Worst Manager in Recent Times

Quoted from Rick12

Yes your right. Some teams paying decent money now in league 2.

Difference being you can finish 3rd and still get promoted without the play-offs.

Quoted from Abdul19

Shared central midfield duties with Boshell, Hudson, Sweeney, Mendy and others. Incredible that we went down really.

Sums it up, really.

Not sure Hurst or Buckley should be anywhere near this list.

People might try he’d not to like Hurst but aside from Buckley, in the last 30 years he’s managed to do something nobody else has. I’d also argue he’s probably the last manager that built a truly galvanised side where everyone played for him and for each other. Also the last side as a fan most of us felt connected too.

Newell has to top that list, an absolute disgrace of a manager that assembled a disgrace of a side. Naturally Woods will forever be the man that took us down but he had his arm twisted and was left with nothing but a bunch of unprofessional male masturbators. It’s hard to find anything positive to say about that side.

Bignot comes a close second, too much bullshit and an absolute charlatan, albeit with the odd good result/away day.

Slade, who knows, it wasn’t too bad until the public meltdown and then it just fell apart. Jolley is similar for me, could pick a player but in truth knee very little. He did his job that one season but we never kicked on.

I appreciate that some of the shortcomings don’t have to be solely the fault of the manager, the players brought in, the board, off field stuff and so forth all form part of it but quite frankly, the squad assembled by Newell and he himself should never step foot in town again...

Hurst shouldn't be on the list. I would have him back at the club. The togetherness and team spirt he brought to the club was fantastic. In my opinion he brought in alot better callabour of players in compared to what we have seen in the last few years in league 2.

Quoted from lew chaterleys lover

I was chuffed to bits when Holloway saw it as a long term project, and that he could change a lot over time, and I still hope he can once we get past this season.

After I grew up watching Town from around 1986, after a couple of relegations and the appointment of Lord Alan Buckley we generally fought above our natural level in the second tier. Nowadays, we are at such a low ebb, six years out of the football league, I believe we haven't finished above mid table in division 4 / League 2 for 15 years, we have a decaying ground, basic training facilitles and a sparse backroom staff. What I am getting at is we are a good sized club at this level, those six years hurt us off the pitch as well as off it though and we are behind similar sized clubs. But the baseline is so low, Ollie must know that and he has so much to improve on. We need to get the infrastructure right, to enable us to improve as a football club and that doesn't mean another portacabin. Ollie will get things right I am certain, good times are coming.

Quoted from aldi_01

Not sure Hurst or Buckley should be anywhere near this list.

People might try he’d not to like Hurst but aside from Buckley, in the last 30 years he’s managed to do something nobody else has. I’d also argue he’s probably the last manager that built a truly galvanised side where everyone played for him and for each other. Also the last side as a fan most of us felt connected too.

Newell has to top that list, an absolute disgrace of a manager that assembled a disgrace of a side. Naturally Woods will forever be the man that took us down but he had his arm twisted and was left with nothing but a bunch of unprofessional male masturbators. It’s hard to find anything positive to say about that side.

Bignot comes a close second, too much bullshit and an absolute charlatan, albeit with the odd good result/away day.

Slade, who knows, it wasn’t too bad until the public meltdown and then it just fell apart. Jolley is similar for me, could pick a player but in truth knee very little. He did his job that one season but we never kicked on.

I appreciate that some of the shortcomings don’t have to be solely the fault of the manager, the players brought in, the board, off field stuff and so forth all form part of it but quite frankly, the squad assembled by Newell and he himself should never step foot in town again...

Hurst didn't take any prisoners. Any bad eggs were soon kicked out of the club. Your hands are a bit more tied in the league with a stricter transfer window. At Ipswich he couldn't get away with loaning a bad egg to the Conference who can sign players on loan outside of the window whereas you can still do that in League 2.

He played the percentage game but we were solid, worked hard and a lot of players moved local. A sign of a good man manager is when players follow them to their next club or stick around for a few years.

Ipswich was a step too far and I think he was the fall guy for things out of his control.

Only Buckley II and Slade I had a team spirit close to one Hurst built in my memory.

Of that list it's only really Newell who can top it in my eyes.

For the unprofessional side of it you don't need to go any further than the Paul Linwood podcast to understand what went wrong.   On the pitch, it was always summed up for me by the decision to play Ryan Bennett in central midfield before he was sacked.  

Early on I was really hopeful about Newell.  He came in and straight away identified the problem areas.  Arguably because of a lack of a budget or a lack of contacts/falling out of date with the game, Buckley's squad was pretty poor.  It lacked pace, creativity, any physical presence or cutting edge up top.  Newell straight away brought Jean-Paul Kalala back to add some of that to midfield and then added the likes of Dean Sinclair and Stuart Elliott.  Up top Jean-Louis Akpa-Akpro and Adam Proudlock came in.  Later on it was the likes of Joe Widdowson and then of course the initially excellent Barry Conlon and Peter Sweeney.  The signing of Wayne Henderson was a master stroke and I've always felt it was the single most effective transfer Newell made.  Conlon and Sweeney got the headlines but it was bringing Henderson in that steered us to safety that year.  

All in, he had to do what many managers had to do after him.  He had to rebuild mid-season.  Once it all started to settle towards the end of that season, it was easy to have hope for the following season.  Just thinking about Fenty getting carried around the Dean Court pitch on the penultimate day of the season still makes me shudder.

After that summer, it could have all gone so much better.  The problem was that Henderson was never going to stay so we ended with a well past his best Nick Colgan.  Conlon and Sweeney, two of the stars of the previous season, were clearly only interested when the dangle of a contract was there.  He also started bringing his drinking buddies in (Brian Stein anyone?) as his backroom staff.  

Needless to say that start to the season was one of the worst I've ever seen as a Town fan.  We were shambolic.

Woods inherited a squad that lacked discipline above all else but was completely unprofessional and for any faults he may have, was on an absolute hiding to nothing in taking that task on.  I don't blame him one bit for our relegation.  An experienced manager would have struggled with that dressing room, never mind one cutting his teeth.  Slade should have been given the card as it was what we needed.  Someone with experience and a hard edge.  

The Conference season under Woods was poor, but he still performed about the same in that first season (well, just under) than Scott and Hurst did for their first full season.  Hurst then got another 4 full seasons (I think 3 completely on his own) at getting the club promoted.  I do wonder how Woods would have performed with that length of time to build something.  

Hurst bored me but he should never be on any worst managers list.  He did the job eventually and was a proper Steady Eddie type.  Would never bust the budget.  Never got the club into trouble and never risked a major failure.  Much was made about the budget he had but I think it was always there or thereabouts of where we finished.  Top 5 but not quite the level of the big spenders in the league at the time.

Bignot - hmm.  There's an argument that he came in here with the remit to build something for the future and he had time to do it.  He certainly was trying to do it and you can't fault him for looking at investing in a bright future with the players he brought in.  It was exciting for a bit and probably what we needed, especially after a few years of Hurst's dour approach.  Those early games especially were very exciting.  But just chaos overall.  Recipe for disaster and Fenty was right to get rid as soon as possible.  From the outside looking in it was bizarre but after his final game (3-1 win away at Blackpool) I remember talking to a Town fan on the Blackpool Pier, he only loosely followed us and went to the game as he was in the area.  He asked what I thought about Bignot and I told him it was carnage, he couldn't believe it and thought I had unrealistic expectations especially after beating a side (that ultimately went up that year) at home.  The week before we played Donny at home and got thrashed, with little to play it and our local derby game that season, Bignot opted to try out Dan Jones in midfield.  It summed him up, he didn't really get it.

Slade Mk II - Ugh.  I think it's probably only the fact that Newell was so bad and that Jolley saved us that Slade isn't top actually.  Had we gone down that season Slade would have been fully responsible.  The football was awful, truly awful.  He got rid of Shaun Pearson for Nathan Clarke and of course there was that rant at Matt Dean and trying to show a PowerPoint presentation over the radio.  His saving grace is that the squad he built was ultimately good enough to stay up, Newell's wasn't.  

Buckley Mk III - Started well and he did try to bring in young and exciting talent.  Danny North, Andy Taylor, Ryan Bennett, Nick Hegarty...they all got their first real run in the team under Buckley and he also brought in the likes of Rob Atkinson and Peter Till.  But the last six months were so dull.  The end of the 07/08 season wascompletely masked by the Wembley appearance.  He probably should have gone that summer and his recruitment was terrible (Matt Heywood, Richard Hope, Chris Llewellyn....).  That spell tainted his legacy a bit but I think it's largely just forgotten about now.

Jolley - Not a chance.  Turned out to be out of his depth and it seems not a particularly nice person either.  But I'm still in awe that he kept that side up that season.  Real fleeting moments of something special being built but it never materialised into anything concrete.  Regardless of how it ended, he kept us out the Conference that spring and probably saved the club in the process.  We shouldn't forget that.

Wait....Nick Colgan had a best!? I guess that one season at Barnsley was his best but made a career of being a bench warmer. 22 years in the game and less than 300 appearances in league competitions says it all.

Quoted from Kris2

Wait....Nick Colgan had a best!? I guess that one season at Barnsley was his best but made a career of being a bench warmer. 22 years in the game and less than 300 appearances in league competitions says it all.

A former colleague was a scout for Liverpool, had the pleasure of attending many a game with him.

Saw Huddersfield once when Colgan was GK coach, sat in the fancy seats, he comes out the tunnel and dropped everything...I let him know I was town fan. Steward threatened my removal, was worth it.

The man never had a best, professional bench warmer. Never forget his howler against Bournemouth at BP...

Colgan proved right that old saying about never going back!