Whatever Happened To?

Leon Trotsky?

Not really. Was reading an article in The Athletic about Craig Johnston earlier and he mentioned playing at Liverpool when Daliglish was Player Manager.

IIRC it was unusual for a club to have a Player Manager, but certainly there are no high profile ones I can think of now. I remember when Platt was Player Manager in his first season, and got irritated at how we were playing against Palace away only to sub himself on and show the rest of the team how it should be done (he was a very good player if a very mediocre manager).

I'd guess that the demands of management today make it a very difficult task; I'm sure there may still be some Player Managers in lower leagues, but they seem to have died a death in the higher leagues.

Wasn't Troy Deeney player manager at Forest Green recently, Gullit or Vialli the last in the top flight?

Ryan Giggs?

Not having that. Platt was a shit manager, mediocre is a word he is not worthy of.

I've heard a number of his players do interviews and podcasts in recent years, and to a man they've said that while many in the squad didn't really understand or embrace his methods, within a few years every club was doing the same things he had been.

Highest finish 11th, while his immediate successor took us to a playoff semi final. But ok.

He was nowhere near as bad as he is portrayed, especially given what was to come over the next 15-20 years.

I'm not entirely sure where his terrible rep came from - the three Italians and maybe daring to leave Forest, rather than be sacked in the next couple of years, or just failing to make an instant return to the top flight as we had the previous two times (people forget the sh!tstorm he came into, just after Wray had sold his stake)?
Chris Bart-Williams (RIP) was adamant Forest would have won promotion the following season, if Platt had not left for England U21, as he could see how things were going. I trust his insight more than the Forest terrace collective.

People didn't like him when he was manager - I remember being at Oxford in the cup in his first (?) season and there was plenty of griping about him even then. You have to remember that our two previous relegations that decade had been reversed relatively straightforwardly (obviously Clark started slowly), so the expectation at the start was that would happen again and the view was that he'd wasted that opportunity by squandering a huge amount of our parachute payments on three players (clearly all signings driven by him) who weren't much use.

Add in that there was a lot of speculation in the summer that Doughty would bring in O'Neill or another manager with a serious track record and then ended up with a guy who'd failed pretty comprehensively in his previous job.

It might be painful fun to rank all our managers from Platt to Hughton.

Changed my mind. It's not fun.

I think because of a (largely deluded) assumption that we would be there or there abouts to go straight back up following relegation as we had the previous two occasions.

Harty then coming along and getting to the play offs (while being afforded a lot of good will on account of not being Platt and his credit for the then current golden crop of homegrown 'stars' coming through), before the wheels really transparently came off for all to see at a club level probably compounded that slightly skewed retrospective.

That's my take anyway.

That and Tricky liked to big him up and sing his praises, so, yeah.

I’ve always got that moment at Selhurst Park with David Platt. For which I will always be grateful

For me, it's kicking Paul "the cnut" Devlin over the advertising hoardings at Bramall Lane (after Devlin had got Quashie sent off). Definitely worth getting a red card for.

I'll bite, but I'll exclude caretakers.
Rankings based on mostly subjective criteria.
Here we go:

1) O'Driscoll
2) Lamouchi
3) Davies Mk1
4) Hart
5) Calderwood
6) Freedman
7) Platt
8) Pearce
9) Karanka
10) O'Neill
11) Warburton
12) Kinnear
13) Davies Mk2
14) McLeish
15) Cotterill
16) Hughton
17) Montanier
18) MacLaren
19) Megson

The bottom half is really hard to sort out as there were some incredible demonstrations of ineptitude by these clowns.
I'll start looking for a psychologist right away....