Everyone Boo the New Manager

By: Daryl | October 27th, 2007

Boo Gary Megson The voices in my head are complaining about Gary Megson. How did a manager with a piss poor record (both this season, and all time) get one of the better Premiership jobs? His record of relegating West Brom to the Championship twice, and dragging Nottingham Forest down to the unprecedented depths of League One should not have attracted a big job offer. And Bolton fans seem to agree. After Megson put pen to paper on his Trotters contract this past Thursday, Bolton fans gave him an unfriendly welcome. Megson watched Bolton’s 1-1 UEFA Cup draw against SC Braga as a spectator, but had to suffer boos from the Bolton faithful, as well as chants of “You don’t know what you’re doing.” Ouch.

But it could have been worse for Bolton fans. One of the other names linked with the job was Graeme Souness. Graeme bloody Souness, who’s been a failure at every Premier League job he’s ever had that wasn’t in Scotland. Liverpool, Blackburn, Newcastle. All ended badly, yet he was still very nearly the Bolton manager.

Just to clear up, I’m not crazy. The voices in my head came from the latest Podball 365 podcast (via my non-Apple mp3 player) as Sarah Winterburn and John Nicholson let rip on one of my favourite subjects: rubbish old fashioned style British managers who keep getting job offers. Megson is bad enough. In his brief tenure he guided Leicester to a well below par 15th in the Championship. It seems like the worse he does, the better job offers he gets. Presumably if Bolton finish bottom of the Premiership this year, then Barcelona will fax over a big contract offer.

Souness we’ve already covered, but the other chief offender is Bryan Robson. Brilliant player… useless manager. He’s currently sitting 19th in the Championship with a Sheffield United team that were only just relegated from the Premiership this season. These are jobs that could be filled by young, innovative up and coming British managers.

We’ll see what happens when Megson and Bolton take on Martin O’Neill and Aston Villa in the Premiership tomorrow, but my guess is that Bolton are in for a rough year that will only serve to underline what a brilliant job Sam Allardyce did at Bolton for all those years.