OTD: MCMENEMY BORN

On this day in 1936, former Sunderland manager Lawrie McMenemy was born in Gateshead. He is widely regarded as one of our worst gaffer's ever, after winning just 27 of his 90 games in charge and playing a huge role in our first relegation to the third tier.

The ex-Guardsman (we’re contractually obliged to include that fact) arrived from Southampton in a fanfare of positive publicity, having hit the headlines by guiding the Saints to FA Cup glory as a Second Division club in 1976 and later by advertising alcohol-free lager. It’s great, man! He was seen as the man to turn around our fortunes and we welcomed him with open arms. Born in Gateshead, he actually signed for them up the road (we should have seen the signs) but never made the first team. He then moved to his hometown club, where injuries ended his playing days and he became a coach. Taking the reins at Bishop Auckland in 1964, he first showed his management abilities as he guided the Two Blues to the Northern League title and the third round of the FA Cup. This success led to league jobs at Doncaster Rovers and Grimsby Town, winning the Fourth Division title with both clubs, before his eight year spell at the Dell. 

We were in a bit of a mess (no surprise there) in 1985 following our relegation under Len Ashurst, so we were waving flags and anything else we could get our hands on when the big fella took the job at Roker. The fact that he was reportedly the highest paid manager in the league should have rung a few alarm bells but, as ever, we didn’t really care as long as the results went our way. They didn’t. Lawrie set about the task of getting us back up by doing it his Southampton way, we’d call it a model these days, and filled the dressing room with wise old heads who’d basically do his tactical stuff for him. For Mick Mills, Alan Ball, Kevin Keegan and Dave Watson, read Eric Gates, George Burley, Frank Gray, and Alan Kennedy. It simply didn’t work on Wearside and Eric Gates summed this tactic up perfectly, “lovely fella, knew bugger all about football.”

We stumbled through the 1985/86 season, our first win not arriving until the eighth attempt, away at Shrewsbury Town, to avoid relegation by two places and four points and dissatisfaction with the manager’s wages grew. The following campaign was even worse, as we simply failed to produce any sort of consistency, we even lost a mid-season friendly at Kingsway in celebration of Bishop Auckland’s centenary. We were deep in the mire and had just lost at home to Sheffield United, when he left to as much celebration as when he arrived and we brought back Bob Stokoe in a vain attempt to prevent the inevitable.

Thereinafter referred to as Mackemenemy, Lawrie took a three-year break before managing England under-21s for three years, then Northern Ireland for two. Although he’ll always be remembered for all the wrong reasons in our part of the world, to his credit he insisted on contributing to the book Tales From The Red And Whites which featured managers. Whilst many of us think of him as the worst manager we’ve ever had, he preceded Simon Grayson, David Moyes, Phil Parkinson and Michael Beale so he’s got real competition. Incredibly, McMenemy has been listed by the Guinness Book of Records as one of the twenty most successful managers in post-war English football. Funny game, football.

Just out of interest, here’s the league records for those five compared:

	P	W	D	L	F	A	Win %
LMcM	77	23	21	33	86	109	29.8
SG	18	3	7	10	10	26	16.6
DM	38	6	6	26	19	69	15.7
PP	38	17	12	9	49	19	44.7
MB	11	4	2	5	13	13	36.4

Based on that, Mackemenemy was better than both Grayson and Moyes, while Parkinson wasn’t actually that bad and Beale was distinctively average but, as they say, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, and Parkinson and Beale were nearly as dull as Grayson.