manc_vale

Doh! Sorry still wearing up from Christmas! It did all go wrong for Stoke whilst he was there. Anyone remember some of his excellent signings like Kevin Wimmer?

not awful, but average. Had reasonable success with Wales, some success at club level, but his last stint at Bradford showed he isn't up to much.

Fair enough he has had more success than most of the others on the list, although that success was backed by cash... Other than a promotion with Middlesbrough, where he also took the expensively assembled squad down, his other appointments have been suitably rank.

Possibly harsh... Shipped in to rescue his hometown club... But to be fair did nothing to turn the club around in 8 games in charge and was the man that took Newcastle down... Never touched management since...

Excellent additions, disastrous spells from both.

Without being a complete shambles the Blues have been a money pit and a mess for years. Another sjoke like club who think a big name manager will solve all problems. Here's an idea for a very short thread - Successful top level player who becomes successful manager - Pep Guardiola, Ancelotti, Zidane (maybe) Add him to the pile of successful players who failed at management Steve Bruce (whilst we has had some success, never rated him) Bryan Robson Wayne Rooney Steven Gerrard Frank Lampard

Look who is winning the most liked posts! There was a bit of a backlog of emails so you might have had a dump of emails overnight/this morning... Sorry, normal service should be resumed (or not if you switch them off).

Changed a couple of things on the server - which should improve performance. One thing you may notice is that images kind of start blurred then sharpen, that's a visible performance fix. I'm hopeful that the changes will mean that the server is less loaded, and also the server should be better able to handle load when big events occur (and as we know Christmas time is one of those times when big football events are likely to occur) I've also upgraded a few things cos its a good thing to do Unfortunately the changes have meant that the forum posts on the front page has broken. Not sure why, hopefully @robf can resolve it before I get around to finding out what's going on.

Another high profile player who isn't really cutting the mustard as manager. I may be blinkered on this, but it does seem to happen time and time again that chairman think that good players make good managers. And time and time again that hypothesis fails. OK, you could argue he did a good job at Rangers, but actually Rangers were doing pretty well in the hardly competitive league before he added the cherry on the top.