I've been going since 78 and during that time the majority of our managers have come from within from what I can recall. Or am I imagining it? Have we always gone for the cheaper option?
How many times have we done anything when we've appointed from outside as well though? We did OK under Bassett but to be fair he inherited a pretty good squad from Hendrie. After that, even when we didn't recruit a manager from within they were still generally pretty cheap options.
In my time, as far as I can recall, managers from outside have been - Allan Clarke, Mel Machin, Viv Anderson, Dave Bassett, Nigel Spackman, Steve Parkin, Gudjon, Paul Hart, Mark Robins, Keith Hill. My most boring post ever, and it's got some reight competition.
Not really - just wondering what our policy has been like and if it's made a difference. Still appointed a lot from within Hunter, Collins, Wilson, Hendrie, Hodges, Ritchie, Ftcroft, Davey, Winstanley had a few spells. Pretty even. Must remember to making racist comments or having a go at HT - might make it more interesting or how expensive bog roll is
A lot of our success has come from the managers appointed from within though, hasn't it. Hunter (admittedly from a good starting point left to him by Sniffer) got us promoted to the second, within a whisker of promotion to the first and gave us a memorable cup run. The miners' strike did for him. Wilson, well, enough said. But he did it with Anderson's team, adding only a couple of players in the first couple of years and turning the side round completely. Hendrie, er, brought Hignett to the club at least. Ritchie did similar to Wilson, in taking taking Hart's struggling side and getting them promoted. Davey, for all his faults, took us to an FA Cup Semi-final at Wembley and had a better win percentage than any other Reds manager since we got promoted. Flitcroft took another failing team and turned it round, mastering the great escape and giving us, in the Huddersfield game, probably the best feeling since the Bradford game. Of the ones brought in from outside, only Clarke and Bassett can really be deemed to have given us anything to match the above (er, Hendrie apart that is!). Clarke is the catalyst behind everything we achieved in the last 30 odd years, whilst Bassett gave us a memorable season, but then blew it by re-signing a lot of players on big wages who should have been let go. That was really the first act of the downfall to administration.
Definitely expectations high, although Hendrie wasn't doing himself any favours getting rid of players like Fjortoft. Dennis has admitted as much and says with hindsight he sacked him too early, because we were expecting an instant return to the Premiership. If we could have afforded to hang on to Ward, who knows, but we lost some of the bette players from our Premiership season and Hendrie was stuck with some of the least successful big money signings. Hendrie never went on to have a career in management though, so probably wouldn't have taken us any further. Didn't we finish 12th-14th under him?
No, I don't think he made it to the end of the season. Eric was the manager at the end of a few seasons over the years! Always a shame that he was never given the chance to have a proper go. I could understand Dennis' reasons, i.e. not wanting to be in a position where he would have to sack him, but I don't necessarily agree with them.
