Joe Royle - has he been acknowledged enough?

Psychedelic Casual said:
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.
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In a nutshell.
 
My issue with Royle was refusing to come and manage us earlier, before we had slipped down the league. I am convinced his style of management was right for us and the premier league then. When he did come he was right for us and the championship but not the EPL. Top flight football had changed and he hasn’t.

Rather than stay with his beloved Oldham he perhaps could have pushed us onto European qualification and ended our trophy drought a decade before than it was. As the game developed we would have moved him on for a more progressive man (Arsène Wenger???)

Don’t get me wrong I loved his tenure with us, but things could have much better.

I know, I am letting my imagination get the better of me and if my aunt had boll…etc. However success is as much about timing and circumstances as it is about talent and I am convinced that was a lost opportunity to avoid a lot of city heartache and enjoy city success in my youth! We could still have today’s success as well!
 
youngbob said:
He's at Goodison basically every week. He clearly does have a stronger affiliation with them.
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I've seen him interviewed in the past and asked that question. He said that, while he has enormous affection for both City and Oldham, he ultimately regards Everton as his club. He does genuinely care deeply about City, though.

It was a shame that his departure was handled as it was. FWIW, I heard him speak at a fans' forum some time afterwards and he said he didn't have a problem with Bernstein. At that time, he reserved his anger for Dennis Tueart, with whom he was no longer on speaking terms.

Although he took us over when we were in the second tier and left us after relegation was confirmed back to it, we were a much stronger club on his departure. He left a squad that had been improved during our one-year PL tenure and, even though we couldn't stay up, the nucleus of the group of players he left was good enough to go straight back up under Kevin Keegan the next season. With the forthcoming move to the new stadium, that was vital to our future.

I had a particular liking for Joe because I thought he really 'got' our club and its fans. He seemed to have an instinctive understanding of what we were about and that made me warm to him.
 
I honestly think that Royle and Bernstein were as crucial to where we are now as anyone since. We were fucking shit and had 50-odd full time 'pros' on the books - a patchwork of half-baked ideas from a succession of dire managers, like a budget version of the rags today. Muen devoted a full two page spread iirc devoted to pics/bios of the squad and there were some I'd never heard of. Joe and Bernstein shipped most of them out, got rid of kinky in the most painless way possible and saved us from oblivion. Joe got a load of cloggers in that we needed to climb back to the top division and it always makes me sad that he sort of hit his ceiling as a manager at that point. Love him as a bloke and it would've been great to see him take us further, but wasn't to be.
 
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Didn't we have something like 53 first team players when Joe was here? Seem to remember him talking about it soon after his appointment.

Signed some steel, made us a proper force again. Know little of the legal battles and we likely went up too soon, but after years of humiliation and at best mediocrity, joe and that team gave me so much happiness and pride.

Without him we wouldn't have been on the journey to become premier league regulars again, and attractive as an investment opportunity. Of course the club sailed perilously close to the wind even after promotions, supporting Keegan's vision, but you have to ask if Joe didn't take us up, would we have cut our cloth for the championship or risked it all again? Could have ended up in real trouble.
 
I would genuinely love it if the club invited him back one day and presented him to us fans so we could show our appreciation.
I don’t consider it an exaggeration to state that in my view he saved us as a going concern.
As someone said earlier, no Joe, no keegan. No keegan, no etihad move. No etihad move, no takeover.

A gent and a scholar. One of our very finest managers who brought back pride and love in and for the club.
 
Thx for the heads up about him suing us ( Joe Royle...spelt properly.) didn’t know. That does taint things , just like Yaya should have been a legend with a statue until his agent and some things he said himself tainted his image a bit.
 
Bobby the blue said:
I loved joe when he was in charge, brought back some pride and dignity to the club after a few woeful years. Brought some exciting players such as mark Kennedy and Terry cooke, Darren Huckerby and Introduced swp. I think the season we got promoted back to the prem was a step to far in hindsight. I think we were riding on the crest of a wave after the previous year.

We lack quality and creativity in that first season and maybe he thought he could replicate his Everton dogs of war mentality which obviously failed miserably.

maybe it has something to do with the way he left the club and trying to sue the club that has left a bit of an after taste but I’m only guessing. Whatever happened shouldn’t detract from the magnificent job he did from dragging us by the bollocks and getting us back where we belong.

As another thread has been started I can’t believe it was 23 years ago at Wembley.!where does the time go. It’s easy to look back and say what a great day etc but it wasn’t really. Ok maybe the last few minutes after dickov scored and after penalties but the rest of it was awful.

Anyway top lad Joe and and thanks for giving us a city we can all be proud of.

ctid
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Why shouldn’t he sue the club if they fucked him about on his contract. I can’t hold that against him. He was a decent forward for us in his day.
He was just what we needed when he took over and cleared out the large playing staff.
He should be remembered for his achievements here.
He was a
 
jma said:
Great bloke, Joe.

Brilliant for City.

He's an Evertonian, first and foremost, but a great servant for City too.
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Weird that Joe and Reidy grew up Liverpool fans. Gerrard, Carragher, Owen, Fowler etc all Evertonians.
 
Bozzie said:
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.
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Soon after his case against us, he said:
”The only thing about that club that is class is the fans.”
When we won the title in 2012, he was asked if he was pleased, since the people he fell out with had all departed, he said:
”I’m very pleased for the fans, they deserve this”
I doubt he has ever really got over what he saw as a betrayal.
 
Two great promotions but we never steadied in the Prem and went straight down.
As for his arrival; he had a third of the season to move us up one place, and failed.
It may seem churlish to point this out, but our two lowest overall league positions were on his watch. The lowest as a result of us being relegated in the second lowest.
 
petrusha said:
I had a particular liking for Joe because I thought he really 'got' our club and its fans. He seemed to have an instinctive understanding of what we were about and that made me warm to him.
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Wasn’t it Joe who coined the phrase ‘a cup for cock ups’
 
Royle and Bernstein changed the whole direction of the club. Royle got us promoted twice in two seasons which was a major achievement but it meant that we had players, bought to get us out of league one (as it's now called) trying to keep us in the premiership. Much as I love Andy Morrison he was never going to be the centre back to keep us in the prem. In hindsight maybe an extra year in the championship, between the two promotions, would have helped us rebuild a little further and Royle might have kept us in there. Having said that, football under Keagan was a joyous roller-coaster.
 
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