Dave ''Harry'' Bassett was on the verge of becoming Man City manager, deal fell through at the last second

Mad Eyed Screamer said:
Following on from the Big Sam thread.....
After Alan Ball was sacked in August 1996, and City lost to Lincoln City 4-1 away in the 2nd round 1st leg of the League Cup, Dave ''Harry'' Bassett was approached to become City's manager. He was currently manager of Crystal Palace.

Football: Bassett ready to take over at City

Lincoln City 4 Manchester City 1
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk

According to reports at the time he accepted the offer to become City's manager (much to the many eyebrows raised amongst the dwindling rank and file supporters) - yet in the morning had a change of heart, turned City down and remained at Palace.

Around 2010, I was involved with a national youth organisation in which a 5 a side competition was held. Regional games were played at Whalley Range High School and each team was assigned a current or former manager to mentor each team. The team I was with was mentored by Keith Alexander, then manager at Macclesfield who sadly passed away a year or two later. Dave Bassett was mentoring another team. During a break I asked him if he liked The Smiths, er, I mean, I asked him about his short lived tenure as City manager.
He was very open - and as usual spoke 100 miles an hour!
He said Francis Lee drove him to Hough End and said ''In 3 years time we will have a 60,000 stadium here.'' He then took him somewhere else and made some other claim or two about that, and so it went on (he definitely said at one of the places Lee took him to, Lee was going on about a bowling alley as well as a stadium!)
He said Lee never once spoke about ''This is the mess we are in and this is how we want you to get us out of it and this is what we can do to support you to achieve that''.
He said he went home (or back to the hotel) and couldn't sleep / spoke with his wife etc. In the end he said he just thought Lee was a fantasist with no sense of reality and therefore called him in the morning and retracted the acceptance of the managers job and remained at Palace.

Enter one Steve Coppell into the hot seat..........
Click to expand...
Wheres the big sam btw
I bet lazy people are saying kick n rush..without any evidence.. Campo Bolton? He got some belters playing. He was also mikes ahead of anyone re sports science , stats, data etc. Much much better than he was ever given credit for
 
Tolmie scores said:
Wheres the big sam btw
I bet lazy people are saying kick n rush..without any evidence.. Campo Bolton? He got some belters playing. He was also mikes ahead of anyone re sports science , stats, data etc. Much much better than he was ever given credit for
Click to expand...
Easy to knock him. Slightly agricultural approach in some regards which most will remember him for, but as you say he was certainly a mile ahead of most, at least in the UK around sports science/data. Brought some great players (slightly ageing) to Bolton and took them into the Europe for the first time. Pretty amazing achievement when you consider the resources he had.
 
Mad Eyed Screamer said:
Following on from the Big Sam thread.....
After Alan Ball was sacked in August 1996, and City lost to Lincoln City 4-1 away in the 2nd round 1st leg of the League Cup, Dave ''Harry'' Bassett was approached to become City's manager. He was currently manager of Crystal Palace.

According to reports at the time he accepted the offer to become City's manager (much to the many eyebrows raised amongst the dwindling rank and file supporters) - yet in the morning had a change of heart, turned City down and remained at Palace.

Around 2010, I was involved with a national youth organisation in which a 5 a side competition was held. Regional games were played at Whalley Range High School and each team was assigned a current or former manager to mentor each team. The team I was with was mentored by Keith Alexander, then manager at Macclesfield who sadly passed away a year or two later. Dave Bassett was mentoring another team. During a break I asked him if he liked The Smiths, er, I mean, I asked him about his short lived tenure as City manager.
He was very open - and as usual spoke 100 miles an hour!
He said Francis Lee drove him to Hough End and said ''In 3 years time we will have a 60,000 stadium here.'' He then took him somewhere else and made some other claim or two about that, and so it went on (he definitely said at one of the places Lee took him to, Lee was going on about a bowling alley as well as a stadium!)
He said Lee never once spoke about ''This is the mess we are in and this is how we want you to get us out of it and this is what we can do to support you to achieve that''.
He said he went home (or back to the hotel) and couldn't sleep / spoke with his wife etc. In the end he said he just thought Lee was a fantasist with no sense of reality and therefore called him in the morning and retracted the acceptance of the managers job and remained at Palace.

Enter one Steve Coppell into the hot seat..........
Click to expand...

At the time, the story that went around was that someone involved with the club had rung Bassett up overnight and told him just how deep the shit was that we were actually in. This was at the time when there was a lot of talk about an infamous fifth column within the club. I think that version of events made the press, but I know it was also believed within MCFC.

At the time, I was a junior solicitor at a firm in Manchester and we did work for the club, with the then-MD Colin Barlow being the main contact. Barlow was adamant that this had happened, though he wouldn't say who they suspected because they didn't have proof (Bassett apparently refused to reveal the identity of the mystery caller).

In the end, we appointed Coppell, but when he departed it started a weird little game of managerial musical chairs. Frank Clark left Nottingham Forest, who appointed Bassett in his place. Coppell stepped in for Bassett at Palace, while Clark filled our vacancy.

The other thing I remember about the Bassett episode was that, according to Franny, when the Londoner accepted the manager's job at Maine Road, he specified a player he wanted the club to buy. Lee had the deal set up and it was ready to be completed on the morning when he heard of Bassett's change of heart, leaving the City chairman frantically ringing round to get the deal called off before the player actually signed.

I don't know for sure who the player in question was. However, I've always suspected it was Vinnie Jones. If so, I'm glad he never signed. He's not a player I could have taken to even though I try to support everyone who plays for us while they do so.

We also almost hired Bassett the best part of a decade earlier. I recently listened to a podcast featuring him in which he talked about his time at Sheffield United and how he came to join them during 1987/88, after he'd been sacked by Watford. He'd taken the job at Vicarage Road the previous summer, replacing Graham Taylor after the latter left for Aston Villa. But Bassett claimed he'd been interviewed by City and turned our job down to go to the Hornets instead (where he eventually lasted only six months).

At the time, we'd been looking to bring someone in as a coach to work alongside manager Jimmy Frizzell, and we'd been linked in the press with Norwich assistant manager Mel Machin and Blackpool boss Sam Ellis. However, it seemed that the number two position at Maine Road wasn't attractive to the calibre of person we were seeking, so Swales decided to shift Frizzell to a General Manager role and recruit a new Team Manager.

Bassett told the podcast in question that he didn't feel City really wanted him, while Elton John did a good job of selling the opportunity at Watford. When he said that about City, my thought was that it was a polite way of saying he didn't want to manage City if he'd have the previous incumbent hanging around and poking his nose in.

I'm not sure Bassett would have been right for City in 1987, as I don't think that integrating the 1986 Youth Cup-winning players in to a team playing his style of football would have been a good fit. However, in September 1996, looking at the mess we were then in, I reckon he could have stabilised us and avoided the disasters of the Coppell and Clark reigns.
 
petrusha said:
At the time, the story that went around was that someone involved with the club had rung Bassett up overnight and told him just how deep the shit was that we were actually in. This was at the time when there was a lot of talk about an infamous fifth column within the club. I think that version of events made the press, but I know it was also believed within MCFC.

At the time, I was a junior solicitor at a firm in Manchester and we did work for the club, with the then-MD Colin Barlow being the main contact. Barlow was adamant that this had happened, though he wouldn't say who they suspected because they didn't have proof (Bassett apparently refused to reveal the identity of the mystery caller).

In the end, we appointed Coppell, but when he departed it started a weird little game of managerial musical chairs. Frank Clark left Nottingham Forest, who appointed Bassett in his place. Coppell stepped in for Bassett at Palace, while Clark filled our vacancy.

The other thing I remember about the Bassett episode was that, according to Franny, when the Londoner accepted the manager's job at Maine Road, he specified a player he wanted the club to buy. Lee had the deal set up and it was ready to be completed on the morning when he heard of Bassett's change of heart, leaving the City chairman frantically ringing round to get the deal called off before the player actually signed.

I don't know for sure who the player in question was. However, I've always suspected it was Vinnie Jones. If so, I'm glad he never signed. He's not a player I could have taken to even though I try to support everyone who plays for us while they do so.

We also almost hired Bassett the best part of a decade earlier. I recently listened to a podcast featuring him in which he talked about his time at Sheffield United and how he came to join them during 1987/88, after he'd been sacked by Watford. He'd taken the job at Vicarage Road the previous summer, replacing Graham Taylor after the latter left for Aston Villa. But Bassett claimed he'd been interviewed by City and turned our job down to go to the Hornets instead (where he eventually lasted only six months).

At the time, we'd been looking to bring someone in as a coach to work alongside manager Jimmy Frizzell, and we'd been linked in the press with Norwich assistant manager Mel Machin and Blackpool boss Sam Ellis. However, it seemed that the number two position at Maine Road wasn't attractive to the calibre of person we were seeking, so Swales decided to shift Frizzell to a General Manager role and recruit a new Team Manager.

Bassett told the podcast in question that he didn't feel City really wanted him, while Elton John did a good job of selling the opportunity at Watford. When he said that about City, my thought was that it was a polite way of saying he didn't want to manage City if he'd have the previous incumbent hanging around and poking his nose in.

I'm not sure Bassett would have been right for City in 1987, as I don't think that integrating the 1986 Youth Cup-winning players in to a team playing his style of football would have been a good fit. However, in September 1996, looking at the mess we were then in, I reckon he could have stabilised us and avoided the disasters of the Coppell and Clark reigns.
Click to expand...
As ever, a great post.
 
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