Our best manager during the first 10 years of the Prem

[dontcallme]

The dark ages of the 1990s regularly gets mentioned.

We spent relatively big on transfer fees but low on salary and manager after manager failed to get us a top 6 finish let alone actual success, bar a league cup.

So from Ardiles in 1993 to Hoddle taking over in 2001 who was the best manager for us? Do not take into account what they did for other clubs and caretaker managers don't count.

 

[LSUY]

Pains me to say this but Graham. The first time I got to see Spurs win a trophy and play in Europe.

 

[VegasII]

Oof, shit choices! It really was bad.

Ossie’s famous five and his love of free shit from the club shop. Gerry Francis’s barnet. Man in the raincoat’s blue and white army. Pleat as caretaker a few times. Gross and his feckin tube ticket. Glenn and his tracksuits.

If it was just the 90s then I would vote for Tel. But since it’s Prem era only then...none of them. All fairly pisch as managers for us.

 

[fuzzylogic]

I wanted it more than anything to be Hoddle! (But it wasn’t)

 

[ralphs bald spot]

Francis was easily the best of those

 

[Nine while nine]

Francis was easily the best of those

Agreed. I can't say I remember the Francis years with any great affection, but, in 1995-96, he took a squad which had sold Klinsmann, Popescu and Barmby, and fashioned a team that came within two points of a UEFA Cup place.

And, if anyone reading that thinks 'well, that sounds a bit rubbish', then they really, really need to check out our other seasons in the Nineties.

More importantly, that season had one of the best games I've ever watched in a pub - the 4-1 beating of Manchester United on New Year's Day. For that, if for no other reason, the man with the mullet gets my vote.

 

[dontcallme]

Had to go with Francis. He took over a team with talented attacking players like Klinsmann, Sheringham, Barmby and Anderton but terrible defenders.

So he had to turn them into a team quickly to save them from relegation. He then had to deal with losing Klinsmann and replacing him with Chris Armstrong.

He took us to 7th, 8th then 10th which sadly was the best of that time period.

 

[ernie78]

Dark days indeed

 

[Tucker]

It’s a bit like choosing your all time favourite bowel movement. They usually start with a feeling of relief, there’s some enjoyable moments during, but then afterwards your left with a foul smell and need to flush them away.

We were a very poorly run club in the 90s, it was only by sheer luck that we didn’t completely fall into obscurity and get relegated. I was sure it was going to happen under Gross, but Jurgen came along and saved us.

Sugar seemed to lumber from one disaster to the next, from managerial appointments to a truly awful transfer strategy. For every Klinsmann there was a Cundy, for every Ginola there was a Calderwood.

We were a complete mess, so it’s harsh to judge any of these managers during their time here. Had the club been run as well as it is today, some of them may have been a bit more successful. What’s telling is that none of them went on to succeed anywhere else. Ardiles didn’t go back into management, Francis went on to become Tony Pulis’ water boy, Gross accidentally got on the circle line and is rumoured to haunt the tunnels to this day, George Graham disappeared off the face of the earth, and Glenn lurched from bad job to bad job before giving in and becoming a grandfather clock.

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

Nice thread. Has to be Francis surely, best league finish and was building something all be it working with a very tricky chairman.

• Ardiles was useless bless him but it was fun for a bit.
• Gross so so bad.
• Man in a raincoat won us a trophy but generally football was pretty dire and results not that much better + he dealt badly with our best player Ginola
• Hoddle was disappointing, got us playing some lovely stuff at times but player recruitment was poor, squad was way too old and shame that it didn't work out for him

 

[sausage]

Francis, considering how he performed in light of what he was working with.

Pains me to say, because it was embarrassing to support a team where the manager was a fat bloke with a greying mullet in a purple shell suit with 'pony' written on it.

 

[ralphs bald spot]

Had to go with Francis. He took over a team with talented attacking players like Klinsmann, Sheringham, Barmby and Anderton but terrible defenders.

So he had to turn them into a team quickly to save them from relegation. He then had to deal with losing Klinsmann and replacing him with Chris Armstrong.

He took us to 7th, 8th then 10th which sadly was the best of that time period.

I thought of Chris Armstrong when Sky flashed up a stat of players who have been offside the most - he would have walked it!!! rarely has there been a player with so little understanding of the offside law VAR would have ruined his career but mind you on most occasions he was so far off he might not have been detected

 

[ralphs bald spot]

Nice thread. Has to be Francis surely, best league finish and was building something all be it working with a very tricky chairman.

• Ardiles was useless bless him but it was fun for a bit.
• Gross so so bad.
• Man in a raincoat won us a trophy but generally football was pretty dire and results not that much better + he dealt badly with our best player Ginola
• Hoddle was disappointing, got us playing some lovely stuff at times but player recruitment was poor, squad was way too old and shame that it didn't work out for him

Graham was rubbish but intermingled with his treatment of Ginola who was fantastic a 3-3 draw with Liverpool was one of the great games and Ginola was great that day he took him off they equalised and the image of Ginola kicking a hoarding in frustration summed it all up

 

[roy@SC]

Amazed that anyone would possibly find Francis was anything near terrible. He was given little or no backing by the board and constantly had best players sold and never backed in the market. Despite all that he produced our best finishes and had the team playing outstanding footy before Klinsmann & Barmby started the exodus.

 

[Mornstar]

Gerry Francis' incompetence, coupled with Alan Sugar's awful chairmanship directly contributed to our downfall and it took us 15 years to recover from the mess.

Francis inherited a very gifted squad that had the likes of Klinsmann, Sheringham, Anderton, Barmby, Popescu, Mabbut, Campbell, Dumitrescu. Not only did he fail to deliver any silverware but he replaced excellent players with dross such as Armstrong, Fox......

We were neck and neck with Arsenal when he took over and by the time he departed a few years later, we were 10 years behind them! That's pretty unforgivable as far as I'm concerned.

 

[yido_number1]

Francis by a mile. Played decent football and had some ok players. I do remember the season with Hoddle where we were top or nearly top in December I think it was 2002 but it wasn't great other than that.

Anyone that says Graham because of that league cup would have Danny Blanchflower rolling in his grave.

 

[HodisGawd]

Let's not think about it... I've purged those dark days from my memory already

 

[Deleted member 27995]

All of them.

It's the fabric of the club.

[enter quote from 60 years ago here]

 

[robin09]

I started going when Ardiles was manager. My memories of all those managers, whatever the opposite of rose-tinted spectacles are, I must be wearing them. Gross felt the worst, to me looking back. The tube ticket (cringe). Francis was fine for what we were at the time. But christ, have we moved on a long way from the 90s!

 

[dontcallme]

I picked Francis but I wonder if he was the starting point for buying players late in their career, who mostly weren't that great in their prime, for high fees and soon to decline.

In previous seasons we'd bought Klinsmann, Popescu, Barmby, Anderton, Walker for reasonable fees. But then under Francis in his frst summer he bought Armstrong, Fox, Sinton and Clive Wilson.

No idea if this was down to Francis though.