Worst Rams Manager Ever

[May Contain Nuts]

2 hours ago, Anon said:

This bit really got me too. Davis was a joke, even at Championship level. He was the type of defender who opposition fans would hope was playing.

I'm not saying he was good, but it is slightly overstated how bad he actually was because of how awful he was for us.

The basis for Billy bringing Davis to Derby (ooh I do love a little alliteration) was that he'd worked with him before at Preston. In the 2005/06 season he was part of a defence that only conceded 30 goals in 46 Championship games, he helped them record 24 clean sheets and won all of their POTY awards.

Given all that it made perfect sense for Billy to want to sign him, to think that he could get the best out of him again.

He was no more a joke to opposition fans than Keogh was in the early-mid stages of his time here.

 

Anyway, I was willing to go along with what Jourdan was saying until this part:

8 hours ago, Jourdan said:

At the time, Billy was one of the brightest young managers working in English football. He was ambitious, he was driven, he was arrogant, he wanted to prove himself worthy of being at the top table. I don't, for a minute, believe he would have sabotaged his chances of success to prove a point.

That's his entire M.O! The fact that he was so arrogant, coupled with some form of narcissistic, paranoid personality disorder, meant that he probably didn't think of it as sabotage and he truly believed that it was exactly those actions which would take him to the top.

[Jourdan]

5 hours ago, RamNut said:

You had me until this.....

they were poor signings. We didn’t have the money for the players we needed, or couldn’t attract them, but this pair were howlers who added absolutely nothing. 

Yes, in the end, that’s how it worked out. Both of them were poor in a Derby shirt.

But at the time of signing, I don’t think there were many who felt that they were poor signings.

Earnshaw, up until that point, was one of the most prolific goalscorers playing in English football and he was just coming off the back of an excellent season at Norwich and had also scored for fun wherever he had been, even when in and out of the side at West Brom in the PL.

Davis was excellent for Preston in the Championship and hadn’t disgraced himself while playing for Sheffield United, who were unfortunate to get relegated, the previous year.

As it transpired, both were terrible for us. No arguments there. Yes, it was a risk signing players who had only proven themselves as top Championship players. But at the time I could totally see the logic behind the signings if we had also added other players of a greater quality in key areas like midfield, for example.

It was the signings of Todd, Griffin, Lewis and the inability of young players like Barnes, Jones and Leacock to step up that was more damaging to us.

Anon mentioned we could have got better value for £6.5 million, and perhaps he is right, but did we have the scouting network and the resources to find those players?

[secretsquirrel]

Docherty-without question .we have had a fair bit of dross down the years but no_one as incompetent as him.

[ramsbottom]

6 hours ago, Anon said:

This bit really got me too. Davis was a joke, even at Championship level. He was the type of defender who opposition fans would hope was playing. I can possibly understand the argument for Earnshaw. Yes, he'd failed in his previous crack at the top division, but his scoring record in the Championship was excellent. The problem was that Billy didn't play him. I know there's some talk about Earnshaw not being Davies' signing, but it's part of the manager's job to work with the board on signings. Davies' subsequent career has proved that he is unwilling to work with anyone who isn't a family member or under his thrall.

No, he isn't the worst rams manager ever, but he gets mentioned here because he's a spiteful little **** *** who is so toxic that he's only been able to find work for 3 of the last 12 seasons, despite the promotion and play off finishes on his cv.

The easiest way to gauge Calamity's reputation was the reaction of Sheffield Utd fans when we signed him.  Every one that came on the old DET forum said he was a disaster, and they'd had our pants down.  Every single one...

[rynny]

3 hours ago, Jourdan said:

Anon mentioned we could have got better value for £6.5 million, and perhaps he is right, but did we have the scouting network and the resources to find those players?

We wanted Kenwyne Jones and Jhon Viafara from Southampton, would have cost us £8m. We had even agreed the deal for Viafara. There was also Mika Vayrynen, who agreed to sign but then we didn't. 

[Dimmu]

1 hour ago, rynny said:

We wanted Kenwyne Jones and Jhon Viafara from Southampton, would have cost us £8m. We had even agreed the deal for Viafara. There was also Mika Vayrynen, who agreed to sign but then we didn't. 

Väyrynen had long term injury which canceled the deal. Really a shame, he was good player.

[Nuwtfly]

Everything about the Paul Jewell reign was rotten, from start to finish.

[Dethorn]

Docherty did this - one brilliant signing in Billy Hughes and then after three months....

"His Sunderland career ended in September 1977 when Derby County paid £30,000 for his signature.[5] In his time at Sunderland Hughes amassed 332 appearances, scoring 82 times.[9] Leeds United manager Don Revie had tried to prise Hughes away from Sunderland at one point, and spoke positively about the Scotsman saying he "is one of the most exciting players I've seen. He loves to go forward. He runs straight at opponents forcing them to commit themselves and can shoot with either foot."[4]

His stay at Derby County was brief, he lasted just two months before being allowed to join Leicester City for £45,000 in December 1977.[4] He had made just 19 league appearances for Derby County, scoring eight goals.[10] "

 

I felt at the time it was almost like he accidentally signed someone good and panic'd to get rid

 

[mr_rams]

Phil Brown 

Paul Jewell 

Nigel Pearson 

Paul Clement

Billy Davies 

John Gregory

Forgot to add another one 

Nigel Clough

 

[Roboram]

On 20/03/2020 at 09:03, AndyinLiverpool said:

Tommy Docherty

 

Close thread

Tommy Docherty

End of ...

[Roboram]

On 20/03/2020 at 09:03, AndyinLiverpool said:

Tommy Docherty

 

Close thread

 

On 22/03/2020 at 14:32, Brummie Steve said:

And Gemmill!

And Leighton James!

And Colin Boulton!

And Derek Hales......His only decent achievement in 20 months!

And Charlie George!!

[David]

Nigel Clough.

Controversial, but think what McClaren did with the same players, had Nigel realised what he had created and what they were capable of, who knows what would have happened.

Ok, I will concede he might not be the worst, but the most frustrating.

[Tyler Durden]

1 hour ago, David said:

Nigel Clough.

Controversial, but think what McClaren did with the same players, had Nigel realised what he had created and what they were capable of, who knows what would have happened.

Ok, I will concede he might not be the worst, but the most frustrating.

That was always my original point when Clough got sacked....a labourer might be very good at pouring the concrete in the foundations but you wouldn't employ them to build the rest of the house

[David]

20 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

That was always my original point when Clough got sacked....a labourer might be very good at pouring the concrete in the foundations but you wouldn't employ them to build the rest of the house

Annoys me no end because had he been willing to let go, that could have been the greatest promotion for us. But he just never let loose with them and McClaren showed what they were capable of. 

Why couldn’t Nige see that? Ok maybe not the worst manager but definitely the most frustrating 

[DavesaRam]

On 20/03/2020 at 18:19, MuespachRam said:

Ok...I am going to bite...what can I say, I am at home and I am bored..... I have highlighted a couple of things for you.

Practically blowing automatic promotion - Doesn't make sense, we didnt get automatic promotion so I guess that was "blown" but, did we get promoted, yes or no, simple question, so did he "blow promotion"?

Scraped into the play offs.....? - We finished 10 points clear of 7th place, 10 points..!! I cant be bothered to look it up but I bet we were hardly out of the promotion places all season were we?

Win at all costs - As opposed to what...? its the name of the game, winning.

 

Worst manager...? He is the best manager we have had since Jim Smith.

 

 

Actually our promotion cause wasn't helped by Darren Moore being given a retrospective red card - I believe it was the only one ever issued - so suddenly a team which depended on resolute defending had lost its big defender. On the Football League committee was Karen Brady, then chairman of Birmingham city, one of our chief rivals.

His transfer window signings didn't help us, but Billy's biggest misdemeanours (apart from setting up a public verbal spatch with the Derby County Board) came after the play-off final when he let it be known he would rather be manager of Preston, and then went on a fortnight'holiday just as the summer transfer window opened. So when he came back, all the players we should have gone for had been signed up. And finally he tr5ied to take on the sophistication of the Premier league with hoofball - palm meet face, face meet palm!

So he was still a baddy.

[europia]

On 24/03/2020 at 16:36, Dethorn said:

Docherty did this - one brilliant signing in Billy Hughes and then after three months....

"His Sunderland career ended in September 1977 when Derby County paid £30,000 for his signature.[5] In his time at Sunderland Hughes amassed 332 appearances, scoring 82 times.[9] Leeds United manager Don Revie had tried to prise Hughes away from Sunderland at one point, and spoke positively about the Scotsman saying he "is one of the most exciting players I've seen. He loves to go forward. He runs straight at opponents forcing them to commit themselves and can shoot with either foot."[4]

His stay at Derby County was brief, he lasted just two months before being allowed to join Leicester City for £45,000 in December 1977.[4] He had made just 19 league appearances for Derby County, scoring eight goals.[10] "

 

I felt at the time it was almost like he accidentally signed someone good and panic'd to get rid

 

Yes, from what I heard Docherty would have an argument with a concrete post. 

[DCFC_Sloth]

After reading through this thread over the last couple of days I thought I’d weigh in with my views on this topic. 

The first question that is import to sort out is, what defines a ‘bad manager’ is it win ratio, quality of football, signings, lasting damage? 

Before I start to tackle this question, I am only going to judge managers who I’ve had the (dis)pleasure of seeing in person (The Doc is safe in this reply), and only permanent appointments count. This leaves me with the list of Jim Smith, Colin Todd, John Gregory, George Burley, Phil Brown, Billy Davies, Paul Jewell, Nigel Clough, Steve McClaren, Paul Clement, Nigel Pearson, Gary Rowett, Frank Lampard and Phillip Cocu. From this list it’s fairly safe to say that Smith, Burley, Clough, McClaren, Rowett, Lampard and Cocu are out of the running, I’m also going to count out Todd and Gregory, because despite having an abysmal record and a relegation respectively, I just don’t remember enough about them to judge them fairly. This leaves us with Brown, Davies, Jewel, Clement and Pearson.

If these are looked at in terms of raw win percentage, then the worst is Phil Brown at 21.21% followed by Pearson at 21.43%. Jewel follows closely behind at 22.41%, then Clement (42.42%) and Davies (44.93%). 

But that’s not the full story. These five managers all inherited squads in different situations. So let’s look at each manager individually. 

Brown: Phil came into a job after Burley resigned following defeat to Billy Davies’s Preston in the play offs and the sale of Tom Huddlestone to Tottenham. Brown also lost Rasiak at the end of the transfer window. The loss of these two players shouldn’t have led to such trudged football that saw Derby win only 2 games away from home all season and end in 20th place. Brown was sacked in January after defeats to Coventry (6-1) and Colchester (3-1). Brown also took the steps to criticise the fan base after they booed his decision to sub off Peschisolido instead of Stern John and play Kevin Poole and Dean Holdsworth who were both parts of the coaching staff. 

Davies: The inclusion of Billy on this list may initially seem unfair, he took over from Brown and achieved what no other manager since Jim Smith has been able to and got Derby promoted. Davies’s reign can be separated into three phases. The first, from when he took over to the end of January. This period saw Derby grind out 18 league wins (15 of them by a single goal) and took Derby 6 points clear at the top of the table. By the end of the season Derby were four points off the top. This is where the second part of Davies’s tenure at Derby begins. In January he took the decision to overhaul the squad, bringing in a large number of players who were worse than those they were replacing. Fagan, Pearson, Macken, Currie, McCeverly, Mears and Gary Teale all came in. This had the effect of destabilising the team and Derby only went on to win a further 7 games and slipped into the playoffs. Outclassed in all three games, Derby managed to scrape through the playoffs and were promoted to the premier league. Davies stood on the pitch and complained about how it wasn’t Preston and how he didn’t know if he wanted to stay. With that, the third phase began. Davies signed a new deal and proceeded to bring in players who again were worse than what was there. Miller, Earnshaw,  Griffin, Lewis, Todd and the disastrous Claude Davies were brought in to form the basis for the worst team in premier league history. With one win Davies was gone by the end of November. His legacy will be two transfer windows which took the club years to recover from, and not the impressive first 6 months of his reign where he got a close knit team punching well above its weight. 

Jewell: the sacking of Davies brought with it the appointment of Paul Jewell. Jewell had high stock following his job at Wigan, and tried his best to turn the tide, but the damage was done and he was unable to achieve this and Derby failed to win another game all season. Jewell then looked to oversee a rebuild at Derby, but after signing 10 players permanently and a further 6 on loan, whilst selling 12 and loaning out 13 (including Liam Dickinson who Jewell had signed in the summer), Jewell left in December after poor form. The problem for Jewel was he was taking over a team already in a tail spin that would have taken a miracle to get out of, and although a large number of his signings were poor, he had to deal with the hangover of the premier league season which made his rebuild more difficult. 

Clement: Paul Clement was brought in to be Derby’s Sir Alex, but was sacked in January after failing to play the Derby way. He, like Davies, spent huge sums of money on players who were worse than what we had. The club are still suffering for the money spent in this period, £35m was spent on players with only Tom Ince turning a profit. Clement’s time at the club damaged it for years to come and although results weren’t, on the whole, too bad, the style of play was boring. Perhaps not Derby’s worst ever manager, but he was at the helm for one of, if not the most, financially damaging time at the club. 

Pearson: The man who decided the tool need to fine tune an engine was a sledge hammer. Taking onboard the team which finished fifth the season before, but with a fully fit Will Hughes and Craig Bryson, Pearson decided to change the formation, loan out the best centre forward, play players out of position and fight the owner. The football became directionless, Vydra and Wilson were brought in to play upfront together and both looked lost, Butterfield, a central midfielder, was deployed on the left wing and nick Blackman, a centre forward, the right of what was supposed to be (I think) a quick counter attacking midfield. I was at Barnsley away for the second game of the season, and the writing was already on the wall. 

to answer the question I asked at the start, ‘what makes a bad manager?’ The answer is simply, a combination of all of the mentioned factors. So who was the worst? The prize is to be contested by Phil Brown and Nigel Pearson, with an honourable mention going to Billy Davies. Let’s start with Davies. His reign was so damaging the club took 4 years to show signs of recovery and his approach to the January and summer windows led to the worst season in premier league history. Although his win percentage is amongst the best in the history of the club, the lasting damage he inflicted cannot be overlooked and anyone suggesting he was a good manager because of the promotion needs to view his reign in a wider context. The wheels had begun to fall off by the end of January and he was never able to recover them. Instead, he threw a tantrum at Wembley to get a pay rise and then went on holiday. The signings he made set us up for the eleven points and this needs to be considered. His win percentage and promotion stops him claiming the award, but he is definitely one of the most damaging characters to be connected to the club. 

The worst manager though has to be Nigel Pearson. He inherited a team that was capable of getting promoted without needing to sign a single player, but he began the process of dismantling the team rather than pushing it on. Whilst brown was working under the three amigos who were looking to sell anything that wasn’t nailed down, Pearson managed to win 3 games out of the 14 he managed with a team containing Carson, Keogh, Bryson, Hughes and Ince. Truly an awful manager, who may have achieved elsewhere, but had Derby on a collision course with League One. 

[LeedsCityRam]

On 28/03/2020 at 03:13, David said:

Nigel Clough.

Controversial, but think what McClaren did with the same players, had Nigel realised what he had created and what they were capable of, who knows what would have happened.

Ok, I will concede he might not be the worst, but the most frustrating.

It's incredibly unfair to use the last part of a manager's reign to tarnish his overall time with the club. It's like saying Jim Smith wasnt any good because we stopped competing for European places or Arthur Cox wasnt much cop because we went down in 1991.

Were it not for Nigel Clough, this club would have gone down to League One & given the mess we were in 2009, could well have stayed there for a while. Yes, he was conservative & the side at the start of 13/14 was showing signs of being capable of a top 6 side but he built that squad on a relative shoestring out of the rubble of 07/08. One of our better managers without a doubt.

[Tyler Durden]

To add some context to this discussion....just remember on this day in 2008 we were relegated from the Premier League with a record low points total....

[LeedsCityRam]

10 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

To add some context to this discussion....just remember on this day in 2008 we were relegated from the Premier League with a record low points total....

Seem to remember Forest finally moving into the auto promotion spots in League One that day too. A perfect storm.