Cook - I never really warmed to him, found his self-contradicting waffle irritating and felt he had far too little tactical nous to expect to escape the "negative questions" he thought himself above, but I've heard plenty of talk from others of him being a nice guy and his overzealous "Demolition Man" act did ultimately set us on course for the more promising state we find ourselves in now, so there's some forgiveness due for that. Lambert - we were already in a flat spin by the time he took over, and I'm not sure he actually made us any worse, it was just painfully obvious that he was never going to make us any better; loses points for his apparent inability to string a coherent sentence together and progressive loss of grip on reality as time wore on. Jewell - completely clueless and way past his prime but (aside from that strange instance of calling a committed youth player a "boring b*stard", generally seemed a decent chap and his failing was ultimately a complete inability to put out a destructive fire someone else started. Keane - whilst it's now starting to look like he's finally grown a sense of humour, a professional arsehole whose rampage through a squad that needed restoration rather than demolition kicked off all these years of misery. Hurst - just an obnoxious, clueless, unapologetic little b*llend who should never have been allowed free rein to pack a Championship squad full of players who had barely played at that level or to let his equally-vile assistant behave the way he did; committed even worse damage than Keane but propelled us further downwards from a lesser starting point.

Source: The Guardian June 01, 2022 16:52 UTC