Past Managers you would have liked to see at City

gordondaviesmoustache said:
They arguably didn’t qualify for four successive World Cups!

Tough route to qualify for 1978 tbf.
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Good point,forgot about 66 and 70.
Cloughie won the league with newly promoted Forest in 77/78.
I'm sure he could have got us to Argentina but we'll never know and he knew he would never be offered the job.
 
Rewatched the Damned United just before the game today. Great entertaining film but I think Sheen plays it on a bit thick with all his Cloughie schtick. Loved Tim Spall as Peter Taylor though. Being only a toddler at the time were Revie's Leeds all that dominant? The mousers, Wolves, Derby and us must have been in the mix?

Really sad that there is no way a small provincial team could win the league and then 2 European Cups in successive years now. I vaguely remember the 1980 final v Hamburg but cannot recall their style of play. Like all managers Clough had a specific shelf life but he'd have been a hell of ride in the 70s or 80s! Would he have had tactical flexibility or been able to identify players in the game today? Who knows but he would have improved the national team I think.
 
Revie
Aba452 said:
Rewatched the Damned United just before the game today. Great entertaining film but I think Sheen plays it on a bit thick with all his Cloughie schtick. Loved Tim Spall as Peter Taylor though. Being only a toddler at the time were Revie's Leeds all that dominant? The mousers, Wolves, Derby and us must have been in the mix?

Really sad that there is no way a small provincial team could win the league and then 2 European Cups in successive years now. I vaguely remember the 1980 final v Hamburg but cannot recall their style of play. Like all managers Clough had a specific shelf life but he'd have been a hell of ride in the 70s or 80s! Would he have had tactical flexibility or been able to identify players in the game today? Who knows but he would have improved the national team I think.
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Revie's Leeds took no prisoners. They were a brilliantly organised side with the right mix of hard men / skilful players for the time (ie 6 or 7 thugs plus 4 or 5 quality footballers). They were horrible to watch unless you were a Leeds fan, and probably just as horrible to play against.
Clough wasn't up to the job - the senior players ran the show after Revie left.
 
Aba452 said:
. Being only a toddler at the time were Revie's Leeds all that dominant? The mousers, Wolves, Derby and us must have been in the mix?
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From 1965 to 1974 (ten seasons) their average league placing was 2.3, which was astonishing for the time. ‘Only‘ won the league twice in that period, so their dominance has to be qualified, I guess.
 
I do sometimes wonder about the parallel world where we sack Pellegrini after the 14/15 season and don't hang on for a year.
 
Lavinda Past said:
No gripe at all mate. Just saying that he's hugely overrated as a manager. He got lucky as a young manager, had a few good young players at Watford when he arrived and gave them a chance. The club had low/no expectations and he had no pressure to deliver. Applied a standard tactic of punting a long ball up to a big centre forward and knock-downs to speedy wingers/full backs. He never really changed that 'system' from Div 4 to 2nd in 1st division and made very few tweaks in players over that time.
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Would have probably worked wonders with Niall Quinn and David White
 
Things really aligned for City to take Brian Clough in the autumn of 1973. He left Derby in mid-October and took up the post at Brighton in early November, but inbetween those dates, Johnny Hart went on sick-leave and City already knew he wasn't coming back, even though his official departure didn't come until after Clough had signed on at the Goldstone Ground. At least one Clough biography and some media reports at the time suggest that City did hold talks with him, but we opted not to pursue the possibility of appointing him. However, it would seem that he really was ours if we wanted him.

It probably wasn't quite the no-brainer then that it seems in hindsight. At the time, he'd taken Derby to a league title and was obviously an exceptional manager. However, it was his achievements at Forest that really showed him to be a genius, and at Derby he'd tried to unseat the board while seemingly regarding his day job as less of a priority than his TV and media commitments. I can see why boards of big clubs, and not just ours, might have decided he was probably more trouble than he was worth. Hard, though, not to think of what might have been had we taken the chance. He certainly wouldn't have got on with Swales, but IMO could easily have engineered success that ensured he wouldn't be the man to step down when Maine Road proved not to be big enough for the both of them.

An intriguing one five years after those events is outlined in Tony Book's autobiography. Book writes that, in the autumn of 1978, he was in the last year of his current contract and was keen to negotiate an extension, only for the board to rebuff him. Disillusioned, he ended up being interviewed to replace Jock Stein after the Scot's very brief reign at Leeds. Having lost out to the Sunderland and former Burnley manager Jimmy Adamson, who then failed at Elland Road, Book says that he was tipped off by a City director that the club was lining up Bobby Robson of Ipswich to replace him.

If I could go back and make one managerial appointment off my own bat, bringing in Robson at that time would probably be it. Sacking Book after he'd won a domestic Cup and qualified twice for the UEFA Cup would unquestionably have been harsh. However, I don't think there's much doubt that Robson was comfortably a better manager. More importantly, we'd have been spared the utter car crash that was Big Mal's second coming. He'd probably have still departed to manage England in 1982, but would have stood a good chance of success in the interim and left us in a position to challenge as a top club through the 1980s rather than being the cash-strapped mediocrities we in fact became.
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
From 1965 to 1974 (ten seasons) their average league placing was 2.3, which was astonishing for the time. ‘Only‘ won the league twice in that period, so their dominance has to be qualified, I guess.
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Too many senior players at the end of their careers threatened by Clough's arrival so they got him sacked. All downhill for Leeds from there, but what s great side they were.
 
Blue Feather said:
Yeah I know, mine was too just not as subtle :) just be fun to see what they would be for Pearce, maybe getting 'you know' re-established in the English language or your side not scoring goals was a tactical masterclass....
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those few games where he was caretaker coach for us, was really impressed with him.

Then he spoilt it with that Boro game haha
 
I think historically the major issue was the Book/Allison period, I doubt people like Clough/SAF would have come without Book being totally removed and once the Allison era occurred it was always going to be a downward level of investment, not all of which where connected to City's control, Taylor report, the fact the ground was built on toxic waste.
 
Leeds under Revie in the 70s were nothing but a bunch of cheats. He had dossiers on every referee and linesmen, who was weak and what he could get away with. Time wasting tactics were a masterclass of Revie's. Best win over Leeds was at home with a ninety minute goal after Leeds time wasted 40 minutes of the 90. As "Cloughie" said in the film the Damned United. "You've never won anything because you cheated"
Spurs quarter 69 said:
Too many senior players at the end of their careers threatened by Clough's arrival so they got him sacked. All downhill for Leeds from there, but what s great side they were.
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berryblue said:
Leeds under Revie in the 70s were nothing but a bunch of cheats. He had dossiers on every referee and linesmen, who was weak and what he could get away with. Time wasting tactics were a masterclass of Revie's. Best win over Leeds was at home with a ninety minute goal after Leeds time wasted 40 minutes of the 90. As "Cloughie" said in the film the Damned United. "You've never won anything because you cheated"
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Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the referees would not book let alone send off for the first tackle. I used to work with a Leeds supporter. He told me that Revie instructed the players to go in very hard and very early (or late as the case may be!) to use up their ‘free’ tackle.

The other factor was the constant time-wasting once they got ahead. They would take the ball into the corner and keep it there for as long as possible.

Leeds had plenty of players who could do that including Hunter, Charlton, Bremner, and Reaney. They also had a number of excellent footballers who could win matches without using such tactics including Eddie Gray, Peter Lorimer, Allan Clarke and ever Billy Bremner.

Clough tried to change all the negative stuff but I suspect that half the team knew they would be out of a job if Clough had the chance to establish himself (most were approaching the twilight of their careers anyway) and replace them, so they ‘downed tools’ and got Clough sacked.
 
JGL07 said:
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the referees would not book let alone send off for the first tackle. I used to work with a Leeds supporter. He told me that Revie instructed the players to go in very hard and very early (or late as the case may be!) to use up their ‘free’ tackle.

The other factor was the constant time-wasting once they got ahead. They would take the ball into the corner and keep it there for as long as possible.

Leeds had plenty of players who could do that including Hunter, Charlton, Bremner, and Reaney. They also had a number of excellent footballers who could win matches without using such tactics including Eddie Gray, Peter Lorimer, Allan Clarke and ever Billy Bremner.

Clough tried to change all the negative stuff but I suspect that half the team knew they would be out of a job if Clough had the chance to establish himself (most were approaching the twilight of their careers anyway) and replace them, so they ‘downed tools’ and got Clough sacked.
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You forgot the best of them all one Johnny Giles
 
tommy116 said:
You forgot the best of them all one Johnny Giles
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Jonny Giles lived next door to my grandparents i n north Dublin, when he moved to Leeds my grandad abandoned the rags to become a Leeds fan breaking a shameful tradition of Rags support on the Irish side of my family. Manchester side all loyal blues.
 
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