Joe Royle - has he been acknowledged enough?

I was lucky enough to meet him a couple of years I ago where I thanked him personally and said it was down to him and his team we are we are now.

He smiled and thanked me.


99 play off saved our club. We could have been Celebrating/Crying about losing a national League play off this weekend instead.
 
We were an absolute shambles on the pitch when Joe Royle joined us . A team playing with no pride and heading in one direction. In 1998 the end game seemed to be us eternally falling down the leagues. Managing us was the kiss of death for any manager and lesser managers wouldn’t go near us

Of course he wasn’t perfect and yes we got relegated from the Premiership but success may have dulled some memories

I think Joe Royle was a great manager for us and I am grateful for what he did for us
 
Reminds me of a story my brother-in-law told me following our back to back promotions under Joe Royle. He (my brother in law, not Joe Royle) was tiling a guys house in Bramhall when a highly respected former City player visited. The talk was naturally around our return to the top flight and the ex player said "The first decision the club will make will be who the new manager is". Now I can't be certain that's what was said but, if true, it suggests the club recognised (rightly as it happened) that Joe was the right man to get us into the PL but not the right man to keep us there. Maybe they were swayed by the emotion of back to back promotions, maybe they felt there would be a media backlash if they sacked Joe under those circumstances or maybe there were financial restraints which meant he stayed.
Always had a liking for Joe, saw his debut at Liverpool on Boxing Day 1974 and, despite the manner of his departure, I've never heard him badmouth the club.
 
He did a great job getting us promoted twice.
Maybe he would have kept us up if he brought in a few more players. I remember we were chasing ugo eghio for 8m which would have been a big fee for us then.
Pissed me off trying to sue us though.
 
Put an end to the disasters we had as manager with Ball and Clarke. Got rid of dozens of players we didn’t need, sorted out the wage bill, instilled a better culture at the club, built a team the fans could get behind, brought in leaders and winners, and got us promoted twice in a row.

Brilliant manager.

That team in the Prem in 2000-01 was still full of players who got us up from the third tier and the Prem was a league too far for many of them. But he changed everything at City and laid the platform for Keegan to come in and take us that step further to establishing ourselves as a Prem club again.
 
Rescued us from freefall in the 90s and made us stable enough again to go one step further under Keegan.

Probably has more of an association and affiliation with Everton, though. Understandable.

not really
 

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