Joe Royle - has he been acknowledged enough?

Zapcity said:
had a goal disallowed in the 76 league Cup Final at Wembley though didn't he!).
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Is this true?

I was at that game and have no recollection of it. Never heard anyone mention it since either.

In fact thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of that game replayed on TV apart from Tueart’s overhead kick. Not even Barnes’ goal.
 
jim tolmies perm said:
Turned the juggernaut around did big Joe and that needs to be put into context with where we are today..... liked him as player and manager
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As a manager a brilliant guy, one of the fans - talked to us about his plans, players, signings and very open. I had many conversations with him over the time he wa our manager and he was always open about everything
 
Zapcity said:
Remember Joe Royle being a decent player in a good City side that came 2nd in the League and won the League Cup .
Goalscoring record for us was okay if not particularly spectacular (had a goal disallowed in the 76 league Cup Final at Wembley though didn't he!).
As others have said ,once he actually got it together as our manager he helped to pull us out of the shit, and halted the decline. The Gillingham and Blackburn games will always be remembered very fondly, as much as anything for the spirit and camaraderie of the players and fans. In the former case it was also ofcourse the shear importance of winning that game.
We weren't ready for the Prem in 2000/2001 and were always going to go down.
Royle I believe took us as far as as he could at that point and fans generally accept that.
Under Keegan we kicked on considerably. There may have not been individual games to compare with the emotion of the above 2 but we were playing better football .
City were also a much better team under Keegan, proved by the margin by which we won the 1st Division (or whatever it was called) and how comfortably we coped with the Premier league when we got there.
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Very well put, the promotion season under Keegan was one of the highlights of supporting this club pre takeover, superb football, some quality players and great atmosphere wherever we were playing, a pleasure .
 
Stephen230 said:
Is this true?

I was at that game and have no recollection of it. Never heard anyone mention it since either.

In fact thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of that game replayed on TV apart from Tueart’s overhead kick. Not even Barnes’ goal.
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He did have a goal disallowed in the final.
If it had stood it meant he would have scored in every round too.
He was alright Joe and as many have said already his part in our history is more than just a footnote.
 
horlock_was_super said:
He did have a goal disallowed in the final.
If it had stood it meant he would have scored in every round too.
He was alright Joe and as many have said already his part in our history is more than just a footnote.
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I’ve just finally got round to watching a replay of it on YouTube after 46 years.

Royle did indeed have the ball in the net. But I’m not sure I’d class it as a disallowed goal. The whistle had already gone and the goalie made no effort to save it.

Noticeable that there were regular renditions of “You’ll never walk alone” from the City end. Can’t see that happening much these days for some reason.
 
Colin Bells Holdall said:
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
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… what?! Can’t leave us on a cliffhanger like that!
 
Stephen230 said:
I think he gets acknowledged too much if anything.

Nobody ever seems to mention that he was the man in charge when we got relegated to the third division for the only time in our history. Everyone seems to lay that at Frank Clark’s door. And as shit as he was, I don’t think we were ever in the relegation places until after he’d left. Happy to be corrected if that’s wrong though.

I hardly think scrapping up via the play offs can really be seen as much of an achievement either, as fun as it was.

Give him his dues for the second promotion though. Nobody was expecting a serious promotion challenge that year and it was one of my favourite years following City.

Then another relegation of course.

I’ll give him one thing, it was never boring.
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We’d won 7 out of 32 games under Clarke in that 1997-98 season. Royle won 5 in 14 to end the season.
 
He was interviewed on those two recent CityTV documentaries first about Gillingham '99 (wasn't there a 20th reunion too where Joe attended) and the one only released the other month about Blackburn 2000. He always seems very complimentary about City and the fans.
 
I think Joe did a good job for City and a great job for Oldham. I actually went to see the latter play a couple of times during Joe's spell as manager and was really impressed at the performances he got out of such a cheaply assembled side.
It was an amazing achievement to get Oldham to the top flight and an FA Cup semi-final.
Him signing Alfie Haaland has got to have been a factor in us signing young Erling.
I'm surprised that some posters still seem to bear a grudge against him - what do they think about the likes of Clarke, Coppell etc?
 
Joe is a proper old school decent manager and did a great job galvanising us as a team once he put his stamp on proceedings.

He did a great job more or less everywhere he managed too.

I met him several years ago and he was very charming and knowledgeable and was positive towards us as a club.

I asked him about George Weah and he said he didn’t know he was finished physically before we signed him, he just couldn’t do it any more, sad situation really.

Always good for a soundbite too, two I remember.

After our Blackburn promotion he said we’d played like ‘pigs in labour’ wtf!

As we got relegated he said ‘I may be captain of the ship as it sank, but someone else was in charge when it hit the iceberg’…..quality.

He left us in the same division as he found us but we were far stronger as a result of his efforts and the likes of Willie Donachie.
 
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