1) Bryan Robson (Middlesbrough)
As he smiled for the cameras, Bryan Robson had the look of a man who was halfway through changing by the side of the pitch after leaving work late for his weekly five-a-side match. Above the waist, he wore a suit jacket, a shirt and a tie and he was holding a Middlesbrough scarf above his head; nothing controversial about that. But below the waist, he was wearing football shorts and socks and had a ball underneath his left foot. The baffling clash of styles raised several questions. Above all, why? Why wasn’t he wearing any shoes? Was he wearing shinpads? If he was wearing shinpads, why? And if he wasn’t wearing shinpads, why not? It was a sartorial disaster – the equivalent of serving a bowl of cereal alongside a steak; what happens when you’re too embarrassed to ask what smart casual means.
There was a more reasonable explanation. It was Robson’s unveiling as Middlesbrough’s new player-manager and while he looked ridiculous, like an accountant in the middle of a nervous breakdown, an accountant who had spent the entire firm’s budget on a treadmill for his office, you can see where he is coming from logically. The boss wears a suit, yes, but a footballer can’t be expected to wear tight trousers, and would it be the worst thing in the world if this very literal interpretation of the role was the accepted get-up for every player-manager? Maintain an air of authority by looking smart on the touchline, but be ready to enter the pitch at a moment’s notice.
But seriously. After 13 increasingly enjoyable years at Manchester United came to an end when they won the double in 1994, Robson was immediately handed his first opportunity in management by Middlesbrough, invigorated by the ambition of their young chairman, Steve Gibson. They were going places on and off the pitch, leaving Ayresome Park for the Riverside in time for the start of the 1995-96 season, and although Robson was busy winning United’s first league title in 26 years while Middlesbrough were dropping out of the inaugural Premier League in 1993, he liked what he saw on Teesside.
And with good reason, too, because Robson’s first season was a roaring success, culminating in Middlesbrough nabbing the only automatic promotion spot by finishing three points clear of Reading, who would go on to blow a 2-0 lead against Bolton Wanderers in the play-off final. The team benefited from the former England captain’s experience. Robson featured in 22 matches and scored his one and only goal for the club with this 25-yard skimmer in a win over Port Vale at Ayresome Park in March 1995.
Ultimately, however, the Robson era was bittersweet, the ups and downs cancelling each other out. He had a big part in one of the most thrilling periods of the club’s history and they played some wonderful football during the good times, with Juninho and Fabrizio Ravanelli tormenting opposition defences, and they bounced straight back after going down in 1997 – but going down in the first place was a major failure despite the unusual circumstances. It was the season when they were beaten in both domestic cup finals, succumbing to Leicester City’s underdogs in the League Cup final and going behind after 42 seconds of their FA Cup final against Chelsea, and they went down as a direct result of being deducted three points by the Football Association for failing to turn up for their fixture against Blackburn Rovers on Boxing Day.
Their excuse about injuries and a flu outbreak fell on deaf ears and shortly after the Blackburn fiasco Robson made one final appearance before hanging up his boots and reaching for the suit trousers. He had not played a single minute since 21 November 1995. A 2-0 defeat at Arsenal left Middlesbrough in the relegation zone on New Year’s Day and they would still be there come the end of the season. JS
2) Arthur Rowley (Shrewsbury Town)
Sometimes the solution is obvious: if you are a club struggling towards the bottom of the lowest league, then all you have to do is sign the most prolific striker of all time, get him to double up as manager, and brace yourselves for blast-off. That is what Shrewsbury Town did in 1958 and look at them now! OK, well, concentrate on 1958 and the decade thereafter. See what they did there? That’s Arthur Rowley for you.
Some people will tell you that Arthur Rowley was the slightly less gifted, more generously upholstered younger brother of Jack Rowley, who was an England international and is still the fourth highest-scorer in the history of Manchester United. But that is by the by. Arthur is a hero in his own right, with his 434 goals in 619 mostly lower-league matches making him the highest scorer in English league football.
Endowed with virtually no pace whatsoever but mighty strength and a left foot so explosive he was nicknamed “The Gunner”, Rowley scored his goals for four different clubs, mostly Leicester City, where speedsters such as Jamie Vardy have never come close to beating the club-record 44 goals he scored in 42 league matches to help win the Second Division in 1957. He hit 20 goals in 25 top-flight matches the following season when the Leicester manager, David Halliday, decided his value was never going to get higher but his age (32) certainly would, and put him up for sale. Shrewsbury, preparing for life in the newly created Fourth Division, saw their chance, forked out the £7,000 fee and appointed Rowley as their first player-manager.
In the season prior to Rowley’s arrival, Shrewsbury had finished 17th out of 24 teams in the Third Division (South), scoring 49 goals all campaign. The Gunner transformed them, firing in 38 goals as part of a team tally of 101 for the season. Shrewsbury were promoted at the end of that campaign and nearly went up the following season too, finishing third in the Third Division (and knocking Everton out of the League Cup). Although Rowley’s waistline kept expanding, he continued to weigh in with ample goal helpings, treating himself to 32, 28, 23 and 24 over the next four seasons as Shrewsbury lingered mid-table. He had always relied more on strength and precision than mobility but, even so, as he grew older he felt it best to retreat from the front line and deployed himself as a central defender instead. But his influence remained strong even though his scoring dwindled before he hung up his boots just shy of his 40th birthday. He continued to manage Shrewsbury until 1968 when, after again guiding them to third, he was headhunted by Sheffield United. He had a short spell there and then six years at Southend United before returning to live in Shrewsbury and becoming a regular spectator at Gay Meadow, the ground to which he brought so much joy. PD
3) Attilio Lombardo (Crystal Palace)
Premier League club newly promoted from the play-offs and widely expected to go straight back down again sign a well-known Italian international midfielder from Juventus? A hypothetical modern-day equivalent might have been the transfer of … say, Claudio Marchisio to Bournemouth last year. It didn’t happen and wasn’t even mooted, but even in these crazy football times one suspects widespread surprise would have greeted such a move. The shock would have been low key compared to the fanfare that greeted Attilio Lombardo’s transfer to Crystal Palace 19 years ago. Yes, Attilio Lombardo, the distinctive former Sampdoria and Juventus winger well known to viewers of Gazzetta Football Italia. Attilio Lombardo, who had won multiple Serie A and European titles during his time in Italy. Attilio Lombardo, the follicly challenged midfield maestro who famously danced the Lambada with James Richardson for our Saturday morning TV entertainment on Channel 4 because it made for a good pun. Eagles don’t get much balder.
Having forged a successful career playing alongside stars of such calibre as Gianluca Vialli, Ruud Gullitt, Didier Deschamps and Zinedine Zidane, Lombardo quickly settled into a team boasting box office talent that included Andy Linighan, Bruce Dyer, Neil Shipperley and Leon McKenzie, scoring on his debut against Everton in one of only eight Premier League matches Palace would win that season. Having been steered into the top flight by Steve Coppell, the south London club were widely expected to be relegated and they duly succumbed to the drop, finishing bottom of the table with 33 points from 38 matches and going down with Barnsley and Bolton Wanderers. It was, however, the manner of the yo-yo club’s slide towards the second tier that made headlines, in a shambolic season not many teams have since emulated in terms of pure chaos.
Owned at the time of their promotion by the decidedly unpopular Ron Noades, Palace were the subject of a takeover bid from board member Mark Goldberg, whose failure to raise much more than two thirds of the full, ludicrously expensive, £30m asking price (£5m of which he received as a loan from Noades) resulted in the 30-year-old taking ownership of the club, but not Selhurst Park, which would be leased to the club for 10 years. The deal went through in March 1998, with Palace bottom of the table, and one of Goldberg’s first moves was to announce that Coppell would be moving “upstairs” so that Lombardo could take over as player-manager.
Due to Lombardo’s inability to speak English, it was announced by Goldberg that Tomas Brolin would work as his assistant (a role subsequently revised to that of interpreter), despite the presence of Ray Lewington at the club, where the current England assistant coach had been working as Coppell’s No2. The one-time Swedish superstar had been signed by Palace the previous November, but was exceptionally long in the waistband, clearly out of shape and approaching a retirement in which he would engage in such activities as opening a restaurant, selling vacuum cleaners and appearing in a music video with Euro-pop superstar Dr Alban. For now, however, there was serious football work to be done, before Goldberg’s very public plan to install Terry Venables as the club’s manager could be put into place.
With Lombardo as their standout player, so good that he was barely on the same wavelength as many lesser talented team-mates, Palace had been pootling along nicely, hovering around mid-table until their talismanic Italian suffered an injury while on international duty with Italy in November. It would have a serious impact on the number of games in which he could participate fully until the following April.
His appointment as player-manager made the club a laughing stock, what with them already having attracted widespread opprobrium and ridicule for the manner in which Goldberg had handled his purchase of the club, his subsequent humiliation of Coppell and his very public courtship of Venables. Lombardo seemed as surprised as everyone else by his appointment, describing his shock at being summoned to a meeting with Goldberg and Coppell, offered the role and given just half an hour to make a decision as the equivalent of being “run over by a lorry” or “crushed by the hotel” in which the meeting was staged. Reports from the time suggest there was some confusion over his choice of simile.
“I realise a lot of people will look at us as being foolish, but, rather than slow strangulation, we’ve done something,” said Coppell, who insisted the decision had been made between himself, Noades and Goldberg. “Only the people within the walls here think we’ve got a fighting chance of staying up. Almost to a man, the rest of the country think Palace are done. So, if we fail, we’ve lost nothing.”
Under Lombardo the player-manager, Palace subsequently lost five of their next seven games, along with their Premiership status, before the managerial reins were handed over to Lewington, who oversaw the final three games as caretaker boss until Venables took over in the summer. El Tel only lasted to the following January, before leaving with his fellow high earner Lombardo as Palace slid towards administration. With the club in total financial meltdown, Goldberg himself left the same month and was declared bankrupt the following year.
Lombardo would enjoy another four years of success at Lazio and Sampdoria and his distinctive bald head could more recently be spotted on the bench alongside his former team-mate Roberto Mancini during his time in charge of Manchester City. Despite the short and disastrous reign as player-manager he had foisted upon him at Palace, he was voted into the club’s Centenary XI even though he made fewer than 50 appearances for the club. BG
4) John Toshack (Swansea City)
What the former Liverpool striker and Wales international did after becoming player-manager of Swansea City in 1978 remains so inspirational that to this day he is celebrated even at Stamford Bridge, where at every match fans hold aloft a banner reading: “JT – Captain, Leader, Legend.” If that sounds improbable, then bear in mind we’re talking about a man who became Cardiff City’s youngest player at the age of 16, qualified as a coach at the age of 18, won three league titles and a European Cup as a striker with Liverpool and was hailed as “possibly the manager of the century” by none other than Bill Shankly, all that before winning the Azerbaijan Super Cup in 2013. All right, so Toshack’s managerial career got gradually less glorious as the years went by, but that is only to be expected after he started on such a high. Even managing Real Madrid to a league title in 1990 suffers in comparison to his feats with Swansea City, which brought the above accolade from Shankly.
Toshack was a controversial appointment as Swansea player-manager in March 1978. It was well known that injuries were hampering his career as a top-flight striker and the timing of the appointment was considered off by some supporters, as Swansea were in the hunt for promotion from the Fourth Division. And the manager’s identity provoked debate, too, as Toshack had no experience and, what is more, was an ex-Cardiff player. “My past meetings with Swansea have occurred when I’ve been wearing the blue shirt of Cardiff City or the red of Liverpool but now I am on your side … and I hope you are going to be on mine,” wrote Toshack in the programme notes before his first match (a 3-3 draw with Graham Taylor’s Watford), where it was pointed out that his predecessor, Harry Griffiths, would be staying on to help him. Griffiths offered a wealth of knowledge, having served the club as a player, physio, coach, manager and lots more besides. When Griffiths died of a heart attack two months after the new man’s arrival, a respectful Toshack declared that “most of the hard work had been done when I arrived” and called on the players to deliver promotion as a memorial for Griffiths. Two weeks later they won that promotion, along with Watford.
The following season Toshack blended local youngsters such as Alan Curtis and Robbie James with former Liverpool team-mates, including Tommy Smith and Ian Callaghan, and Swansea won their second successive promotion (again with Watford), returning to the second tier after a 14-year absence. They spent two seasons there before Toshack took them even higher, reaching the top flight for the first time in the club’s history in 1981. And what a start they made there, battering Leeds United 5-1 in their first match. They even topped the table for a while, prompting Toshack to sing his own praises and say that only Bob Paisley and Brian Clough were as canny as him. He had brought Swansea to unprecedented heights, and scored 25 goals in 63 appearances on top of his managerial wiles, but he had peaked. Swansea petered out towards the end of the season, losing five of their last six matches, but still finished sixth. Sensational. But they were relegated the following year and again the year after that. Toshack moved on, but belief in Swansea’s ability to rise from the depths remained part of the club’s culture. PD
5) Gordon Strachan
You’d have to be bananas to be a player-manager – or at least fuelled by them. Gordon Strachan’s famous diet of bananas, seaweed, porridge and hard work was the main reason he was able to play Premier League football in his forties during a memorable month at the end of the 1996-97 season, when he helped Coventry pull off one of their greatest escapes.
Strachan had joined Coventry as player-coach in March 1995, and was scheduled to succeed Ron Atkinson in the summer of 1997. The plan was brought forward in November 1996, with Coventry managing only five goals and nine points from their first 12 games.
Atkinson, who became director of football, had a party to celebrate the handover one Sunday afternoon at a pub called The Oak & Black Dog. Strachan planned to take his wife and kids to a fireworks display that evening and settled for a couple of halves – yet by 5pm he was so drunk that he had to be carried home to bed, where he slept for 14 hours before waking up with a drum-and-bass track playing in his head. Strachan concluded his drinks had been spiked as a joke by one of his own players, probably Noel Whelan (there’s a great sitcom in their relationship, but that’s another story).
Whelan was certainly in the mood for mischief. He tried to give Paul Telfer and Dion Dublin love bites so that they would get in trouble with their partners. Telfer escaped, Dublin chinned him. “They told me it was a new celebration for when they scored,” said Atkinson of the love bites. “I told them it was so long since they had scored I couldn’t even remember what they used to do. But it was all just a bit of hi-jinks.”
The following morning, a still-refreshed Whelan was done for drink-driving. All this before Strachan had taken charge of a match. When he did Coventry kept on losing, but then he made two vital signings: the unknown striker Darren Huckerby from Newcastle, and the Scotland assistant manager Alex Miller. A Huckerby-inspired win over Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle was the first of four in a row that helped Strachan win Manager of the Month that December.
Reality soon plunged its incisors into Strachan, however, with Coventry winning only one game in the first three months of 1997. It’s a shame there is no recording of Strachan’s internal monologue during their visit to Old Trafford in March, when they scored two exceptionally farcical own-goals in the first five minutes.
In his first five months in the job Strachan made only five substitute appearances totalling 35 minutes. He had no intention of playing again until Gary McAllister, his old mate from Leeds, told Strachan he was struggling with the responsibility of leading a relegation-threatened side. “I could,” said McAllister, “do with some help from you here.”
Strachan, who was earning less than many of his squad, put himself on the bench for the visit to Anfield and came on for the last seven minutes with the score 1-1. Dublin scored an injury-time winner, fatally damaging the Spice Boys’ best chance of a title. Four days later Strachan won a pre-match battle of wills over which kit each team should wear – Chelsea had not brought their away kit and ended up in Coventry’s – before playing superbly in a 3-1 win. It was his first start for a year. In four days, Strachan the player had helped Strachan the manager collect six points.
“I rubbed myself all over with WD40, then went out there to prove I can still make a contribution,” he said. It was exhausting stuff, however, and a few days after the Chelsea game, he fell asleep in the chair in his office. The strain of a relegation battle was not just physical. Management may not have driven Strachan to drink, but it did drive him to a regrettable comment about drink.
In the third-last game of the season, the Arsenal captain Tony Adams – who had been teetotal for nine months – clattered Strachan. “Next time,” said Adams, “I am going to knock you into the stand.” The two exchanged extreme banter for a minute or so until Strachan played his joker: “Why don’t you just fuck off and go for a drink, and let the rest of us get on with the game?” He knew straight away he had been “out of order”, and sought out Adams to apologise after the match.
The next game, at home to Derby, was Strachan’s last as a professional player. He was booked for dissent, gave away the free-kick that led to the first goal with a vigilante tackle, and then went off injured. At 40 years 83 days he was the Premier League’s oldest outfield player until Teddy Sheringham wheezed past him in 2006.
A 2-1 defeat to Derby left Coventry in all kinds of trouble: they had to get three points at Tottenham on the last day and hope Middlesbrough and Sunderland failed to win. “Bryan Robson is one of my best friends and I also know Peter Reid very well,” he said of his rival managers. “But if I ring up Robbo, what am I expected to say to him: ‘Good luck’?. He knows and I know that I would like to see his team get stuffed 10-0.”
Coventry were 9-1 to stay up, and a resigned Strachan spent the morning of the match talking with McAllister about their preparation for life in the second tier. Strachan had put himself on the bench, wanting to focus on the second part of his job. His coaching team implored him to come on for the last 15 minutes, with Coventry starting to panic and Huckerby tiring. But Strachan the manager had already released enough nervous energy to power a small village through winter. When Huckerby said he was “absolutely knackered”, Strachan turned to the bench and told them Huckerby said he was fine.
Those 15 minutes were the most exquisite torture for Coventry. They led 2-1 and, because of a late kick-off, knew that Middlesbrough’s and Sunderland had drawn and lost respectively. It was in Coventry’s hands, or rather the hands of their keeper Steve Ogrizovic – and his feet, which he used to make a vital save near the end. Coventry held on to pull off one of their greatest escapes. Strachan ran on the field and held McAllister in a long, emotional embrace.
The midfield signings of Tront Solvedt and later George Boateng meant Strachan did not need to play in the 1997-98 season. His story at Coventry did not end happily – after three relatively comfortable seasons when they finished 11th, 15th and 14th, they were relegated in 2001 – but the memory of 1997 will always keep him warm.
Coventry took 11 points from their last six games, 10 of them off Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs. In his excellent autobiography, Strachan summed it up. “My decision to return to first-team action, and the result we achieved, made this spell unquestionably one of the most stimulating – and certainly the most nerve-wracking – of my entire career.” RS
6) Roy Race
From his appointment in 1978 to his eventual retirement in 1992, aged well over 50, Roy Race’s career as player-manager of Melchester Rovers was nothing if not eventful. As well as masterminding victory in four league title races, two League Cups, five FA Cups, two European Cup Winners’ Cups, two Uefa Cups and one European Cup, the iconic striker signed two members of New Romantic pop group Spandau Ballet and several television pundits including Bob Wilson. It wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns for Race, however. While picking the team for which he also lined up, he endured at least one relegation, got shot and went into a coma, then lost eight members of his squad in a terrorist attack. Having announced his retirement as a player at the beginning of the Premier League era, he continued to oversee affairs at Melchester Rovers and crashed his helicopter while on a scouting mission, leaving him in another coma from which he emerged to discover he had lost his foot and would have no choice but to hang up his boots. Well, one of his boots. BG
