Next Senior Men's Team Manager - Runners and Riders

Rafa at Everton was always a disaster waiting to happen. Club is a shambles and the fans hated him from day 1 because of his past. I wasnt really advocating for him anyway - just trying to share some thoughts around who is considered at the higher end of the list when it comes to being pragmatic and playing to the teams best abilities.

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Originally Posted by SkStu

Rafa at Everton was always a disaster waiting to happen. Club is a shambles and the fans hated him from day 1 because of his past. I wasnt really advocating for him anyway - just trying to share some thoughts around who is considered at the higher end of the list when it comes to being pragmatic and playing to the teams best abilities.

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Why would Rafa be taking the Everton Job / Chelsea job when you consider the " history " he had with those clubs.

Rafa is a bit of a strange guy and his choices could also be strange. Did he ever do much with Liverpool in the league ( the most important championship for Liverpool )

I believe that there was a stat that he never put out the same Liverpool team in the league for two games in a row ~ ~ That is kinda Insane ! ! !

I'm not sure Rafa would be absolutely guaranteed to accept an offer from the FAI either!

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Originally Posted by ifk101

Maybe finances dictate a left field appointment? Would be great to know the criteria being used to draw up a short list (if any :-)).

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Possibly. The wages in the championship are better than what we can offer if what Darren Moore was looking for is anything to go by.

Probably gonna be looking at lads that can't get a job with a championship club or going the route of a coach looking to get into management ala Eustace, Beale, and McKenna once were.

If Canham is the one respondable for finding our next manager then hopefully the search is spread far and wide rather than just looking at lads who've worked in the UK.

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Originally Posted by Jolly Red Giant

You came out with this nonsense a couple of weeks ago -

He took over Newcastle in the Championship and won the championship with 102points. In the PL Newcastle played a broad expansive passing game - and despite Newcastle doing very welll in the PL Ashley sacked Hughton because his gambling buddy ran up big debts and Ashley was bailing him out by giving him a big contract.

Hughton took over at Brimingham in the Championship - they played in Europe and came fourth, losing in the play-offs.

He was poached by Norwich to replace Paul Lambert - but Delia Smith did her usual of tightening the purse strings and while it was a tough season, they finished 11th. In the second season he had even less money and a poorer squad - They battled relegation all season - but in April, and with Norwich five points above relegation with four games to play - the Norwich board panicked, sacked Hughton and got the club relegated.

Hughton then took over at Brighton who were a shambles after Sami Hyppia - he saved them from relegation - got them to the play-offs the following season - and then won automatic promotion with 93 points playing an exciting, passing game. In the PL Hughton was operating with a bottom 3 budget and finished 15th in the first season with what was effectively a Championship standard squad (and finished two spots above Southampton - where the entire first eleven were earning more money than the highest paid player at Brighton). In the second season he was still operating with a bottom three budget and like all clubs in the PL with that kind of a budget, they struggled to bring in quality players - most came in on free transfers. Once again - he kept Brighton in the PL. The fact that he managed to keep Brighton up those two seasons is quite remarkable - and he laid the foundations for Potter - Hughton was responsible for signing of Gross, Propper, Gyokeres, Bissouma, Burn, Steele, MacAllister, and he gave Liam Rosenior his start in coaching.

The less said about Forest the better - Hughton was sold a pig-in-a-poke by the owners - I think he made a mistake taking the Forest job and should have gone to WBA who were a much better run club at the time. At the start of the season when they lost all those games Hughton had 7 first team regulars out with injuries and was still trying to get Garner back in on loan. The team that Cooper had the last game of that season only had two players that started the first game for Hughton. Three months after sacking Hughton Forest were still stuck in 17th place (after another run of seven games without a win). The Championship is the type of division where if you string together 5-6 wins you can go from fighting relegation to the play-offs - and that is exactly what happened Forest (after they brought in more players in January).

But the Ghana job is another remarkable achievement for Hughton - the Ghanaian FA is riddled and rampant with corruption and he has made great strides sorting out a team that was in freefall for three years before he started working there. They had begun to turn a corner and doing a clearout of the squad was needed to continue the progress. Unfortunately it is clear that the Ghanaian FA bureaucrats as more interested in exercising their own power than in the team doing well - and Hughton would probably be well off out of it.


1. Hughton is still doing well today - he has just qualified an international team for a major tournament.

2. David O'Leary had a sh*tload of money to spend and he started with a squad at Leeds that had finished 5th in the PL the previous season. He didn't have to clean up a mess at the bottom of the Championship. In fact O'Leary spent more money on both Rio Ferdinand and Robbie Keane than Hughton spent on any player at Brighton 20 years later.

Hughton knows how to organise a defence - and by hell we need that - and he knows how to coach players (he is still one of the most highly regarded coaches in English football and would walk into practically any assistant managers job in the PL even today) - and that is just the type of manager Ireland need.

Would Chris Hughton be the best manager out there - probably not - the problem is that the FAI are going to be fishing in a very small pond - and Hughton ranks way above practically any other potential candidate who has been mentioned. The likes of Neil Lennon isn't fit to polish his boots.

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Fair play, with a post like that you have a job waiting for you as Hughtons PR man, or maybe his Manuela who can translate his recent lack of success into positives :)

To say that the Ghana job is a remarkable achievement is quite something. Would we say that Kenny has done a remarkable job in the face of the FAIs corruption/amateurism/lack of finances? Results matter and his results in Ghana have been awful. As have his results at Forest.

Hes you're favorite, and like all of us your entitled to your opinion. If he gets the job I think many of us will be disappointed, but we'll all back him in the job until we see how he does.

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Originally Posted by geysir

Should it not be "not fit to lace his boots"? though I think it lessens the value of one's opinions when you belittle other manager's achievements and boost your own choices with a selective copy and paste from a wikipedia type cv.
His club career has had its ups and downs, yet the down parts always have a reasoned excuse offered to explain it away.
Norwich for sure he was prematurely sacked and the Newcastle sacking was bonkers., Brighton improved solidly after he departed, it was a decision which was well vindicated.
Regardless, I think Chris would be a very good choice to coach of the national team, he has the coaching and management credentials, possibly he could thrive in an environment where he just has to work with eligible players and be relatively independent - not having to deal with the complex vagaries of club management.

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I have already outlined Hughton's record - and unfortunately Lennon's does not remotely compare

Lennon was manager of Celtic while Rangers were insolvent - they weren't even in the Scottish PL. His second stint at Celtic was when that kluts Gerrard was manager of Rangers, a covid shortened season and then he got sacked after two years, with Celtic 18 points behind Rangers in Feb 2021. But more important is what Lennon did outside of Celtic. An 18 month stint at Bolton where they finished 18th in the Championship and the following season they spent the entire season at the bottom of the Championship having won 3 games - and got relegated after Lennon was sacked in March. At Hibs he got them promoted to the PL - and then got suspended after a massive blow-up during a team meeting where the players attacking Lennon's ability to coach the team. He then ended up in the Cypriot League with Omonia (21 times champions) and was sacked after losing four of their first seven games in the 22-23 season.

Now - just to be clear with Hughton's position at Brighton - In early 2019 Dan Ashworth was appointed Brighton's technical director and from day one he wanted Hughton out of the club because he wanted to bring in his own man (Graham Potter). Irrespective of what Hughton did for the remainder of the season, Ashworth was intent on getting him out. At the end of the season Hughton met with the owner Tony Bloom and they held a four hour meeting to discuss the transfer targets and plans for the off-season with every indication that Hughton would remain in charge. It was then that Ashworth made his move, attacked Hughton's player recommendations and persuaded Bloom to sack Hughton.

Now - it could certainly be argued that the decision was vindicated - because Potter did well and RDZ has done even better. But it must be remembered that following Hughton's sacking Ashworth broke the Brighton transfer record four times, one after another, and spent more money in that off-season than Hughton had been given in the previous two seasons and the Brighton wage budget also increased significantly. But the reality is that the Brighton team under Potter bore Hughton's signiture all over it - Bissouma, MacAllister, Gross, Propper, Burn, Steele, Solly March, Ryan, Ben White, Sanchez - all players signed by Hughton or groomed by Hughton as young players. Indeed, I would argue that Potter bears a large responsibility for ruining Aaron Connolly. The kid was not ready to play in the PL and Hughton intended to send him out on loan - instead Potter put him into the first team squad and everything went sideways.

The great unknown here is that we do not know what Hughton would have done if he had been given close to £100m for players in 2019 and how the team would have performed during the following season. But the situation in 2019 was very similar to the situation Hughton faced when he took over Brighton at the foot of the Championship four years earlier. He had kept them in the PL for two tough seasons when most promoted teams go straight back down or are relegated after the second season - and his team could very well have kicked on with the players coming through and the money that was used to buy players for Potter. We will never know - and that is largely down to Dan Ashworth (and it is worth noting that Potter was gone from Brighton within months of Ashworth leaving to take a job with Newcastle).

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Originally Posted by CraftyToePoke

Yeah, its a fine post but if you are capable of walking into practically any EPL assistant role I don't think you end up in Ghana, simply put.

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After Hughton was sacked by Brighton he was offered at least 13 jobs as first team coach with PL clubs. He turned them all down because he wanted to manage again and he tried to take his time to try and find the right job (he took Forest but also was in the frame for Watford, Bristol City and WBA - and apparently two other clubs as well - indeed he was being lined up to take over at West Ham who seriously contemplated sacking David Moyes in 2020 (he was saved by covid).

He took the Ghana job for one simple reason - his father is Ghanaian - he had an affinity with the country.

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Originally Posted by CraftyToePoke

He is ( give or take ) twenty years younger than Trap, ten than MON and the same age as MickMack so he is in that bracket age wise we have seen several times where the game / life / whatever, moves beyond these guys while in the Ireland job, he represents a very real risk of that happening again. He stunk the place out at Forest to an extent he ended up where he now is, if it was only a few injuries and everything was about to be ok, he would have had those UK options and he would have chosen them. He didn't have them. Just because JRG shouts loudly and to be fair convincingly, there isn't any balance to his post, its not remotely objective.

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You may be 100 per cent correct in this assessment.

I believe that Chris Hughton is a very underrated coach/manager - just as he was as a player. He is a very intelligent man, who thinks carefully about what needs to be done and then acts with conviction. Some people regard him as soft because of his polite and pleasant demeanor - but he is a determined individual and usually does very well. The whole Forest thing was a mistake from start to finish and it did damage his reputation - but that does not mean that he is a bad manager. You can list all the managers that Ireland have ever had and few, if any, of them have the record that Chris Hughton has (and I would even include Johnny Giles in that category - and I think he was one of the best managers of his era - but even he did not have the same success managing at club level as Hughton).

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Originally Posted by CraftyToePoke

Would he make things better than they now are, yes.
Is he the guy who can make us greater than the sum of our parts to the extent we need, no I don't think so.
Is he potentially a compromise candidate which the fanbase could unite behind as is badly needed, to be fair I think he could be, for a bit at least.

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1. Good to see that you think its a possibility
2. Hughton's teams have always been better than the sum of their parts - that is what good coaches do.
3. If he gets the job I don't think he would be a compromise candidate.

As I said before - the FAI are going to be fishing in a very small pool - and I think Hughton stands head and shoulders above most of what is being touted. Yes - maybe a hot new young gun might bring a major spark to the team. But the downside is that as soon as they show promise they will be poached by a big club and you are back to square one. That, at least, would not happen with Hughton.

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Originally Posted by Razors left peg

Fair play, with a post like that you have a job waiting for you as Hughtons PR man, or maybe his Manuela who can translate his recent lack of success into positives :)

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his 'recent lack of success' - Hughton has just qualified a team for a major international tournament.

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Originally Posted by Razors left peg

To say that the Ghana job is a remarkable achievement is quite something. Would we say that Kenny has done a remarkable job in the face of the FAIs corruption/amateurism/lack of finances? Results matter and his results in Ghana have been awful. As have his results at Forest.

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I have dealt with the Forest stuff -

Stephen Kenny has one game to play in a qualifying group and Ireland will probably end up with two wins (against Gibraltar) and six losses and finish fourth just above Gibraltar.

Chrish Hughton has just qualified Ghana for a major international tournament.

The difference is clear.

And by the way - Hughton is not being paid by the Ghanaian FA - he is being paid by the Ghanaian government who initially brought him in as technical director to try and sort out the shambles that exists in Ghanaian football. No matter how bad things are with the FAI, things are fifty times worse in Ghana - and the FAI bureaucrats are not telling Kenny what players to pick and threatening him with the sack if he doesn't do it.

Since Hughton took over with Ghana they have won 2, drawn 2 and lost 0 in competitive internationals -

Stephen Kenny's record in competitive internationals - played 26 - won 6 - drawn 10 - lost 15 (and the six wins were Gibraltar x2, Armenia, Scotland, Luxembourg and Azerbaijan)

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Originally Posted by Razors left peg

you're favorite, and like all of us your entitled to your opinion. If he gets the job I think many of us will be disappointed, but we'll all back him in the job until we see how he does.

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Name a better candidate that the FAI has a chance of recruiting - and one that won't jump at the first club job that comes along and I am all ears.

By the way - Rafa is not an option - the guy chases the money

Everyone should aspire to find someone in life that loves them the way JRG loves Chris Hughton!

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Originally Posted by Razors left peg

Everyone should aspire to find someone in life that loves them the way JRG loves Chris Hughton!

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He makes some valid points and a good argument in terms of benchmarking against other potential replacements, albeit from a somewhat biased view of his management career.

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Originally Posted by LurcherLover

He makes some valid points and a good argument in terms of benchmarking against other potential replacements, albeit from a somewhat biased view of his management career.

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The case is well argued but very biased towards his own opinion, and thats fair enough, we are all entitled to our opinions and favorites for the job. We are also entitled to want to avoid some managers at all costs. Lennon, Roy Keane and Hughton are on that list for me. All who have had some form of success, all who I think would be a disaster for us.

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Originally Posted by Razors left peg

The case is well argued but very biased towards his own opinion, and thats fair enough, we are all entitled to our opinions and favorites for the job. We are also entitled to want to avoid some managers at all costs. Lennon, Roy Keane and Hughton are on that list for me. All who have had some form of success, all who I think would be a disaster for us.

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I agree the likes of Keane and Lennon would be disastrous. Although I wouldn't necessarily be delighted if Hughton got the nod, he's a better candidate than the vast majority of names that have been thrown out to date. We're in position now where there wouldn't be too many candidates that will please everyone. I've a feeling it's going to be a major disappointment unless Canham etc surprises us.

I'd say the chances of that contract extension happening are getting slimmer.

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Originally Posted by Razors left peg

Everyone should aspire to find someone in life that loves them the way JRG loves Chris Hughton!

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I've been a long time admirer of Hughton - an underrated player and an underrated coach who probably would have had a much higher profile if he wasn't such a nice guy (and he is also way too loyal to the people he works for).

Is he the best coach in England - no - is he the best coach Ireland has ever produced - no - but he is a damned good one and is better than any other name currently in the frame for the job.

Now - just because he is a good coach doesn't mean that he is going to be a success if he was appointed Ireland manager - but he has a better chance of doing it than the likes of Neil Lennon or either of the Keanes etc.

I have to say that the prospect of Poyet coming into the frame is interesting and he is another good coach. Unlike Hughton, Poyet is a bit of a loose cannon - but things would be interesting with him at the helm.

And by the way - I have absolutely no issue with anyone disagreeing with me - it would be good to have a proper debate about it, rather than simply dismissing the idea with off the cuff comments about Brighton, Forest and Ghana.

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Originally Posted by LurcherLover

He makes some valid points and a good argument in terms of benchmarking against other potential replacements, albeit from a somewhat biased view of his management career.

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I think my approach to Hughton is partly impacted by the fact that I do know someone who is reasonably close to Hughton in professional terms and I have gained some limited insights into stuff going on behind the scenes.

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Originally Posted by Jolly Red Giant

I've been a long time admirer of Hughton - an underrated player and an underrated coach who probably would have had a much higher profile if he wasn't such a nice guy (and he is also way too loyal to the people he works for).

Is he the best coach in England - no - is he the best coach Ireland has ever produced - no - but he is a damned good one and is better than any other name currently in the frame for the job.

Now - just because he is a good coach doesn't mean that he is going to be a success if he was appointed Ireland manager - but he has a better chance of doing it than the likes of Neil Lennon or either of the Keanes etc.

I have to say that the prospect of Poyet coming into the frame is interesting and he is another good coach. Unlike Hughton, Poyet is a bit of a loose cannon - but things would be interesting with him at the helm.

And by the way - I have absolutely no issue with anyone disagreeing with me - it would be good to have a proper debate about it, rather than simply dismissing the idea with off the cuff comments about Brighton, Forest and Ghana.

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I didnt write an off the cuff remark about his time with Ghana, in fact I went into detail about each result he had there more than I normally would do usually from an individual game point of view and respective FIFA rankings. You are of the opinion that there are mitigating circumstances that I dont agree with because the teams the results have come against are so bad.

It is what it is, I dont hate Chris Hughton, I just dont think he is the right man for the job.

Imagine having a father from Ghana and a mother from Ireland and managing both countries in your career?

He can't turn it down if he's offered it

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Originally Posted by Razors left peg

I didnt write an off the cuff remark about his time with Ghana, in fact I went into detail about each result he had there more than I normally would do usually from an individual game point of view and respective FIFA rankings. You are of the opinion that there are mitigating circumstances that I dont agree with because the teams the results have come against are so bad.

It is what it is, I dont hate Chris Hughton, I just dont think he is the right man for the job.

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Of the usual suspects (Keane, Lennon, Hughton etc) that normally get named when it comes time for a new manager I'd have had him as the preferred choice. That I wouldn't mind if he got the job as it's slim pickings when it comes to experienced managers but after ifk's post on the last page he's got me second guessing myself.

As he's recently come out talking about the Irish job publicly it's rumoured that Gus Poyet is close to being sacked after going public the other day about his assistant not being paid.

Getting sacked for complaining about not being paid?

That'll work out well I'm sure

Though if his contract is close to up, then it'd be more than he wasn't kept on rather than that he was sacked