5 of the poorest managerial tenures of all time

Football managers are hugely popular, and they command respect. This is true mainly for successful ones like Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho, and Sir Alex Ferguson among others. However, there have been numerous managers in the history of football who have been sacked, fired, or forced to resign. Mike Walker at Everton and Les Reed at Charlton are a few examples.

Here, we take a look at the managers whose actions led to the most devastating consequences on the teams they managed.

#5. Hristo Stoichkov

Stoichkov is considered the greatest Bulgarian football player of all time. He joined Celta Vigo in 2007 as their manager. His poor man-management skills did not allow him to get along with the players. He forced three players into retirement and later accused Romania of fixing a qualifier.

As a manager, he could only survive 180 days at Celta. They won seven games, drew one and lost eight out of 16 matches. Their win percentage was 43% under his leadership.

Stoichkov was unpopular at Celta and was subsequently replaced by Juan Ramon Lopez Caro in the same year.

#4. Ossie Ardiles

Ossie was a midfielder who won the 1978 FIFA World Cup as part of Argentina. During his second season with Tottenham as a manager, he devised a new plan which employed a five-man front-line and one-man midfield. This cost them 33 goals in 15 games. Ardiles was sacked and widely criticised for his irrational tactics. Tottenham lost 24 and won 16 out of 54 matches under his stewardship, with a poor win percentage of 29%.

"The hardest thing that’s happened to me in my life was leaving Tottenham. The blackest time, after the Malvinas aftermath, was my departure from Tottenham," he was quoted as saying.

#3. David Platt

David was an English midfielder who played for Juventus and other clubs. He had a great connection with the players and had strong managerial skills.

He joined Sampdoria in 1998-99 but was widely criticised for not possessing the appropriate qualifications to manage the Serie A side. He spent £12m on players such as Salvatore Matrecano and Gianluca Petrachi, which made him hugely unpopular.

He stayed there for 49 days before he was let go. Under his leadership, Sampdoria did not play a single match.

#2. Egil Olsen

In 1999, Olsen was appointed as the manager of Wimbledon. From the start, he could not get along with the players. They criticised him for employing wild tactics and strange formations.

Wimbledon lost 18 and won 7 out of their 36 matches. His win percentage was a shoddy 19%. The management fired him in 2000, but not before he wiped the club off the footballing map.

#1. Graeme Souness

Graeme Souness played as a midfielder for Scotland and captained Liverpool in the 1980s. Souness faced an uphill struggle since the day he joined Liverpool as manager. He was quite disciplined in his approach, which was not appreciated by the senior players.

In the 1992-93 season, he sold star player, Dean Saunders to Aston Villa. Top scorer Ian Rush was not in the best of form. Overall, Liverpool finished sixth, and he had to leave.

He won 54 matches out of 129 which contributed to a win percentage of 42%. This was average by any standard.

In an interview, he said: “In management, I expected my players to feel the same as me. But the world was changing. Players were expecting a shoulder to cry on. The players were holding more power than the manager. I wasn’t cute enough sometimes, or political enough.”

Edited by Arvind Sriram