To a man every player at the club hated him. He was obnoxious to the fans. We stayed up despite him not because of him.
As a person I hated him too. Never forget the massive queue for Anfield tickets. It was about 4pm and people had been queueing since early morning. He came out of the side door next to the box office with his head down, got in his 4x4 and sped off without saying a word. I didn't like Keef either but in the same situation i'm sure he'd have spent a few minutes to acknowledge the fanbase, thank them for being patient, ask how they were etc instead of a complete cold shoulder. As a manager though he gave us one of our best ever seasons. Easily top five which is some feat when you look how old our club is. Transfer wise he did alright too. Plenty of the foreign players he signed are spoke of as some of the best players we've seen. For example Muller and Steele are two of our best ever keepers and thanks to him we had them at the same time.
I've got nothing against him personally, but he was one the of worst managers we've had that I can remember. Signed a few good players, but it's so frustrating that he was the only manager to get an actual budget in the championship. He blew our chance of establishing ourselves - he still had the core group of players that got us promoted and money to spend. He got the best part of 3 years to work with too. Is it true hat the players didn't like him? I remember Hassell saying he was devastated when he got fired Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
He was hardly a terrible manager for us. He kept us up for three seasons and took us to an FA Cup Semi Final, beating Liverpool and Chelsea along the way. You can dislike him and disagree with some of his tactics and personnel choices though.
Who knows? Our team raised and massively for those games. Lee Johnson put up a good fight against Everton but rolled over against everyone else. Why? It was a cup game and he went for it before going one up top and playing safety safety negative white straight after. Davey and Johnson were very similar but with differing budgets.
Simon Davey was responsible for me starting to go back down to Oakwell again. When we dropped out of the Prem, the ST renewal deadline fell conveniently about one day before Danny Wilson announced his departure up to S6. We weatherd the fiasco that was John Hendrie's reign (not the wee man's fault, entirely) and endured the ugliness of Bassett's tenure. After that I bailed out for several years, but took a great interest (via Sky) in the promotion of 2006. Grandfathertyke lured me back down again by organising tickets for the amazing cup run of 2008, and I was back in the fold. In recent years, with Mr (Wrecking Ball) Hill and Mr (Sincerity Half-Life) Flitcroft's clueless squads plumbing ever deepening depths of mediocrity, Davey's squad (Da Silva, Leon, Hassell, Devaney) came to resemble the golden generation. But my abiding memory of Davey (and I've banged on about this before) is seeing him get out of his Hayselden-sponsored VW Toerag and walk past a gang of us queueing to renew our season tickets without so much as acknowledging us. I ask you? The football under Davey set out promisingly but ultimately disappeared up it's own arse, and I've no desire to see someone who couldn't hold a candle to Heckingbottom's coaching and motivational skills have anything further to do with our club.
I think it's pretty clear that Luke Steele beat Liverpool and any manager who can't motivate his team to run their socks off in a home cup quarter final against Chelsea shouldn't be in charge of an under 11s team.
When we survived in his first season, he inherited a team in the relegation zone, made four January signings totalling 300k and finished 4 points clear (8 points clear when taking into account the Leeds 10 point deduction).
Did well to keep us up the first time, but shouldn't be praised for the other seasons he did that. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk