Rate the Riverside managers

Adi_Dem

Adi_Dem

Well-known member
Inspired by the Warnock thread and unashamedly lifted from the midfielders thread I thought this might be an interesting one. So here are the Riverside managers in chronological order (ignore the caretakers I guess):

Robson
Venables
McClaren
Southgate
Cooper
Strachan
Agnew (1)
Mowbray
Venus
Karanka
Agnew (2)
Monk
Liddle
Pulis
Woodgate
Warnock
Wilder

And my pick from best to worst (accepting it’s really early days for Wilder):

1. McClaren
2. Karanka
3. Wilder
4. Venables
5. Robson
6. Mowbray
7. Southgate
8. Warnock
9. Woodgate
10. Pulis
11. Strachan
12. Monk

Pick a top 5 or 10 or whatever.
 
Adi_Dem said:
Inspired by the Warnock thread and unashamedly lifted from the midfielders thread I thought this might be an interesting one. So here are the Riverside managers in chronological order (ignore the caretakers I guess):

Robson
Venables
McClaren
Southgate
Cooper
Strachan
Agnew (1)
Mowbray
Venus
Karanka
Agnew (2)
Monk
Liddle
Pulis
Woodgate
Warnock
Wilder

And my pick from best to worst (accepting it’s really early days for Wilder):

1. McClaren
2. Karanka
3. Wilder
4. Venables
5. Robson
6. Mowbray
7. Southgate
8. Warnock
9. Woodgate
10. Pulis
11. Strachan
12. Monk

Pick a top 5 or 10 or whatever.
Click to expand...
McClaren
Robson
Karanka
Wilder
Warnock
Venables
Southgate
Pulis
Mowbray
Strachan
Woodgate
Monk
 
Adi_Dem said:
Inspired by the Warnock thread and unashamedly lifted from the midfielders thread I thought this might be an interesting one. So here are the Riverside managers in chronological order (ignore the caretakers I guess):

Robson
Venables
McClaren
Southgate
Cooper
Strachan
Agnew (1)
Mowbray
Venus
Karanka
Agnew (2)
Monk
Liddle
Pulis
Woodgate
Warnock
Wilder

And my pick from best to worst (accepting it’s really early days for Wilder):

1. McClaren
2. Karanka
3. Wilder
4. Venables
5. Robson
6. Mowbray
7. Southgate
8. Warnock
9. Woodgate
10. Pulis
11. Strachan
12. Monk

Pick a top 5 or 10 or whatever.
Click to expand...
Strachan was by far the worst, he actually made me not like football. Didn't watch any of it, other than England tournaments for a good few years. Had we kept him longer we would have ended up in league 1, and maybe got even worse.

In his two years he turned us from a relegated side which should have been looking to go up, to 11th, and the 23rd in October when he got the boot. How Mowbray turned that round was incredible.

Wilder - I can't really see anything what he's done wrong, if he carries this on, we're in very good hands
Mowbray - didn't watch much of his time, but the results he got with that squad were great, and one hell of a recovery from the ginger clown
Robson (his flaw was he only had 3-5 players, but one of them was the best we've ever had, his best attribute was his name was Bryan Robson, could attract good players)
Karanka (did a good job, not sure what happened when we went up, don't think he was supported financially, as well as we needed to be then)
Venables (good rescue job, but think Robbo would have kept us up on his own)
Southgate (better than Mclaren imo, had less money to spend and a recovery job to do) Shouldn't have been sacked when 4th, not for the clown Strachan who managed to drop us to 11th and then nearly take us down the nest year.
Warnock/ Pulis - all had hard jobs, in hard circumstances, and not a great deal of money to spend
McClaren (good job, but spent a hell of a lot of money, and on old players with no return, and the knock on effect of that probably lasted a decade) - I know I'll get shot for putting him behind warnock and pulis, but he had an easier job, and left us in a worse situation than when he took over, which you can't say about many, other than the clowns below. I know he got the cup, and Europe etc, but they came at extreme cost.
Woodgate, had a tough job to do, to be fair, and had no money to spend
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Monk - didn't actually buy bad players, but boy he turned them crap, by not using them the right way
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Strachan - I hate this clown so much
 
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I'll leave Wilder out because I think it's too soon.

1. McClaren
2. Karanka
3. Robson
4. Venables
5. Mowbray
6. Southgate
7. Pulis
8. Warnock
9. Woodgate
10. Monk
11. Strachan
 
Wilder
McLaren
Venables
Mowbray
Robson
Pulis
Warnock
Monk
Woodgate
Strachan

And last by some distance, Southgate. Baffles me how he is the England boss
 
1. McLaren
2. Robson
3. Karanka
4. Wilder (so far)
5. Venables
6. Mowbray
7. Southgate
8. Warnock
9. Pulis
10. Woodgate
11. Monk
12. Strachan
 
All of them have big flaws so I struggle to rank them, the obvious three though…

Smac spent money on players with no resale value and generally played dour football but won us our first cup, had great success in Europe and we had the best squad we’ve ever had only time weve ever had 3 great strikers on our books in JFH, Viduka and Yak (and Maccarone!).

Robson gave me the best times as a boro fan, best ever players and an absolute roller coaster of a few seasons leaving ayresome promotions and a relegation, massively run out of steam by the end and hung around far too long.

Karanka built a good team but the best one was the one which didn’t go up, had a massive melt down and the following season in the prem was an utter waste of time

Pretty much all the rest have been failures, the football under pulis and Warnock was dire, monk frittered away our money. Mowbray had nothing to spend and the football was generally poor, always gets a good write up on here though from his playing days. Strachans Scotland experiment was **** poor and southgate gradually weakened the team over 3 years dismantling what was an established premier league team filling it with no marks. Woodgate was just a plank who somehow ended up in the job, not going to comment on the short termers other than saying sacking Karanka and relying on Agnew to keep us up is the second worst mistake gibbo has made (after giving Southgate the managers job when our stock was at its highest ever).

Wilder looks the best we’ve had for a hell of a long time, we are actually playing modern football like what I’ve been watching in the premier league for the last 10 years
 
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McClaren gets to the top by default because he actually won something, had our best finish and we saw some of of our greatest moments but the squad he had at his disposal was away ahead of anyone else's on this list.

Karanka always seemed to me like we had been lucky and got someone that would become a Mourinho, Guardiola calibre manager. He gave us an identity and improved is massively. I think his failing was that he wasn't adaptable. When his approach wasn't working he didn't know what to do.

Robson was a leader and could inspire a team. It was magical times but he wasn't a thinker/tactician so it was never going to last.

Wilder gives me Karanka vibes but he is adaptable. You can see that in how many games we have gone from behind. Time will tell how he copes when we go on a bad run. It will happen, whether that is this season or next. I get the impression that he will know what to do to turn it around. If we go up this season I'd like us to do what we didn't do with Karanka and that is stick with him and give him another chance in the championship. Hopefully he is someone that does well with us and goes on to bigger and better things. McClaren is the only one on this list who has gone to a "better job". It's a sign they've done very well with us so it would be nice that his achievements with us get him a big job.

The rest are a mixture of done a job, underachieved and were downright awful.

Would be interesting to see how they'd all do with the same squad/budget.
 
The dates would be interesting. Robson-McClaren seems to be a stable period, then the turnover speeds up as you get to present day.
 
Adi_Dem said:
Inspired by the Warnock thread and unashamedly lifted from the midfielders thread I thought this might be an interesting one. So here are the Riverside managers in chronological order (ignore the caretakers I guess):

Robson
Venables
McClaren
Southgate
Cooper
Strachan
Agnew (1)
Mowbray
Venus
Karanka
Agnew (2)
Monk
Liddle
Pulis
Woodgate
Warnock
Wilder

And my pick from best to worst (accepting it’s really early days for Wilder):

1. McClaren
2. Karanka
3. Wilder
4. Venables
5. Robson
6. Mowbray
7. Southgate
8. Warnock
9. Woodgate
10. Pulis
11. Strachan
12. Monk

Pick a top 5 or 10 or whatever.
Click to expand...

Can't really argue with any of that. Swap Pulis for Woodgate maybe, but really hard to compare the two. Woodgate well out of his depth, almost took us down and a bit deluded as to his own capabilities. But helped clear the decks and brought in Bola and Dijksteel for nowt.

Pulis partly sorted out Monks mess but then undid anything good he'd done by blowing the rest of finances on rubbish (McNair aside, who he didn't play) and forcing out the best centre forward we've had in a decade.
 
Adi_Dem said:
Inspired by the Warnock thread and unashamedly lifted from the midfielders thread I thought this might be an interesting one. So here are the Riverside managers in chronological order (ignore the caretakers I guess):

Robson
Venables
McClaren
Southgate
Cooper
Strachan
Agnew (1)
Mowbray
Venus
Karanka
Agnew (2)
Monk
Liddle
Pulis
Woodgate
Warnock
Wilder

And my pick from best to worst (accepting it’s really early days for Wilder):

1. McClaren
2. Karanka
3. Wilder
4. Venables
5. Robson
6. Mowbray
7. Southgate
8. Warnock
9. Woodgate
10. Pulis
11. Strachan
12. Monk

Pick a top 5 or 10 or whatever.
Click to expand...

Woodgate as clearly the worst, we would be playing League One football if he’d had stayed.
 
1. McClaren - won a trophy, got us to a Euro final, 2 FA cup semis. It was sometimes hard to warm to him as a person, but we played some cracking football and had our most successful period in our history. He had massive backing but you have to buy the right players and make it work and he did.

2. Robson - transformed the club, I think he deserves a statue for what he did for us and the passion he still retains. No Robson, no Juninho, Rava, europe, League cup, or any of the brilliant moments we've had in the last 30ish years

3. Karanka - Brilliant tactician in the champo, but struggled with the pressure and tried to sh!thouse for a whole 39 games

4. Venables - steadied a difficult situation, but it's hard to put him any higher from just 8 league wins

5. Wilder - rising up the rankings fast, and if he were to get us promoted having given every other team a head start he would rise to third immediately for me

6. Southgate - thrown in at the deep end learning on the job, and having the playing budget cut under him, he was always on a hiding to nothing. The relegation season was difficult, but he was steady midtable the two seasons before.

7. Mowbray - Had a tough repair job to do and had a history of playing attractive football, often on a shoestring, but it never materialised for us. He had about 3 months where we started to look like a team, other than that his time was pretty disappointing in results and performances

8. Pulis - boring football, but almost bored us back up. He did sort out our defence, and made us competitive in every game, but was always going to fall a bit short.

9. Warnock - another stoneage football proponent. won four of first 8 to keep us up and for the first 3 months looked like he could long ball us to a play off spot, but the last 12 months were absolutely torturous

10. Woodgate - lost

11. Strachan - arrogant, cold, prickly, cliched, confrontational, and utterly bereft of ability to set up a defence. No club side has dared appoint him in the 12 years since he left us. He was that bad

12. Monk - allegations about his behaviour with transfers not withstanding, he was an absolutely shocking manager. Couldn't sort our defence out, thought that Britt was the answer to fire us back to the prem, didnt recognise that Bamford was a quality striker. He didn't sign the cheques, but these were his players and they set us back 6 years. We're still not free from the chains of that disaster as they won't be entirely off our FFP calcs for another couple of years.
 
Venables
Mclaren
Karanka
Mowbray
Southgate
Robson


Then the rest.

Wilder may turn out to be the best of the lot.
 
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