potential managers available at the time. There was only one man greedy enough to take a position that could only make him look worse (difficult when he was already dragging his current team toward relegation). Of course he was a disaster, £46 million pound later he was sacked, most confusingly he survived a worse start to the season than the last manager and was given a chance to save face (for the chairman) all the way to February. His record wasn’t too bad in terms of wins (44/33/21) but the class of opposition were far inferior in a sequence of cup runs that disguises how bad a manager he is. Still, of the 3 top class managers you think should stand in Shepherd’s favour, Souness won more games than two of them.
Roeder – 56/28/15 is a better record than Robsons, despite the lack of inspiration in the appointment, the ship was steadied. Jumping on the sack Roeder bandwagon might leave him as Shepherds best performer, but it wouldn’t do the club any favours as it simply rocks the boat all over again.
So, looking at the managers appointed in the past, it’s difficult to say that trophies are any indication of how the’ll perform, that’s why I never did. I can’t say if O’Neill would have performed as well or worse than Roeder. The only thing I think you can say is that Shepherd likes to back and then to sack his managers, he’s made the club a less attractive prospect with each subsequent change and he’s getting one hell of a wage.
My first choice is the man in the job at the minute. Let him get on with it. If a new owner can attract a top class name, excellent. But I know for a fact that Shepherd can’t, so leave it as it is I say.
