John Carver and the 5 worst managers in Premier League History

After Newcastle slumped to an eighth consecutive defeat at the weekend, James Dutton looks back at the worst managers in Premier League history…

As Newcastle lurched from a long malaise to a full blown crisis with their 3-0 defeat at Leicester on Saturday, conversations started to turn towards the capabilities of manager John Carver. The loss was the club’s eighth in a row, and the 12th they’ve suffered in 17 games under the Geordie, who replaced Alan Pardew in January. So bleak is the situation that having not picked up a point since February 28, Newcastle have been sucked into a relegation scrap and their manager’s record is being likened to that of some of the very worst managers the Premier League has seen since 1992. Join TFN as we trawl through the archives and relive the sad tales of some of the league’s least well remembered characters… 

Ricky Sbragia (Sunderland)

P 26 W 6 D 7 L 13

Poor old Ricky Sbragia could barely muster a smile during his time on Wearside. His furrowed brow was a weekly occurrence on Match of the Day, be it after a 4-1 win over Hull or a 3-0 defeat to Everton, that sorrowful stare into the reporter’s eye looked the same. It had all started so well for ol’ Ricky, beginning with a narrow 1-0 defeat at Old Trafford before smashing four goals past both West Brom and Hull in the lead up to Christmas. Coming after Roy Keane’s departure, hastened by a miserable 4-1 home loss to Gary Megson’s Bolton, he was the good cop the Black Cats dressing room needed.

But it wasn’t to last long as Sbragia managed to win only three more games after Christmas, ending the season by losing eight of the last 10. Finishing 16th with 36 points the Mackems avoided relegation by virtue of being marginally better than Alan Shearer’s Newcastle and Phil Brown’s Hull, who won only once from the start of December.

Sbragia can now be found moulding the finest young Scottish talent at U19 level, or telling the 6ft 1inch Real Madrid player Jack Harper that he hadn’t been selected because he wanted “more height”, rather than someone who would “float all over the place.”  Continue reading

Premier League Gameweek 31: 5 things that (may or may not have) happened

Joe Devine returns with his weekly look at things that may or may not have happened in the Premier League…

John Carver Wins ‘Biggest Fan’ Competition

It’s been a great week for Newcastle manager John Carver. Not only did he get to wake up as Newcastle manager every day, but on Sunday, he won a competition held by the club to discover the world’s biggest Toon fan. First prize was lunch with Mike Ashley, which Carver was reportedly thrilled about, as he’d been trying to get a meeting with Ashley since taking the job. This is the second competition John Carver has won this year, the first being the one he entered to become Newcastle manager. 

Tim Sherwood Maintains 100% Record Against Man United

After Saturday’s game at Old Trafford, Tim Sherwood told reporters that he was pleased to have maintained his 100% record against Manchester United, despite having lost the game. When puzzled members of the press quizzed the Aston Villa manager, Sherwood explained that the record he referred to related to a “battle of the managers” – “We might have lost on the pitch, and that’s fine, but off the pitch, between me and Louis, I won that battle. You see? I know we lost the game but in our mind battle I actually won. My tactics were correct, it’s just that it didn’t work out, BUT I am the cleverer manager, is what I’m saying. I won. Just not where you can see, but I did win. 100%. They’ll forget that though, won’t they, when the people all say I’m useless, that I’ve got a 100% record against Manchester United, they’ll forget that. My ratios are sky high. Higher than the sky. I’m 100%.” Continue reading

Patrick Kluivert at Newcastle: a lesson in nostalgia

TFN debutant and Newcastle fan Andy Booth remembers Patrick Kluivert’s season on Tyneside…

Patrick Kluivert’s arrival on Tyneside in July 2004 was met with cautious optimism from the Newcastle United supporters. Manager Bobby Robson had compared the capture to that of the revered Alan Shearer in 1996, such was the reputation of the Dutch striker.

He had left Barcelona earlier that summer as the fourth top La Liga goalscorer in the club’s history and was top of the chart for the Netherlands with 40 goals in 79 internationals. Yet he had been released on a free transfer after failing to fit into Frank Rijkaard’s side for the second half of the previous season and had not played a single minute in Euro 2004, in which the Oranje had reached the Semi-Finals. Having just turned 28, he was, theoretically, still in his prime and after a disappointing 5th-place finish the year before, Kluivert was recruited to return Champions League football to St James’ Park.

However it certainly did not work out like that. His one season on Tyneside ended in a 14th place finish and there were few tears shed when he returned to Spain the following summer. But should we be surprised that the move did not work out as the club had hoped (rather than expected)? Even at the time the signing always felt slightly nostalgic. A former star, past his peak, plying his trade in a place he’d rather not be and probably wishing it was 1995. So what went wrong?

Well from a purely tactical sense you have to question whether his style of play fitted with the dynamics of the squad. At Ajax and Barcelona he had excelled playing as a classic number 9. Good with his feet, exceptional in the air, always eager to shoot, he was your stereotypical penalty box striker; a role already filled by the talismanic local hero Shearer. Even at 34 Shearer expected to start every game, and failure to fulfil these demands risked a backlash from the Toon Army, as Ruud Gullit had found out five years earlier. Continue reading

Liverpool’s Dunkin Donuts and six other weird football sponsors

article-2540599-1AB645B800000578-19_634x433

TFN’s Piers Barber takes a look at the wacky world of football sponsorships…

Thanks to Liverpool’s multi-million pound deal with Dunkin’ Donuts, staff at Anfield can now look forward to regularly indulging in the company’s finest baked goods, as well as the brand’s rather pitiful attempts at brewing coffee and tea.

Yet Liverpool is far from the first side to involve themselves in a wonderfully weird and out of context sponsorship deal. Here are some of the typical ways that the strange world of global capitalism has involved itself in the Beautiful Game…  Continue reading

Editor’s Column: Fabio Borini, Joe Hart and Arsenal v Liverpool

57019.3

The latest Editor’s Column from James Dutton tackles the implications of two late goals in the Premier League and next weekend’s top-of-the-table clash…

Is there a top-flight derby in England with lower quality and technical ability than Sunderland v Newcastle?

A central defensive pairing of Mike Williamson and Paul Dummett, a midfield battle between Cheick Tiote and Lee Cattermole and the continued pointlessness of Adam Johnson.

Before Fabio Borini’s stunning late winner for the hosts, it was a derby meandering toward nothingness. Suddenly the Black Cats are reinvigorated, and Newcastle fans are staring at another year wondering what on earth is going on.

Will it be the turning point of Sunderland’s season? Victory against your local rivals can create a cathartic, transformative effect around a club, and given their meek surrender at Swansea last week it no doubt removes some of the gloom that has gripped the Mackems.

But this one result against an alarmingly average Newcastle side doesn’t show that they have the necessary tools to avoid relegation. It doesn’t change the fact that Sunderland have, Crystal Palace aside, the weakest squad in the league. Continue reading

Caçapa – Newcastle’s Catastrophic Brazilian Import

0,,16138956-EX,00

Ian Cusack profiles Newcastle’s second and most recent Brazilian import, the catastrophic Caçapa…

While it is notoriously difficult to define or even divine the ultimate historical importance of on-going situations, the summer of 2007 must be regarded as pivotal in the chronology of Newcastle United. Following the resignation of Glenn Roeder towards the end of the previous campaign, outgoing chairman Freddy Shepherd’s last significant act before selling the club to Mike Ashley, wherein lies a whole different narrative that we simply don’t have time to touch on here, was to appoint Sam Allardyce as manager. If the arrival of the infamous long-ball merchant and his litany of snake oil selling, blue-toothed, laptop-wielding, technocratic, camp following boffins was met with a severely underwhelming welcome, several of his signings were afforded a fair hearing, on account of the fact nobody had never heard of them before.

Alongside the perennially loathsome Joey Barton, back in the days when he cultivated an image of being the Gallagher Brothers’ Scouse cousin rather than an amalgam of Malcolm Muggeridge and Rosa Parkes, who promptly broke his foot in a pre-season game at Carlisle and disappeared until Christmas, Allardyce brought in the porcine, indolent Mark Viduka on a free from Burragh, the woeful, pedestrian Alan Smith, who’d never be a top flight player again following his broken leg at Old Trafford, the glacially-paced Geremi from Chelsea as well as unknown quantities David Rozenhal, a scrawny, incompetent centre back from Paris St. Germain who disappeared to Lazio on New Year’s Day, Jose Enrique, who turned into a superb left back after a wobbly first season and Caçapa, about who this piece is dedicated.

Having begun his career with 5 seasons at Atletico Mineiro, Caçapa left Brazil to spend 6 years with Lyon, between 2001 and 2007, where he was captain of the title winning side for 5 successive campaigns. Somewhat surprisingly, having been granted French citizenship in 2006, he opted to leave at the end of his contract the following summer; consequently, Newcastle United found themselves in receipt of a 31 year old Brazilian international for no transfer outlay. What could go wrong? At first, nothing; he made his debut as a 90th minute substitute in a 0-0 with Villa, becoming our 1,000th player used in the Premier League in the process and his full debut on September 1st as we beat Wigan 1-0. Until this point, all well and good; Newcastle were unbeaten, if a bit dull to watch and Caçapa seemed a steady, unspectacular stopper, with a large physical presence. Continue reading