da dobrowin： Being a manager of a Premier League club gets a bad press. Granted there is the 24 hour pressure, job insecurity, and thousands of fans thinking you’re clueless, incompetent or both.
da prosport bet： On the flip-side though it is an occupation unlike any other in that failure is often rewarded with another identical position. You can even go the whole hog and preside over an abject relegation and be sure that once the P45 has been filed away and the colossal pay-off is agreed to along will come another club believing you’re their potential saviour.
The 25 year history of the Premier League is awash with such boomerang bosses yet strangely there are others where the very opposite applies. Despite doing a reasonably good job – in some cases an exceptionally good job – they vanish from the technical area with an alarming suddenness never to be seen or heard of again.
If you know of the whereabouts of any of the names mentioned below please contact your local police station. Their families are worried…
Alan Curbishley
Until he took on the role of technical director at Fulham Llewellyn Charles ‘Alan’ Curbishley spent five years being the bookies’ third favourite to manage every single job going in the Premier League and most in the Championship. It was a strange spell in the wilderness for a man who laid the template for how a club with limited resources can thrive among the big boys keeping Charlton Athletic punching above their weight season after season through shrewd acquisitions and attractive football into the bargain.
Between 2004 and 2006 he was undoubtedly the most in-demand gaffer in Britain with Liverpool reportedly making overtures before opting for Rafa Benitez and a nation insisting he was installed as England boss. The job went to Steve McClaren.
Instead Curbishley moved across London to West Ham reviving their fortunes until a messy dispute over transfers led to his resignation. Next came…well, very little save for the odd bit of punditry and the waste of a damn fine manager.
John Gregory
Like several characters from the Fast Show rolled into one Gregory was a brash, cocky sort who always appeared to know a secret you didn’t. Don’t be fooled by the second hand car dealer demeanour however because his track record in the top flight is up there with the very best English managers leading Aston Villa to an oh-so-close title fight, an FA Cup final, and only getting the sack when the Midlands club plummeted to eighth in 2002.
What they would give for that today.
Famously the last gaffer to field an all-English starting eleven Gregory’s stock fell after disappointing spells at Derby and QPR leading to some bizarre career choices that took him to Israel and Crawley via Kazakhstan.
Now 61 the former Brighton midfielder recently underwent successful open heart surgery and is presently looking to get back into a tracksuit.
David O’Leary
O’Leary will forever be linked with the crazy Leeds fairytale that ultimately went belly-up and though it could be argued that he spent £100m in the space of four trophyless years it can equally be said that his pressing game was ahead of the curve, his promotion and tutelage of an extraordinary batch of kids was magnificent, and he took them to a Champions League semi-final.
It wasn’t the Irishman who wrote the cheques and it certainly wasn’t he who borrowed £60m against future gate receipts so perhaps it is entirely unjust that this talented – if somewhat annoying – coach found himself damned by association and seemingly unemployable following a mixed spell at Villa.
A brief undistinguished stint with Al-Ahli in Dubai has been his only return to management since the mid-2000s.
Paul Jewell
Now seemingly cast into managerial purgatory it is worth remembering that Jewell is only 51 and has twice defied the odds by keeping a traditionally lower league club in the top flight. On both occasions he took them there in the first place, first with Bradford then with Wigan, reaching a League Cup final with the latter and overseeing the fairytale of the millenium with the former.
It’s undeniable that the Liverpudlian has endured some shocking stints too, most notably at Derby but it’s not uncommon for managers to ‘fit’ some clubs and be dramatically unsuited to others.
Was last in the news threatening legal action after quitting an assistant role at West Brom after just one week. Look Paul, we’re trying to talk you up here.
George Burley
It is doubtful we will ever see a return to the dug-out for the 59 year old Scot and the past five years appears to be a period of semi-retirement barring a two-game disaster at the mighty Apollon Limassol in Cyprus.
Burley is included here simply due to an under-appreciation of his outstanding achievements at Ipswich that saw him named Manager of the Year in 2001 after guiding the Tractor Boys to a fifth place finish.
What should have been a springboard for a highly successful career led to frustrating tenures at Derby and Hearts that were undone by interfering directors of football and owners respectively. The football however was always open, studied and watchable.