From Tom Watson to Dave Mackay, via Harry Potts, here's a selection who rarely get the wider recognition they deserve
1) Tom Watson: Sunderland (1891-92, 1892-93 and 1894-95) and Liverpool (1900-01 and 1905-06)
Tom Watson, the first truly great manager in English football history, made the likes of Jos� Mourinho and Andr� Villas-Boas look like a pair of superannuated procrastinators. He became manager of Sunderland in 1889 aged just 29, and it wasn't long before his side were making waves. His Sunderland were built on the Scottish passing game, the town's proximity to Scotland allowing him to plunder the best talent of the day: strikers Jimmy Millar and Johnny Campbell, midfield enforcer Hughie Wilson, defender John Auld and eccentric goalkeeper Ned Doig, a man so paranoid about his balding pate that he wore a cap secured with a chin strap.
Sunderland had ambitions to join the nascent Football League and staked their claim with a 4-1 win over Preston North End, during Preston's Invincibles 1888-89 league season, and a 7-2 skelping of League founder William McGregor's Aston Villa. That win caused McGregor to coo over Sunderland's "talented men in every position", a quote soon mangled into "they are the Team Of All The Talents", a name which stuck.
Sunderland were granted league status in 1890 ? the first new team to be admitted, replacing Stoke City ? and they soon reached the top. After taking a season to acclimatise, Watson's side won three titles in four years. The first championship saw them win all 13 of their home games, a campaign during which they also recorded 13 wins on the bounce. In their second title season, they were the first team to score 100 goals in a campaign, 43 more than second-placed Preston. They also made the FA Cup semi-finals in 1892 and 1895.
But Watson fell out with the board over money. In 1896, Liverpool offered him an unprecedented wage of �300 per year to take over at Anfield. He snatched their hand off, becoming the highest paid "secretary" in the league. Progress at Anfield was slower ? although in his first season Liverpool did at one point top the league for the first time in their history ? as Watson pursued a safety-first policy of sorting out his new club's leaky defence. Before long, though, he was hoicking the best talent out of Scotland: wingers John Walker and Tom Robertson, striker Hugh Morgan, and (via Stoke) defender Alex Raisbeck, destined to become a club legend.
Watson nearly led Liverpool to the Double in 1899, but the team lost an FA Cup semi-final against Sheffield United, then spectacularly bottled the league: needing only a draw at Aston Villa to secure the title, they conceded five goals in the first half. Villa won the championship instead. But Liverpool didn't have to wait too long for their first title, which came two seasons later, thanks in no small part to an end-of-season run that saw them let in only two goals in their last 10 games.
Another title came five years later, the major addition to the team being goalkeeper Sam Hardy. Watson's last achievement would be taking Liverpool to the 1914 FA Cup final, which they would lose to Burnley. Just over a year later, he died suddenly of pneumonia and pleurisy. Doig and Raisbeck helped carry his coffin to an unmarked grave in Anfield Cemetery. Doig would later be buried within 20 yards of his old boss. Neither man has a headstone to this day.
2) Ernest Mangnall: Manchester United (1907-08 and 1910-11)
Given Manchester United have just won a record 19th English league championship, the fact that they've had only three title-winning managers comes as quite a surprise. But while two of them are world-famous giants of the game, indelibly etched into the history books, United's other champion boss is a relatively peripheral figure these days.
Ernest Mangnall is, along with Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson, the only man to win a league title for United. His official title was that of secretary, but nobody was in any doubt as to who was running the team. He arrived from Burnley in 1904 ? having kept that club afloat during a "most serious crisis", according to the Manchester Evening News ? and immediately set about changing United from a run-of-the-mill Second Division side into real contenders.
A straw-boater-sporting charmer, Mangnall beat several of the country's big clubs to the signature of ball-playing defender Charlie Roberts, who would become his captain, and Southampton goalkeeper Harry Moger. United won promotion in 1906, with a team whose emphasis was on sturdy defence rather than attack.
But Mangnall did not stop there, pilfering neighbours Manchester City for attacking talent. In 1906, he signed their winger Billy Meredith, who was at the time serving a two-year ban for his part in a bribery scandal. In 1907, after City put most of their team up for sale after a brouhaha over illegal monies, Mangnall bypassed an auction set up by the club at a Piccadilly hotel by simply approaching the players he wanted in advance. He reportedly swanned through the hotel foyer and out into the Manchester evening whistling, past managers from other clubs who had been waiting patiently, having signed forward Sandy Turnbull, defender Herbert Burgess and winger Jimmy Bannister. All four ex-City players would help United win their first title a year later, then the FA Cup in 1909, then another league in 1911.
As well as being a saucy sod, Mangnall was also a pioneer: he insisted his teams were as fit as fiddles, no small diktat in an era when fags were generally considered a healthy morning repast; he took the team into Europe for the first time, for a tour of Austria and Hungary in 1908, five decades ahead of Busby; and he was instrumental in moving the club from its Bank Street ground to a purpose-built stadium in Old Trafford.
But in 1912, Mangnall left for Manchester City, who offered him big bucks to switch sides. His final game as United boss was against City ? it had to be ? with his new club running out 1-0 winners at Old Trafford, much to Mangnall's ill-disguised glee. He would win nothing at City.
3) John Haworth: Burnley (1920-21) and 4) Harry Potts: Burnley (1959-60)
Bill Nicholson, Alf Ramsey, Bill Shankly, Matt Busby, Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison, Don Revie: the managers who won an English title in the 1960s have generally gone down in history as legends, true heavyweights of the game. But two bosses buck that trend. The underappreciated Harry Catterick ? more of him in a minute ? and the very first boss to win a championship in the not-quite-yet-swinging 60s, Burnley's Harry Potts.
Potts played for Burnley in the immediate post-war years, winning promotion with the Clarets in 1947, before going off to play for Everton, then starting his managerial career at Shrewsbury Town in 1957. Burnley's owner of that era, Bob Lord, gets a bad press these days ? with some justification ? as a pompous dictatorial blowhard impotently tilting at the winds of change but he was quick to spot the potential of Potts, snapping up the talented manager barely a year into his career.
At 37 years old, Potts was the youngest boss in the First Division, but Lord's punt proved to be a wise one. The new manager inherited a squad of extremely good players ? playmaker Jimmy McIlroy, captain and engine room Jimmy Adamson, winger John Connelly, young striking partnership Jimmy Robson and Ray Pointer ? and moulded them into an attractive passing side. Potts possessed a gentle and avuncular manner, much loved by his players, and was shrewd enough to make the meddling Lord think he was getting his own way whenever he tried to interfere in football matters.
Burnley became a major force. They won the title in 1960, having reached the top of the table for the first time that season when the whistle blew at the end of the campaign's final match. They had to win at Manchester City, and did so 2-1, reserve winger Trevor Meredith scoring the decisive goal. Potts had kept the team calm ahead of the match, treating it as just another game.
Burnley came fourth the following season, and reached the quarters of the European Cup, then should have bounced back the year after as champions. But the best team for the majority of the 1961-62 season, putting in performances routinely regarded as a step up from their championship season, suddenly began to show its age. They won only two of their last 13 matches, handing the title to Alf Ramsey's Ipswich Town. Adding insult to injury, they then lost the FA Cup final against Spurs. That Adamson won the football writers' player of the year title, with McIlroy second, was no consolation.
With the maximum wage abolished, a small-town team like Burnley were bound to struggle, though Potts ensured they held on manfully. Finances dictated McIlroy was sold to Stoke, with many fans blaming the manager for the decision: vintage graffiti reading "SACK POTTS, LORD OUT" remains in the town to this day. Potts led Burnley to another European quarter-final in 1967 ? the Fairs Cup this time ? and the club were the last of the Lancashire town clubs still in the First Division when he was relieved of his duties in 1970.
He was reinstated in 1977 with the team in the Second Division, winning the Anglo-Scottish cup two years later, beating Scottish champions Celtic in both legs. But the great days were gone forever. Potts was sacked again the same year as Burnley struggled in the league.
Of course, whether Potts is the most underappreciated Burnley manager of all time is a moot point. John Haworth enjoyed an even greater level of success than Potts, and is similarly forgotten when the plaudits are handed out. Haworth took the team into the First Division in 1913, then led the club to their first and as yet only FA Cup in 1914, beating Tom Watson's Liverpool in the final. The following year saw Burnley finish fourth, three points behind champions Everton, before the Great War intervened.
Upon football's resumption, Haworth's Burnley ? built all this time around inspirational captain Tommy Boyle and striker Bob Kelly ? finished second in the league, before winning their first title in 1921. A third place the following year would be Haworth's last achievement, the manager fated to die of pneumonia in 1924 at the age of 48. He was the second Burnley boss in succession to die in office, having taken the job in 1910 after his predecessor Spen Whittaker fell from a moving train while travelling to London to sign a player.
5) Harry Catterick: Everton (1962-63 and 1969-70)
Everton were on their way to a fifth-place finish in the 1960-61 First Division, one that would be the club's highest since winning the title back in 1939, but that wasn't enough for chairman John Moores. He had pumped large quantities of his Littlewoods Pools fortune into the Toffees ? so much so that the club had become known as the Bank of England ? and with two games of the season remaining, he took manager Johnny Carey for a spin in the back of a hansom cab, where he sacked him. (For years afterwards, fans across the land who had become thoroughly sick of the clown in charge of their team would shout "taxi!" at their manager. Chalk up another small part of football culture eroded by Soccer AM.)
Four days previously, the manager of title challengers Sheffield Wednesday had walked out of his job. Earlier in the season Harry Catterick, frustrated at not being given funds to spend, had tried to leave Hillsborough for Nottingham Forest, but his request to be released from his contract had been refused. Now, after a blazing row with the board over an aborted transfer, he had been allowed to leave. He insisted that he had nowhere to go. "I would like to stay in football," was all he said upon departing. Three days after Carey's dismissal, Catterick was announced as the new manager at Goodison Park. A quirk of the fixture list meant his first game was at Wednesday; Everton won 2-1, a harbinger of things to come, which in turn would show the not-so-wise Owls what they could have had.
Catterick would win two championships at Goodison with two distinct sides. The first came in 1962-63, with a side built around the Golden Vision of Alex Young, snarling midfield irritant Bobby Collins, and the ill-fated wing-half Tony Kay, freshly plundered by Catterick from Wednesday. The second title-winning side was even better, remembered for the holy trinity in midfield of Howard Kendall, Alan Ball and Colin Harvey. In between, Everton won their first FA Cup for three decades, coming back from two goals down in the 1966 final against Sheffield Wednesday. The hero that day was Mike Trebilcock, a controversial pick over fan favourite Fred Pickering who fully justified his manager's faith with a brace as Everton came from 2-0 down to win a classic. (Most pundits had been expecting a rubbish final, incidentally, having set their heart on a "dream" clash between the other semi-finalists Chelsea and Manchester United. Same as it ever was, with this tedious fixation on the "glamour" clubs.)
Despite being one of the few managers to build distinct title-winning sides, Catterick is rarely mentioned in the exalted roll call. This is partly because he paled in comparison to the showmen of the time ? Bill Shankly, arguably the greatest performer of them all, was across the road playing the public like a fiddle, for goodness sake ? but mainly because Catterick couldn't be bothered with all that anyway. A disciplined football man, he had no time for the press, making it as hard as possible for them to write stories. He also discouraged the TV cameras from filming his side, convinced his team suffered from the loss of an element of surprise.
Catterick's champion side of 1970 disintegrated quickly after losing a European Cup quarter-final to Panathinaikos. Alan Ball was questionably sold to Arsenal while at the peak of his powers, much to the player's shock, and by 1973 Catterick himself was gone, dogged by ill health. He died of a heart attack at Goodison as Everton drew with Ipswich Town in a 1985 FA Cup tie.
(Carey, incidentally, would still have his day in the sun after that infamous taxi ride. He led Leyton Orient to their only season in the top flight in 1962, then came second behind Manchester United in the 1966-67 title race while in charge at Nottingham Forest.)
6) Dave Mackay: Derby County (1974-75)
Derby County were in a terrible mess when Dave Mackay took over as manager in 1973. With Brian Clough and Peter Taylor having resigned after losing an ego tug-of-war with chairman Sam Longson, the players were threatening to down tools in the hope of forcing the club to reinstate the pair. The club directors instead showed they weren't all preening buffoons by appointing Nottingham Forest boss Mackay, who had helped Clough and Taylor win promotion as a Derby player in 1969. Mackay immediately poured oil on troubled waters, winning respect immediately from the agitated squad. Roy McFarland would later point out that only a father figure like Mackay could have replaced Clough; had he not come in, some of the squad would most likely have gone through with their threats to fly out of country, therefore making themselves unavailable to fulfil league fixtures. With Derby having already been banned from Europe in 1970 for financial irregularities, the authorities were preparing to throw the book at them. Mackay averted the danger, and saved the club.
Mackay then set about making significant changes to the team. Bruce Rioch came into central midfield to replace McGovern and O'Hare, who would end up at Leeds with Clough. Francis Lee arrived up front, Henry Newton in midfield. Mackay went back to another of his former managerial posts, Swindon, for Rod Thomas, the marauding full-back. Derby's style changed: the team still had the steel of the Clough years, but offered more flair, pace, and creativity. Instead of grinding teams down, the likes of Lee would make things happen. The team landed the 1974-75 title.
Mackay had little luck the following season. In the European Cup, his side spanked Real Madrid 4-1 at the Baseball Ground. While the result flattered Derby slightly, any luck they had was repaid in the return leg at the Bernab�u; they crashed out 5-1, courtesy of some dubious refereeing decisions. Meanwhile domestically, County were going for the Double in April, but their season fell apart: they lost their FA Cup semi to Manchester United, pivotal new signing Charlie George dislocated his shoulder against Manchester City, and they ended the season in fourth place.
Derby started the 1976-77 season poorly. Lee had retired, while the rest of the team were getting on a bit. They still registered Derby's biggest ever win ? a 12-0 tonking of Irish part-timers Finn Harps in the Uefa Cup ? but with league form poor, Mackay got wind of rumblings from the board room. He asked for a vote of confidence ? and didn't get it. Nevertheless, Mackay is revered in Derby for his reign to this day; such a shame the Clough legend obscures the view for the rest of the country.
? For more on Derby's second league title, Rob Smyth, like a pint of plain, is your only man.
Many thanks to Rob Mason, David Harris, Ray Simpson, Gary Naylor and Andy Ellis
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/jul/08/joy-six-oft-forgotten-title-winning-managers
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