Who was our worst manager and why?

[dmayne7]

10 hours ago, Soar Fox said:

Rodgers

Pearson 

Taylor/Holloway

RvN 

Rodgers the best? 

[The Doctor]

15 minutes ago, Tielemans63 said:

Not the worst, but a special mention for Levein - he was definitely the dullest. Dull man, dull signings, super boring football. I hated that period.

any man who looks like he has a secondary job as a geography supply teacher shouldn't be a football manager tbh

[jayfox26]

15 hours ago, inckley fox said:

Best: Pearson. Took us up two divisions, kept us up and - in unprecedented fashion given our financial limitations - formed a side on a shoestring that would win the league. If we were treating Pearson I and Pearson II as separate incarnations, then you could possibly argue for O'Neill ahead of him -  and certainly Ranieri - but if you combine the two reigns, he's got to be the most important manager in our history. In fact, his achievement is, for me, the most underrated in modern football. He was the architect, if not the deliverer, of one of the most significant events the game has ever seen.

 

Most liked (by the fanbase): Ranieri. Retrospectively, Pearson perhaps, but while he was actually in charge he was in and out of favour with the fans. It was always 'fine margins', as he'd say. Ranieri was feted pretty much from game one to the rather messy ending. O'Neill was adored, but the negativity towards him in his first six months leads me to lump for Ranieri. My personal favourite? O'Neill just pips Pearson and Ranieri. I should also add that I posted on here under a different name when I was a kid and people thought I was secretly in love with Craig Levein, which is unfair because I thought he was crap and was merely trying to offer some balance here and there. I actually fled the forum for a few years on the back of that! It is true that I had a soft spot for the late Gordon Lee though. I met him when I was little, and he was a good man. And saved us from disaster back in 1991.

 

Most disliked (by fanbase) - Cooper. Ahead of Taylor and Ruud, who were quite popular for brief spells, and Megson, who was gone before the hatred could hit fever pitch. At first it was because he wasn't good enough for us, then because he wouldn't give Alves a chance, then because he wouldn't play Pereira (both justifiable decisions), then because he was to blame for our dodgy recruitment (Skipp, Bobby etc.) even though our recruitment had been awful for years, and then because we should have been in the top half of the table, and weren't, (which was an utterly insane stance, even at the time). I'm sure people are trying to realign their arguments now. Yes, he was the wrong appointment and we'd most probably have gone down if he'd stayed, but it was still disproportionate hatred. People just couldn't get beyond a real gut distaste for the guy, and the tidal wave of negativity - which gave the green light, I thought, for some of our players to express their antipathy too - meant he was doomed from the off. Personally, the one I could least abide was probably Rodgers, but it's an irrational dislike because I think, given time, it's inevitable that he'll be seen as one of our more successful bosses. I also had a serious issue with Taylor. I wrote him a letter telling him how crap Junior Lewis was and, to his credit, he replied. But he wrote, quite brusquely, that anyone who understood the game would see what Lewis had to offer, and he weirdly double-underlined the word 'manager' where it said, beneath his signature, 'Leicester City Manager'. I still have that letter in my parents' house somewhere.

 

Worst - Holloway for me. Taylor at least achieved a 13th place top flight finish. There are only 13 or 14 of our managers who have kept us up for at least a season in the top flight, so even though PT was the manager who perhaps did the most damage to the club in my lifetime, his achievements put him a notch or two above Hamilton, Allen, Megson, Holloway, Ruud. Ollie inherited a side in 17th which, in spite of the chaos, should never have gone down, and his complacency (e.g. saying 'we probably already have enough points to stay up') was key to our worst ever finish. Hamilton, Pleat and Sousa, for instance, were nowhere near that awful or that disastrous. 

Most disliked has got to be Rodgers. Despite winning us our first fa cup, I'd defy any true leicester fan to tell me how they don't dislike Rodgers given the way he acted and the damage he did. 

 

The disrespect he showed our club and our fans was a different level to anything ever seen before. 

[leicsmac]

20 hours ago, Wolfox said:

Just to clear this thread up a little for everyone as somehow we’ve managed 7 pages of discussion…. 
 

it’s Peter f@ck#n Taylor…

Of course it is. 

 

Did any other manager nearly put the club out of existence? No? That's pretty much it, then. 

[The Doctor]

19 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Of course it is. 

 

Did any other manager nearly put the club out of existence? No? That's pretty much it, then. 

I mean, you can make the case that that's Dave Bassett as much as anything. Losing premier league money when moving into the new stadium was a massive blow, and Taylor massively contributed to that with his abysmal transfer policy, but he left with 27 games of the season left and plenty of time to stay up.

[SK3Blue]

Martin Allen was unbelievably shite, just basically a non league tier 6 manager who found himself in the professional game. 
 

Worst of the lot for me, Tater Peeler, dismantled O’Neill’s side and got the wrong side of Steve Walsh. Cockney pillock. 

[murphy]

10 hours ago, The Horse's Mouth said:

He didn’t destroy what enzo had built it was pretty much proven that season that team had a soft underbelly because the vast majority of them got relegated before anyway. We also lost our best player in that time. 35 million wasn’t enough to invest into the team and survive.He objectively did though, he didn’t leave us in a situation like Martin left saints in, we were outside the relegation zone. Those “better” players that were isolated that came back in played a crucial part in us breaking records when it came to not winning and not scoring, so in hindsight he was probably right in that regard.

 

Honestly I think you could actually make a better argument for Sven being worse than cooper, who systematically ripped up everything Nige at built with that team and bringing in old ***** on big money which severely ****ed us with ffp for the years going forward. The only reason we don’t really look at it like that is because Nige actually fixed the club afterwards

I have to take issue with this oft-repeated line defending Cooper.  We were outside the relegation zone, not because of anything Cooper did, but because Crystal Palace and Wolves were in false positions and had gotten off to disastrous starts.  They went on to recover to 53 points (12th) and 42 points (16th) respectively.  We were nowhere near that.  Had we continued at Cooper's 0.8pts per game-ish we might have scraped 30 points or so.

 

I don't think that Cooper unseats Taylor as the anti-goat but he deserves to be in the conversation.  He snuffed out any glimmer of a chance we might have had before a ball was kicked blowing the budget on his fetish for experienced journeyman plodders.

 

 

 

 

Edited 6 September 2025 by murphy

[surrifox]

1 hour ago, The Doctor said:

any man who looks like he has a secondary job as a geography supply teacher shouldn't be a football manager tbh

A description that fits Potter as well 😂

[The Doctor]

13 minutes ago, surrifox said:

A description that fits Potter as well 😂

nah. he looks like a maths teacher

[The Horse's Mouth]

24 minutes ago, murphy said:

I have to take issue with this oft-repeated line defending Cooper.  We were outside the relegation zone, not because of anything Cooper did, but because Crystal Palace and Wolves were in false positions and had gotten off to disastrous starts.  They went on to recover to 53 points (12th) and 42 points (16th) respectively.  We were nowhere near that.  Had we continued at Cooper's 0.8pts per game-ish we might have scraped 30 points or so.

 

I don't think that Cooper unseats Taylor as the anti-goat but he deserves to be in the conversation.  He snuffed out any glimmer of a chance we might have had before a ball was kicked blowing the budget on his fetish for experienced journeyman plodders.

 

 

 

 

There’s no such thing as a “false position” the table is the table and he left us in a position above the relegation zone. With your example in wolves they changed their manager and got better, whereas we did the opposite. Continuing with the same PPG and then pointing at two teams that drastically improved their PPG is a weak argument.

Im no fan of cooper either, but he inherited a mess where we were hamstrung by financial mismanagement and lost our best player, he wasn’t here long enough to make a sufficient impact either way so I don’t really consider him in the chat tbh 

 

[ts_1010]

Peter Taylor

Ian Holloway

Martin Allen

 

And an hour able mention for Gary Parker.

[murphy]

1 hour ago, The Horse's Mouth said:

There’s no such thing as a “false position” the table is the table and he left us in a position above the relegation zone.

Of course there is.  Man City currently lie 13th.  They may deserve to be there but that is not the same thing as saying that they are in a false position.  They are in a false position because, despite the fact that they might not be the force that they were, they have enough quality that it is extremely unlikely that they will stay there over the course of a season and if you don't believe that I will happily have a cheeky tenner with you.

 

1 hour ago, The Horse's Mouth said:

With your example in wolves they changed their manager and got better, whereas we did the opposite. Continuing with the same PPG and then pointing at two teams that drastically improved their PPG is a weak argument.

 

Aren't you contradicting yourself here?  Saying that Wolves improved their ppg only by changing their manager in one breath then saying that it is a 'weak argument' that we could expect the same ppg by keeping Cooper.  Personally, I think that by keeping Cooper our ppg would have declined as the effect of weekly beatings was accumulative and we looked a beaten team before we kicked off.

 

The that idea that our ppg would not improve goes back to the original idea of clubs (Wolves and Palace) being in false positions, which you reject, but I say was born out by the final standings, but we shall agree to differ here.  We really were that bad.  They weren't as they went on to prove.

 

Edited 6 September 2025 by murphy

[Joe90]

21 hours ago, whoareyaaa said:

Cooper destroyed what we built under Enzo had a whole pre season and spent about 35m and we looked awful in most games on the other hand RVN had no pre season or budget and came into a broken dressing room as Cooper isolated most of the better players and had us playing some awful stuff dunno how you can claim Cooper left us in a good position moronic 

Are you implying RVN would have done better if the roles were reversed? Not scoring in 9 home games trumps any negative that cooper did, was we even in the bottom 3 before cooper got sacked? Im not saying he was a good manger and yea he probably would have took us down as well, but Jesus RVN was anther level of shit! 

[Mike the Metal Ed]

TIL that the manager and the manager alone is the only person who can dictate the result of a football match and whether the club at the time is well run or an utter shitshow coming off a number of consecutive bad decisions at boardroom level is completely irrelevant.

[leicsmac]

3 hours ago, The Doctor said:

I mean, you can make the case that that's Dave Bassett as much as anything. Losing premier league money when moving into the new stadium was a massive blow, and Taylor massively contributed to that with his abysmal transfer policy, but he left with 27 games of the season left and plenty of time to stay up.

There's something in that too tbf. 

[Trav Le Bleu]

4 hours ago, The Doctor said:

any man who looks like he has a secondary job as a geography supply teacher shouldn't be a football manager tbh

Frank Burrows 

[The Doctor]

1 minute ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Frank Burrows 

groundskeeper for a stately home

[Trav Le Bleu]

There are actually 6 City managers with a 0% win ratio. None of them were in charge for many games.

 

Of managers who managed more than 20 games, McLintock has the worst record at 12.5.

[whoareyaaa]

1 hour ago, Joe90 said:

Are you implying RVN would have done better if the roles were reversed? Not scoring in 9 home games trumps any negative that cooper did, was we even in the bottom 3 before cooper got sacked? Im not saying he was a good manger and yea he probably would have took us down as well, but Jesus RVN was anther level of shit! 

Cooper would have took us down we was getting battered and creating nothing which continued under RVN and other teams where just finding form, yea RVN managed us while the team couldn’t score in 9 home games hardly all on him, players should have been better. Agree he was shit but hardly on him because of the mess Cooper put us in 

[King Claudio]

4 hours ago, leicsmac said:

Of course it is. 

 

Did any other manager nearly put the club out of existence? No? That's pretty much it, then. 

Fair 

[Joe90]

5 minutes ago, whoareyaaa said:

Cooper would have took us down we was getting battered and creating nothing which continued under RVN and other teams where just finding form, yea RVN managed us while the team couldn’t score in 9 home games hardly all on him, players should have been better. Agree he was shit but hardly on him because of the mess Cooper put us in 

👍 Here is an interesting one, i think we are far more likely to see cooper in the premier league then RVN ever again 

[whoareyaaa]

1 minute ago, Joe90 said:

👍 Here is an interesting one, i think we are far more likely to see cooper in the premier league then RVN ever again 

I doubt it tbh neither will 

Edited 6 September 2025 by whoareyaaa

[orangecity23]

Cooper's games were 90% hiding in our own half getting battered to bits, with an occasional late flury of offense to pull back the odd consolation goal, with the end result being another toothless loss. By the end, the consolation goals were gone as well, and it was just getting slapped to bits by the worst Man Utd team in leaving memory twice in a week, managed by the RVN, the manager that so many of the Cooper defenders would insist he was vastly superior to. If he wanted to keep his job and not lose it to Ruud, maybe he shouldn't have made him look so good at the time by putting on two such appallingly bad performances.

 

So much of his defence seems to hinge about being "above the bottom 3", which was entiely carried on the back of the 4 points taken against Ipswich and Southampton, 2 of the worst teams in Prem history - and two games which we came a whisker away from getting zero points from - he was 2 goals ddown to Brussel Martin until Fatawu bailed him out (off the bench, naturally - can't be starting exciting wingers when there are Ayew's and Bobby Reid's to accomadate). When his fixtures were stacked up against the equivalent ones for Van Nistelrooy, they were almost identical. Both of them got most of their points from Ipswich, Southampton and Tottenham, with a token win (bournemouth, West Ham) for each of them, with almost everyone else beating them pretty easily. Him and Ruud are two sides of the same coin, both deserve to be on the list of our worst managers in recent memory, the only difference is Cooper was put out of his misery much earlier, while Ruud was allowed to fester longer.  

 

He was tactically abysmal, the team was disorganised, his signings were some of the worst we've ever made (Skipp is the next 20 million + man to leave on a Bosman once the current batch (soumare/Daka) goes next summer, a nice PSR deadweight to hold us down for another 3 years). He couldn't even conjure up a tiny sliver of hope in pre-season because he was getting his arse handed to him by Papy Mendy. He's an absolute fraud of a manager, gifted a premier league survivial with Forest by default because Rodgers was deliberately tanking us, and sacked by them because they didn't believe he could out perform Luton Town even after spending the defence budget of a medium sized European country on transfers.

 

 

[Guest Bilo]

We've had some horrors, haven't we?

 

Peter Taylor for single-handedly dismantling the O'Neil era within 12 months. 

Frank McLintock for doing the same to the Bloomfield side.

Martin Allen for spending like a pissed sailor on shore leave in a Bangkok brothel and sowing the seeds for our first ever relegation to the third tier.

Gary Megson for being so bad that our own fans ended up singing Megson For Bolton in a matter of weeks.

Ian Holloway for rubber stamping our aforementioned relegation to League One while still being a media whore.

Steve Cooper for turning a potentially difficult situation into a completely impossible one for seasons to come by spending millions on utter shite.

 

I've omitted Brendan Rodgers because we were genuinely sublime for his first two years, to the point that the worst criticism you could possibly lay at his door between 2019 and 2021 was that we probably should have qualified for the Champions League and/or gone deeper into the Europa League. Probably the best football Leicester City have ever played at times.

 

I've also omitted Ruud van Nistelrooy because I do wonder how he'd have done if he'd had a transfer budget and a better squad of players. It's a real sliding doors scenario because he did a decent job at PSV and we certainly started with a bit more identity when he first arrived. No Hermansen injury means no Ward antics at SJP or at home to Wolves. I also wonder how he'd have used Fatawu had he been fit. So he wasn't a good manager, but he was also dealt an extremely poor hand.

[Clever Fox]

Worst Manager has to be Taylor for the amount of money he spent and the rubbish he signed. Totally egotistical like Rogers.

 

The one I despise the most is Rogers for the way he took over a good team and went on to a great Cup win . He's largely responsible for the mess we are in now having  spent 200 plus million on mostly poor signings.

He also cost us Champions league by not signing a big type CF. Just a couple of Goals was all we needed that season to finish 4th.

After his poor signings, He then took no responsibility for it and blamed the Club. Then threw in the Towel and jumped ship.

 

This is why the structure within the Club has to be right regardless. As Managers come and go.