ham

[TomYam]

Just now, TomYam said:

Gordon Lee was the most destructive manager we ever had, but he was quite competent. He forced out many of our best players (MacDonald, Hibbitt, etc) while executing a harrying and dull long ball style, helped achieve our highest placing for 26 years, walked out on us mid season and whispered dissent into the ears of our players after he left the club. He turned things upside down and then walked out - all in 18 months. Then the pendulum swung the other way as McGarry was brought in to instil discipline. 1976 -82 was a calamitous period of mismanagement, an unambitious and stagnant boardroom, decrepit stadium, tumbling attendances and a backdrop of economic woe. 

#Instil discipline after player power had seen the board cave in to the demands of senior players (Nulty, Gowling, Tommy Craig) and install - against their better judgement- Richard Dinnis as manager.

[Holloway]

45 minutes ago, GideonShandy said:

And I might claim Ron McGarry

Bill 😉

[TheBrownBottle]

1 hour ago, Holloway said:

Bill 😉

Yep, bit of a mix-up with Cass McGarry there.  Who was doing satellite dishes on Tyneside in the ‘90s.

[Holloway]

9 minutes ago, TheBrownBottle said:

Yep, bit of a mix-up with Cass McGarry there.  Who was doing satellite dishes on Tyneside in the ‘90s.

Ron played for us mid 60s I think, a bit before my time 😉

[Rich]

 

[TheBrownBottle]

1 hour ago, Holloway said:

Ron played for us mid 60s I think, a bit before my time 😉

Well before mine too  

[Geordie_once_removed]

5 hours ago, TheBrownBottle said:

Souness and Dalglish did a LOT of damage - Souness’s wasn’t reversed until Howe.  Souness is the worst for me - worse than McClaren, Bruce or Kinnear.  Souness inherited a talented young side that was a couple of players and some good man management away from challenging for the title and smashed it to smithereens within a year.  
 

edit: perhaps Bruce is the biggest wanker to manage us (my dad would still claim Gordon Lee for that one).  But a manager who had us in lower mid table every season having taken over a team which had finished lower mid table can’t be the worst we’ve had. 

 

 

 

It took me a long time to be able to see Souness on TV and to not launch into a lengthy and varied series of expletives. It was always going to be hard for anyone to take over after the disgraceful treatment of Sir Bobby, but Souness really excelled in all the worst ways. What an unmitigated disaster he was.

 

 

Edited Saturday at 12:21 by Geordie_once_removed

[wormy]

It's quite sad how much of an argument you could make for so many based on different criteria.

 

Souness did the most damage considering what he had to work with on arrival. Whilst I wasn't quite old enough to fully understand, I'd say Dalglish is second but with more mitigating factors with the club seemingly pushing the need for sales. And he did sign some players that would become important for us.

 

Bruce edges Pards for most intolerable piece of shit thanks to his insincere local lad patter.

 

Yet McLaren was somehow the most rudderless out of all of them, which is impressive in its own twisted way. Quite simply out of his depth to the point I can't even hate him despite the resulting relegation.

 

I hate Bruce most. 

[AyeDubbleYoo]

McClaren just didn’t have the courage to stick to his ideas. Despite becoming a joke he knows a bit about football. We just kept losing and he didn’t know what to do. 

[Skeletor]

57 minutes ago, wormy said:

It's quite sad how much of an argument you could make for so many based on different criteria.

 

Souness did the most damage considering what he had to work with on arrival. Whilst I wasn't quite old enough to fully understand, I'd say Dalglish is second but with more mitigating factors with the club seemingly pushing the need for sales. And he did sign some players that would become important for us.

 

Bruce edges Pards for most intolerable piece of shit thanks to his insincere local lad patter.

 

Yet McLaren was somehow the most rudderless out of all of them, which is impressive in its own twisted way. Quite simply out of his depth to the point I can't even hate him despite the resulting relegation.

 

I hate Bruce most. 

 

My most hated in order:

 

Brewce (ugly fat cabbagehead)

Pardew (more his bulletproof nature despite breaking negative records left right and center)

Souness (not a football manager. Just a bullying bastard)

Gullit (his arrogance and how he treated Shearer/Lee)

Dalglish (wrong time probably in hindsight given the need to sell players, but amongst some good signings, he signed some epic whoppers as well which meant it took years to recover)

[WilliamPS]

JFK was terrible, but it’s more on Ashley as there was never any doubt he’d be rotten. I would say he met every fans expectations.
 

Dalglish did the most damage IMO. had Dalglish not wrecked the squad and instead ridden the wave of European competition expansion life could have been so different! Instead Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool did. He wasn’t as bad a manager as some of the others, but he had the best hand when he took over.

 

You can make the same argument against Souness, but I think the cash had already dried up when he came in, Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea were too far ahead financially already (Chelsea as Abramovich came in in 2003)

[RUHRLYASLEEVESUP]

John Carver a shocking omission  

[Dr.Spaceman]

Yep, I think each managerial spell needs added context, where were we when they took over and what were our expectations. That rules out JFK for me, possibly even Souness as we all expected a downturn following the SBR era. McClaren and Bruce on the other hand...

 

 

Edited Saturday at 13:37 by Dr.Spaceman

[Pilko]

Kinnear was embarrassing and the football was putrid but he'd have kept us up if he didn't have his heart attack, we were drawing lots of games and averaging about a point per game overall.

 

Carver gave us a hell of a scare and set some records in terms of losing runs but ultimately "did the job" in terms of keeping us up that year.

 

Bruce or McClaren is the argument for me. Bruce was more of a cunt and it was a longer, more depressing period with worse football but he kept us in the division. SM wasn't a bad guy and did try to play better football but was incredibly out of his depth, naive, lacking in authority and relegated us despite two "spending sprees" (relative to Ashley's tenure). Hard to call. I'd probably go Bruce just because how much of a thick cunt he is.

[RodneyCisse]

Everyone just turning them down these days? 

[wormy]

13 minutes ago, RUHRLYASLEEVESUP said:

John Carver a shocking omission  

 

I discounted him from my list purely because he was never truly 'permanent', was he? Even if he probably wasn't far off lasting as long as McClaren.

[alexf]

On 31/01/2025 at 07:33, KetsbaiaIsBald said:

 

It goes to show how well we did last year.  At one point we had 11 first team players injured/unavailable.  

 

 

Howe managed to see us thought that period and we only missed out on Europe due to bad luck.

 

 

 

This graphic isn't a true reflection of the problems we had that season. Burn and Anderson both had broken bones in their back, Burn in particular was horrific for awhile when he returned. Willock was pretty none existent, he would play the odd game then be injured again. Isak was carrying a groin issue for the bulk of the season if memory serves and never looked fully fit but we were making him play every minute. Longstaff allegedly had a foot injury he was playing through and looked like he could barely move. 

 

Main issue was we didn't even have any young academy talents to bring in other than Miley so we got into positions where Dummett and Ritchie started games for us last year. Now go and look up where both players are this season and how they are doing and tell me that it's not a miracle that Howe got that team to finish 7th after needing to play players like that in 2024. 

 

Spurs have had similar issues, not going to claim better or worse but I think they have managed it horribly. Most of their injuries have been defensive players. So if Ange had set them up differently and protected his goal better, then they could have accumulated far more points.

[Mike]

 

 

[The Butcher]

ACL injury for the barista.

[HaydnNUFC]

On 01/02/2025 at 06:37, TheBrownBottle said:

Souness and Dalglish did a LOT of damage - Souness’s wasn’t reversed until Howe.  Souness is the worst for me - worse than McClaren, Bruce or Kinnear.  Souness inherited a talented young side that was a couple of players and some good man management away from challenging for the title and smashed it to smithereens within a year.  
 

edit: perhaps Bruce is the biggest wanker to manage us (my dad would still claim Gordon Lee for that one).  But a manager who had us in lower mid table every season having taken over a team which had finished lower mid table can’t be the worst we’ve had. 

 

 

 

My dad was the same regarding Lee purely because he sold Macdonald but results and performances under him were actually quite good. It’s the pissing off to Everton in January 1977 that I don’t get. Player power/influence in keeping Dinnis sent us down the following season and set us back decades until a certain Kevin Keegan arrived as a player.

 

 

Edited Monday at 19:37 by HaydnNUFC

[leffe186]

On 31/01/2025 at 20:07, PauloGeordio said:

 

On 01/02/2025 at 13:44, RodneyCisse said:

Everyone just turning them down these days? 

[leffe186]

4 hours ago, The Butcher said:

ACL injury for the barista.

Of course. What can you even say at this point?

[Zero]

27 minutes ago, leffe186 said:

Of course. What can you even say at this point?

 

Next season would be better

[gjohnson]

On 01/02/2025 at 13:19, Skeletor said:

 

My most hated in order:

 

Brewce (ugly fat cabbagehead)

Pardew (more his bulletproof nature despite breaking negative records left right and center)

Souness (not a football manager. Just a bullying bastard)

Gullit (his arrogance and how he treated Shearer/Lee)

Dalglish (wrong time probably in hindsight given the need to sell players, but amongst some good signings, he signed some epic whoppers as well which meant it took years to recover)

We've had a right selection of incompetence, but some of them do have mitigating factors....

 

Dalglish, did a lot of background good and bought some decent players...did a lot of bad by giving his Liverpool buds pension funds, and had some rotten luck losing the main player in preseason

 

Gullit...bad manager but at least had the decency to admit it and walk without a pay off

 

McClaren...clearly a decent coach but never a manager

 

Pardew...odious, unpleasant and easy to hate....got a 5th place but probably more down to luck than anything 

 

Bruce....nothing good to say. We knew he'd be a disaster, he was

 

Souness...had a decent start but too volatile to accommodate the players that made a difference. Pretty incompetent when you have 3 of your midfield literally running into each other in a match

 

Carver...don't know what Charnley was smoking when that seemed a good idea

 

Kinnear...obviously terrible in the first place, but was at least just about on target to keep us up

 

 

Edited yesterday at 11:35 by gjohnson

[Likelylad]

I always wonder where we would have finished in 97/98 if Shearer doesn't get injured. 

I mean he's probably bagging what another 25 in the league. 

Uefa Cup places maybe?