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Was Alan Ball as bad as people remember?
- Thread starter HelloCity
- Start date
Just a few of many, Promised transfer funds, extensive rebuilding of Maine Road ( 4 sides) , taking the club into the 20th century in terms of a business, we were run like a poor corner shop under Swales and in reality it improved very little under Lee.What specific promises did Lee actually make that were broken? Did he claim he had a big fuck-off transfer budget? Because in his programme notes for the very first game at home to Ipswich following the takeover, he clearly stated that he was "no Jack Walker", but he did provide the funds for us to buy Walsh, Rosler, and Beagrie several weeks later prior to the old March transfer deadline day and those signings effectively helped keep us up.
I'll be the first to accept that it didn't work out under Lee the way I'd hoped but that doesn't negate the fact that Swales simply had to go
Francis Lee had and has one of the biggest ego's I have ever encountered, a very unpleasant little man, whom despite what he thinks has very little business knowledge.
standupifyouhatemanu
Well-Known Member
I'm sure he summarised after he was sacked and after another poor City performance slagged the whole team off, the team that he had bought the majority of?
Well said, it was a terrible and sad time for our club.Frank Clark is the worst manager in our history, and we have had some right whoppers.
This man is single-handedly responsible for our fall through the divisions.
A horrible, scheming, conniving, back-stabbing, spineless **** of a man.
X2 for his assistant, Alan Hill.
I take great pleasure in knowing I contributed in him getting the sack and helped get Joe the job.
At least Ball was a nice man.
M18CTID
Well-Known Member
Just a few of many, Promised transfer funds, extensive rebuilding of Maine Road ( 4 sides) , taking the club into the 20th century in terms of a business, we were run like a poor corner shop under Swales and in reality it improved very little under Lee.
Francis Lee had and has one of the biggest ego's I have ever encountered, a very unpleasant little man, whom despite what he thinks has very little business knowledge.
Yeah, I remember the plans for rebuilding MR on all 4 sides and it looked good but I think that was understandably shelved when we agreed the deal to move to the new stadium.
I think the off-field side of things improved immeasurably under Lee to be fair. Obviously, the same can't be said on the pitch
No personal knowledge of what Clark was like as a man, and he did look more or less as though he knew what he was doing for the first four months after his appointment. But from the end of the 1996/7 season onwards, his performance was abject. At that stage, he had a squad, including several of his own acquisitions, that had just managed a fairly decent end to the season, and he was handed a very handsome transfer budget by the standards of that division back then. To leave us two-thirds of the way through the following campaign one place off the foot of the table and averaging less than a point a game was truly pathetic, definitely worse than Ball in my book. I knew that Mad Frank had lost the plot when, having announced to all the world in the summer that new boy Tony Vaughan had been recruited to fill the problem left-back slot, he was moaning a few weeks later that Vaughan's poor form owed to having to play out of position at left back.
Anyway, back on topic. As for Ball, it shouldn't have taken the benefit of hindsight to know he was a poor appointment. Yes, in his previous post at Southampton, they'd avoided the drop twice but he was aided by the exceptional form there of Matt LeTissier. I'm one of those posters on this thread who was underwhelmed by Brian Horton, despite him coming across as a dignified, likeable man who inspired some superb attacking football; those displays were very much the exception rather than the rule, and I thought we could probably do better. But if asked whether it was worth sacrificing Horton so we could hire Ball, I'd have responded with a resounding no and the latter's performance in the job showed why.
Anyway, back on topic. As for Ball, it shouldn't have taken the benefit of hindsight to know he was a poor appointment. Yes, in his previous post at Southampton, they'd avoided the drop twice but he was aided by the exceptional form there of Matt LeTissier. I'm one of those posters on this thread who was underwhelmed by Brian Horton, despite him coming across as a dignified, likeable man who inspired some superb attacking football; those displays were very much the exception rather than the rule, and I thought we could probably do better. But if asked whether it was worth sacrificing Horton so we could hire Ball, I'd have responded with a resounding no and the latter's performance in the job showed why.
jimharri
Moderator
"And after all....."
I would dissagre, better than Swales for sure, but still pathetic.Yeah, I remember the plans for rebuilding MR on all 4 sides and it looked good but I think that was understandably shelved when we agreed the deal to move to the new stadium.
I think the off-field side of things improved immeasurably under Lee to be fair. Obviously, the same can't be said on the pitch
We had to use St Bedes for training, and a nameless player decided to do donuts in his car in the middle of one of their pitches, that went down very well ....
We even ran out of white grass paint to mark the pitches, we had not paid the bill to the company for months and were black balled. Had to go begging to St Bedes
Yeah, I remember the plans for rebuilding MR on all 4 sides and it looked good but I think that was understandably shelved when we agreed the deal to move to the new stadium.
I think the off-field side of things improved immeasurably under Lee to be fair. Obviously, the same can't be said on the pitch
If I remember correctly, the chance to move to the New stadium came after Lee, in the David Bernstein era.