Post by Jon on Nov 2, 2009 23:00:24 GMT
I'm trying to remember what those were. I think it is fair to say that Deano, Loram, Howells and Elliot in particular had a reputation for being quite "sociable" - but Deano could tell you more about that than I could.
Deano mentioned the naughty boys getting sent to Stockport. Legend has it that Alex Ferguson spiked Loram's permanent move to Stockport - because he feared that he would be a bad influence on the young Lee Sharpe. Loram's talents and frailties were very well known to managers at all levels of the game.
Deano told the story of Tommy Tynan whacking Wes Saunders over the head with a kettle in the buildup to the 1991 play-off final. This was well publicised at the time and Tommy left the club by mutual consent. It's funny that these two were the two big money buys of the new Bateson era in 1990. Early impressions were that Tynan was a lethal goal machine worth every penny whilst Saunders was an injury-stricken waste of time. By the end of the season, Tommy had outstayed his welcome whilst Wes was everybody's hero.
Richard Thompson who was mentioned was one of the many youngsters in the awful Newport team that Lee Sharpe ripped to shreds - we won 6-1 - late in the 1987/88 season. Newport were relegated and went bust soon after, but Thompson did enough to impress Cyril. He went on to a long managerial career in the Western / Southern Leagues.
Deano mentioned Cyril disappearing for a while in the 1988/89 season, We have discussed this one before on a Dave Caldwell thread - copied and pasted below.
Jul 10, 2008 16:31:52 GMT Jon said:
We only got Caldwell in the first place because he was a flawed diamond, and following his sending off in the fifth minute at Aldershot*, Lew Pope was insistent that Cyril Knowles unload him pronto. The only club that would have him was some obscure lower league Belgian outfit and that transfer eventually cost us Cyril as our manager as a row developed between him and Lew, Cyril resigned - withdrew his gesture but the chairman refused to accept it!
I won't go into the details of it, but it was a rather tawdry tale and reflected little credit on either party.
Cyril didn't end up leaving over the Caldwell affair.
Caldwell played for us in the first Cyril season – 1987/88 – when we reached the play-offs. Towards the end of that season he was handed a ridiculously long suspension, eight games I think, from the start of the following season. That is why Pope was so keen to get him off the payroll in the close season of 1988. I don’t know exactly what went on between Pope and Knowles, but I got the impression that Pope refused to honour promises that Cyril had made - leaving Cyril feeling that his authority had been undermined. There was a picture in the paper of Cyril ripping up his contract and chucking it in the bin – although it turned out later it was just a piece of paper, not his contract. I don’t know how, but the differences were smoothed over somehow and Cyril stayed for another year or so – leading us out at Wembley in 1989.
During the summer after Wembley, Pope and Knowles fell out again. Knowles wanted profits from Wembley to be spent on the playing budget whereas I suspect they had already been swallowed up in the black hole of TUFC’s finances. Pope upped the ante by publicising the fact that a fair chunk had gone into Cyril’s pocket by way of a bonus.
Against that background, we made an awful start to 1989/90 and were second bottom above Hartlepool when Cyril felt he’d had enough and threw in the towel. Just to show he liked a challenge, he became manager of Hartlepool and grabbed them by the scruff of the neck just as he had done at Darlington and Torquay. Unfortunately, he passed away just before the team he built there clinched promotion.
Dave Smith took over from Cyril and had Caldwell back on loan, but wasn’t interested in making the deal permanent.
As a silly aside, I seem to remember that the Belgian club was amateur and so found “bogus employment” to pay players for – like rugby clubs used to do here. Apparently, they had Caldwell down as a “mattress tester”. Given Enzo’s comments about his “social life”, I imagine he would have been quite good at that!