Who was our worst manager and why?

[Trent Steel]

in my lifetime is has to be Cooper or Ruud

All the Florist fans say to me if we had kept Cooper we would of stayed up

But hey are bound to say that.............

[Nickaj]

 

No doubt in my mind, admittedly we've had some shockers but Frank McLintock was absolutely in a class of his own.

Nice bloke though, very friendly and approachable. 

[enmac]

1 hour ago, SouthStandUpperTier said:

Looking objectively at the stats it's clearly McLintock with his 12.5% win ratio.

 

Special mention should go to both Levein and Holloway, who both had a sub-30% win ratio in the Championship.

Plus he sold Frank and bought Alan Waddle! 

[Richmondfox]

Cooper more than RVN.  He ignored the players that worked well together, playing players out of position, weird formation of the whole team on the left hand side of the pitch and ignoring mistakes game after game. 

 

He stuck the club with the likes of Ayew, Reid and Skipp, hindering the club way after him and his useless staff left. 

 

Looking like an Boglin was the only interesting thing about him.  He spoke a lot shit l, blaming everyone but his own inability and also showed that people don’t know what pragmatic actually means. 

[LiliansLeftPeg]

Taylor, Ruud and then Levein. Taylor's signings and results were abysmal. He tore up a legacy. RvN had that stinking run of results and Levein was just beige and obsessed with signing mediocrity from Scotland and rated Elvis Hammond at seven figures. Bar that FA Cup performance where Mark de Vries turned into prime Adriano there was nothing to shout about under Levein. Other popular shouts were before my time. Cooper gets out of jail with me because he wasn't here long enough to take us down although he set us on the path with his signings. 

[shen]

1 hour ago, suffolk fox said:

Taylor took a great team and dismantled it.  Mclintock, shockingly bad, was a young kid when he gave a halftime team talk on the pitch at Loftus Rd, Bizarre.  RVN obviously.

Exactly this. Taylor inherited a good team and completely bottled it. The consequences of that relegation were nearly fatal for the club as well.

 

As bad as last season was under RVN, his hands were pretty much tied and he inherited a poor squad with low morale. He still did a poor job, but their starting positions were very, very different.

 

Shoutout to Rodgers too. The way he completely bottled it and tanked the club makes me suspicious of his role during our successful seasons under him.

Everywhere he's had success he's inherited a good squad. I wonder how long the club will feel the lasting effect of his tenure.

[ithuriel]

There are some stand out liabilities that could make a play for worst but for me Peter Taylor, blew plenty of cash on crap, took a team that was top ten and still running well enough to cruise half a season with this clown in charge and crashed it like a drunk in charge of an HGV on a wet motorway, its what all the other planks can only aspire to not being but tried anyway.

[andy peake]

Definitely McLintock. Followed by Taylor, although from memory we were amazingly top of the First Division under Taylor for a short time not long after he took over.

[davieG]

Just now, LiliansLeftPeg said:

Taylor, Ruud and then Levein. Taylor's signings and results were abysmal. He tore up a legacy. RvN had that stinking run of results and Levein was just beige and obsessed with signing mediocrity from Scotland and rated Elvis Hammond at seven figures. Bar that FA Cup performance where Mark de Vries turned into prime Adriano there was nothing to shout about under Levein. Other popular shouts were before my time. Cooper gets out of jail with me because he wasn't here long enough to take us down although he set us on the path with his signings. 

Levein was between a rock and a hard place having to reduce the value of the squad which left him pretty much down to buying from Scotland or League 2 Saving the club nearly £1 mill in transfer fees.

 

Players Out

 

Tomi Petrescu		Released	Free	17.11.2004
Nathan Blake		Leeds United	On loan	31.12.2004
Trevor Benjamin		Northampton Town	On loan	31.12.2004
Trevor Benjamin		Northampton Town	Free	19.01.2005
Martin Keown		Reading	Free	28.01.2005
Matt Elliott		Retired	Free	31.01.2005
James Scowcroft		Ipswich Town	On loan	14.02.2005
Kevin Pressman		Leeds United	Free	25.02.2005
Ian Walker		Released	Free	06.05.2005
Nikos Dabizas		Released	Free	09.05.2005
Nathan Blake		Released	Free	09.05.2005
James Scowcroft		Released	Free	09.05.2005
Lars Hirschfeld		Released	Free	17.05.2005
Lilian Nalis		Sheffield United	Free	17.05.2005
Stephen Dawson		Mansfield Town	Free	28.06.2005
Peter Canero		Released	Free	July 2005
Jordan Stewart		Watford	£125,000	01.07.2005
Matt Heath		Coventry City	Unknown	08.07.2005
Chris Makin		Reading	Unknown	21.07.2005
Keith Gillespie		Sheffield United	Unknown	05.08.2005
Chris O'Grady		Rushden & Diamonds	On loan	18.08.2005
David Connolly		Wigan Athletic	£2,000,000	31.08.2005
Tommy Wright		Blackpool	On loan	31.08.2005
Peter Gilbert		Sheffield Wednesday	On loan	24.11.2005
Conrad Logan		Boston United	On loan	24.12.2005
Tommy Wright		Barnsley	£50,000	01.01.2006

[King Claudio]

1 hour ago, suffolk fox said:

Taylor took a great team and dismantled it.  Mclintock, shockingly bad, was a young kid when he gave a halftime team talk on the pitch at Loftus Rd, Bizarre.  RVN obviously.

Taylor without a second thought. 

 

Probably a bit harsh to say he dismantled it, many of the players wanted out. The problem was a complete lack of judgement on the substandard players he wasted the money on.

 

It would be 100% on his shoulders as before days if director of football. Akinbiyi was terrible but he brought worse players - Lewis, Marshall, Benjamin. No where near championship level let alone premier league. 

 

I also thought Cooper was bad until RVN walked in. He was useless. 

[demon_dog]

Supported the club since the days of Matt Gillies who was a decent manager. Remember quite a few who weren't, the tenure under McLintock and Pleat were awful but for me the worst has to be without doubt Peter Taylor. He dismantled a very good squad and replaced them with mediocre players setting the scene for our relegation. 

RVN was also poor but was working under difficult circumstances with the lack of any real backing from the board.

[Stadt]

Glad Cooper has been mentioned multiple times.

 

Inherited a talented squad that had just won the Championship, it contained lots of players that had performed in the PL previously, oversaw our record net spend on dross like Skipp, Ayew, Reid and Edouard. 

 

We were incredibly shit in his games, the Forest home loss whilst they were chanting his name was disgusting. Somehow we kept scabbing points and 4 points at 10 men Southampton and Ipswich (two of the fellow worst sides in PL history) papered over the fissure. He ignored Fatawu and Ricardo for most of his tenure too. RVN was shit but the damage had mostly been done.

[Le Renard]

There is plenty to choose from, some of it will be a personal dislike, or just the wrong manager at the wrong time.  But for me, the criteria are the quality of the squad combined with the manager/coach.  Rodgers has to be included for his last 18 months, the potential of the squad he inherited, and to go from that to utter dross in such a short space of time takes some beating. Not to mention he's so full of himself, which is a very unlikable character trait.  I could add the usual suspects of Megson, Taylor, Levein, Ruud et al, but Rodgers' last 18-24 months are still too fresh in the memory.

Edited 4 September 2025 by Le Renard

[SouthStandUpperTier]

13 minutes ago, andy peake said:

Definitely McLintock. Followed by Taylor, although from memory we were amazingly top of the First Division under Taylor for a short time not long after he took over.

We were still in 3rd place in March, just before the Wycombe cup QF defeat (which is what really sent the Taylor era into a terminal tail-spin).

 

Edited 4 September 2025 by SouthStandUpperTier

[RumbleFox]

It’s funny because objectively he’s one of our most successful managers in many ways and he won the FA Cup but I can’t really look past Rodgers. I like him less than any other manager I can think of right now and whilst he brought us success I feel like he totally destroyed the team and the club. 

[Stuntman_Mike]

Not just from a results or performance perspective, but no one has made me dislike the club more than RVN.

 

He just wasn't likable at all. If a manager acts like you don't even exist as a fan, or even pretend to care then it's a non starter and that's before you include how useless they were.

 

If Pearson's record under us dropped off a cliff, I'd still be using up precious annual leave to follow his side, whereas RVN had me coming into the city the day we're playing the champions elect and heading home before kick off.

 

 

 

[OntarioFox]

Taylor set us back a decade, set in motion a collapse to our lowest league position ever, and exacerbated the disaster of our administration by losing us our PL revenue for the first season on Filbert Way. If Mickey Adams hadn't got us up we'd have been screwed. He came the closest to literally destroying our club, and for that he's clear on his own as the worst ever. He also signed Dennis Wise so he's a twat just for that.

I'd give an honourable mention to Rodgers despite his FA Cup win, because he did so much damage to the playing squad and managed to get a side that still had a bunch of top-six talent on paper relegated. We're still reeling from the effects of that disgusting capitulation today, and we may never get back to where we were. Despite our decent start, there's still a very real danger that a few seasons in the Championship and having our talent poached could lead us straight back to League One. That all started with Brenda, his pathetic man management, stubborn tactics and spending around £200 million on, for the most part, downgrades in every area of the squad.

 

RVN and Cooper were both terrible, the former in a record-breaking sense, but neither were really here long enough to own the failure entirely. Cooper however was integral to bringing the likes of BDCR, Skipp and Ayew to the club for no logical reason, so he's treading dangerously close to Taylor / Rodgers territory for me as he undid a lot of Enzo's good work in rebuilding us in a single transfer window, at a time when it was vital to get it right with the looming FFP / PSR threat.

Edited 4 September 2025 by OntarioFox

[fox in the sox]

2 hours ago, teblin said:

For me it’s Taylor. RVN was bad but Taylor bought lots of crap players too. RVN didn’t do that. 

Yes but Taylor had a far superior record to RVN.

[CornwallFox]

I remember from Pleat onwards. 

It's Peter Taylor. 

It's not even close.

[CornwallFox]

1 minute ago, fox in the sox said:

Yes but Taylor had a far superior record to RVN.

RVN had a crap team and no ability to change it. 

Taylor took a great team, entirely dismantled it, signing utter dross in its place. He took a transfer budget we thought we'd never see and used it to buy players that were out of place in the championship.

 

[fox in the sox]

11 minutes ago, OntarioFox said:

Taylor set us back a decade, set in motion a collapse to our lowest league position ever, and exacerbated the disaster of our administration by losing us our PL revenue for the first season on Filbert Way. If Mickey Adams hadn't got us up we'd have been screwed. He came the closest to literally destroying our club, and for that he's clear on his own as the worst ever. He also signed Dennis Wise so he's a twat just for that.

I'd give an honourable mention to Rodgers despite his FA Cup win, because he did so much damage to the playing squad and managed to get a side that still had a bunch of top-six talent on paper relegated. We're still reeling from the effects of that disgusting capitulation today, and we may never get back to where we were. Despite our decent start, there's still a very real danger that a few seasons in the Championship and having our talent poached could lead us straight back to League One. That all started with Brenda, his pathetic man management, stubborn tactics and spending around £200 million on, for the most part, downgrades in every area of the squad.

 

RVN and Cooper were both terrible, the former in a record-breaking sense, but neither were really here long enough to own the failure entirely. Cooper however was integral to bringing the likes of BDCR, Skipp and Ayew to the club for no logical reason, so he's treading dangerously close to Taylor / Rodgers territory for me as he undid a lot of Enzo's good work in rebuilding us in a single transfer window, at a time when it was vital to get it right with the looming FFP / PSR threat.

They were not here long enough because they were so poor so that can’t be used in their defence. Longer stays for Rodgers and Taylor shows that they did at least start well.

[fox in the sox]

2 minutes ago, CornwallFox said:

RVN had a crap team and no ability to change it. 

Taylor took a great team, entirely dismantled it, signing utter dross in its place. He took a transfer budget we thought we'd never see and used it to buy players that were out of place in the championship.

 

Taylor didn’t take on a ‘great’ team, they were a very good mid table Premier League side.

[OntarioFox]

8 minutes ago, fox in the sox said:

They were not here long enough because they were so poor so that can’t be used in their defence. Longer stays for Rodgers and Taylor shows that they did at least start well.

The signings matter as much as anything with that in mind - it's a bit like how it's only from now we should really be starting to form a judgement on Marti since he has players of his own through the door. Cooper is worse than RVN for me, because he did damage to the squad whereas Ruud simply wasn't backed at all. And Rodgers has done as much damage to us in that respect as Peter Taylor ever did, this window is the first time we've done anything to clear out the mess he left and it's been three miserable years now.

That's one of the reasons I look back on Holloway's mess of a stint with a bit of a silver lining - he didn't have a summer window and brought two important players for us through the door in January in Howard and Oakley. I don't think we'd have made the waves we did under Pearson without those two. Same logic with Puel who was incredibly underwhelming tactically but brought in the best players of anyone since we first made it to the Prem.

Edited 4 September 2025 by OntarioFox

[CornwallFox]

Just now, fox in the sox said:

Taylor didn’t take on a ‘great’ team, they were a very good mid table Premier League side.

Okay decent mid to top half team, but a team on the up when MON left. With a record transfer budget to use to improve it. 

And he wrecked everything in a year.

[Miquel The Work Geordie]

2 hours ago, sylofox said:

I don't solely blame Holloway. The main fault for that relegation was mandric  we changed our manager more times that season than some people change underwear.

 

We were a mess behind the scenes but Holloway had 32 league games and a squad (although limited) that was more than good enough to stay up. He was also quite well backed in the Jan window.

 

Incredible how easy he gets off the hook with some folk.