On this day in 1987, Lawrie McMenemy left our club. Resigned, was sacked, left by mutual consent, snuck off into the sunset – it doesn’t really matter, as his departure was met with possibly the largest collective sigh of relief ever hear on Wearside.
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 in 1936, he actually signed for them up the road (we should have seen the signs) but never made the first team, moving to his hometown club where injury ended his playing days and he moved into coaching. 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 Donny and Grimsby, winning the Division Four 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 ’85-’86 season – our first win not arriving until the eighth attempt, away at Shrewsbury - 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 Utd, 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 U21s for three years, then Norn Iron 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. While 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 is 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 14 13 36.4
Based on that, Mackemenemy was better than both Grayson and Moyes, while Parkinson wasn’t actually that bad – but as they say, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, and Parky was nearly as dull as Grayson.
Let’s just say we were happy with what happened on April 16th 1987, despite what followed.
