Ian Holloway makes honest admission about his ill-fated spell as Leicester City manager

[Langston]

5 minutes ago, Corky said:

Vichai and Top got a bit of stick for muscling in on the title celebration but Mandaric was on another level. Our owners now aren't in the media too much making statements but barely a few days went by without Milan proclaiming he's a fan, he wants success, this manager didn't work, the next one is great, he'll go through 20 managers to make the club successful.

 

He really did try too hard.

 

The amount of times Mandaric would be in the press bleating "TRUST ME" was beyond words.

[Dan Gliballs]

Absolute clown of a manager, I don't care what's happened since, and what's still to happen, I'll never let water go under the bridge over the way he conducted himself at this club.

 

Yes, we were a relegation waiting to happen, but the way he conducted himself in the media, and coming out with stupid s**t before crunch games like 'we thrive on the pressure', he just didn't give a f**k, I don't care what that man says. Absolutely dire man management.

[Babylon]

 

22 hours ago, Corky said:

It was a tough job, the club wasn't in great shape but I feel there was enough in the squad to survive relegation. That is what was required. Far too many home matches were shocking and to not win two games in a row is pathetic.

 

Do you think that squad was good enough to stay up that season?

Of the ones in my list I’d say only about 5 or 6 were actually a decent championship standard. With perhaps two more added in Jan.

 

Personally I think there is more to it than just what players you have though. Sometimes events conspire to leave even good players totally drained and demoralised. That’s how I saw us... alongside lots of shit players and players with questionable attitudes.

[inckley fox]

 

Quote

 

I've meant to post on this thread for a week but thought it'd take me too long. (Apologies by the way for the 'quote' box. My computer's being weird and I can't get rid of it.)

 

I wouldn't make too many excuses for Holloway. He took over a dispirited but well-resourced side in 17th place, with plenty of the season remaining. He invested, and ended up with our first ever relegation to the third tier. Yes, I agree that the club was in turmoil with four managers in a year, near-relegation the previous season, the summer recruitment fiasco, one boss who lasted 3 league games, another who was gone after 6 weeks.

 

But he is one of the few managers of whom you can say that he was not only responsible for a dire catastrophe, but also never achieved anything other than being so terrible that things simply had to get better thereafter. In our history, you could liken him to some of the Fosse managers who were just unmitigated failures, or McLintock, but even Taylor earned some accolades on his way to absolute disaster. Even Hamilton managed to match our previous season's p.p.g. when we got relegated in '87. There's nothing to redeem Holloway.

 

As for turmoil, plenty of managers did well in the face of adversity. Wallace, Lee, Little, Adams, Pearson. Others failed but can't be accused of making things any worse than they already were - Bassett, Pleat and so on. Few of the aforementioned had the resources at Holloway's disposal.

 

The side shouldn't have gone down. There was dross, but there always is in that league. Our defence was 3rd or 4th best in the division, wasn't it? We had Stearman and McAuley in there. Up front there was Howard, Fryatt, Hume, Campbell, lots of options. In midfield, where we struggled the most, there was Oakley. So why didn't that side score the goals it needed to score? Well, if you play for draws when you need a win I'd tend to point the finger at the guy who makes that decision. 

 

Players have said how out of his depth he was, how erratic he was, how - in one ex-player's words - he seemed to crack under the pressure. I remember him saying at one point in the relegation run-in that we probably already had enough points to stay up and thinking to myself, 'wow, if he's wrong...'

 

So okay, you can understand why it went wrong. And it would have gone wrong for other managers too. And yes,  others deserved a share of the blame - Allen, Megson, Taylor for financially crippling the club 7 years earlier, Levein for fumbling the rebuild, and definitely Mandaric. But Holloway was a god-awful mess. One of our worst. He once called himself the worst manager in our history. It might be a stretch, but he wasn't far off.

[Gamble92]

On 01/11/2019 at 09:26, surrifox said:

Despite the way things ended with Holloway I don’t think I was alone in believing he was a decent appointment at the time . He had built a competitive and entertaining Plymouth side with the likes of Halmosi and David Norris and when he brought in the two Hungarians Laczko and Gabor whatsisname to city there was an insane level of excitement and anticipation that lasted all of 2 games 

Im  shocked you can say Laczko and not Bori and im even more shocked i remember both. 

 

I swear these threads aren't good for my mental health.

[Gamble92]

On 02/11/2019 at 15:00, Langston said:

 

The amount of times Mandaric would be in the press bleating "TRUST ME" was beyond words.

KEEP THE FAITH 

[Gamble92]

On 02/11/2019 at 09:22, Sly said:

Holloway won 28% of his games. 
 

Only the following Leicester Managers are worse:

 

Frank McLintock - 12.5%

Ian McFarland - 20%

Garry Parker - 0% - that was horrendous!!

Bassett - 14%

 

 

 

Only we could have a real life manager called Bassett with a worse win percentage than Mike.