4: Peter Daniel 0.79 PPG
We’re right down in the mire now, the worst four managers in our history according to points per game. Peter Daniel took over the from George Kerr in 1986/87 as we slumped towards the bottom of the table, managing just two wins in 14 matches. Oddly, one of those was a resounding 3-1 win against Champions Northampton Town, proving that the club had the performances in them.
Sadly, we didn’t have enough an Daniel’s reign was doomed from the start. he was forced to sell Gary Strodder and struggled to bring in a replacement, plus he was let down by a misfiring Gary Lund and inadequate loan signings such as Jimmy Gilligan and Derek Hood. The story of how we fell out of the league is well-known and Daniel’s spell as manager is widely regarded as a disaster.
3: John Pickering 0.75 PPG
Taking over from a club legend cannot be easy and Lincoln City in 1985/86 was not a great place to be. Sadly, just months after the Bradford Fire, the club’s focus was not on the playing squad and that proved to be the downfall of Pickering and of Lincoln. Pickering had been Colin murphy’s assistant since 1981 and had worked with some great Lincoln players, but he couldn’t make the step up to management.
He recruited Bob Latchford hoping for goals, but didn’t get many. The team didn’t play too badly in the early stages of the season, reaching sixth in October, but plummeted badly after that. Three defeats in cup competitions help to push Pickering above Daniel and Clarke, with the former not playing a cup match and the latter getting one of his three wins in the cup.
Pickering oversaw a 7-0 defeat at Derby and when Cardiff, later relegated with us, beat us 4-0, his time was up. 10 defeats in 11 matches meant he lost 14 of his 24 in charge.
2: Steve Wicks 0.63 PPG
The short spell Steve Wicks spent in charge of the club lasted from September 2nd 1995 until Sunday 15th October. In that time he bagged one win, 4-3 in the Mickey Mouse Cup against Rochdale, and two draws. He got rid of David Puttnam and Dean West, replacing the latter with Kevin Hulme. His spell was nothing short of a disaster and whilst the dinosaur football of Sam Ellis couldn’t get the best out of a decent squad, Wicks managed to get the best players out of the squad.
He is believed to have applied for the job a couple of times, being unsuccessful on each occasion, before John Reames relented and gave him his chance. Oddly, despite his appalling form and transfer record, fans were chanting Wicks’ name as we drew 0-0 with Scarborough, his former club, the day before he was sacked. Mind you, with John Beck in the stands watching on, many felt he was being treated badly.
He later helped us out whilst scouting for Newcastle, recommending Darren Huckerby to the Magpies, helping bring a lump sum into the coffers which helped John Beck go on and earn promotion.
1: Con Moulson 0 PPG
Anyone who has perused the articles Malcolm Johnson writes for the site will have read about Cornelius Moulson, an Eire international who made 88 pre-war appearances for the club. As a player, he served diligently, but his record as a manager was embarrassing to say the least. Malcom, who puts it far more eloquently than I, says:
“City now embarked upon one of the lowest points in their history. The Directors, with their team selecting having put City into a worse position than when they began decided now to turn to a professional. Con Moulson had been amongst City’s greatest-ever players, winning 3 international caps for Eire in the 1930s but now aged 58 he had been out of the game for over 20 years and was working as a machinist at Ruston & Hornsby.
Moulson’s first game in charge failed to stop the rot, with a 2-0 home defeat to next-to-bottom Bradford City.
Maurice Burton was particularly scathing as Moulson had declared the team would adopt a 3-3-4 formation but according to MB, this “…rapidly became something of the order of 7-3-0 as Bradford City took command”, describing it as “one of the poorest exhibitions put on by a Lincoln side for many years”. Moulson declared: “some players did not do as I told them. I have a lethargically-minded team, and this is my urgent problem”, going on to say he would be a hard taskmaster in training.”
This went on for eight matches, none of which brought a win. Nor a draw. The club did tempt Roy Chapman back to the fold though, a coup at the time, and he went on to replace the beleaguered Moulson, only to also find himself on this list 55 years later.
Tilson, Buckley, Clarke, Wicks, Kerr, Daniel, Sutton & Bell (both not listed)… hell, we’ve had some bloody terrible managers in my lifetime and hopefully we won’t get one as bad as that lot in the foreseeable future. Makes you wonder how any of them were ever appointed in the first place.
Thought Willie Bell would be in there. A shocking team.
春暖花开，下次再来！
Shows why some stats need further context, like pass completion if the pass is just 2 yards back and forth. Westley and Tilson are 0.01 apart and yet hugely different reputation wise. Perhaps you need to factor in who the teams were we lost to in both cases. It is also relevant when a run happens, Tilson lost a run of games at the end of the season, Westley at the start so the outcomes are very different.
Buckley is no surprise. But for the LDV Vans area final run, ending in a shoeing from Vale, we were utterly awful. We tried to play passing football and it was woeful. But for the quirk of Hereford v Brighton as last game of the season, those being the bottom two and only one goes down, it could have been a worse outcome. And I will never forgive his son; I came back to Stanstead airport in June wearing a Lincoln shirt and the security guard gave me a load of grief about one of our players stealing from others and is the sort of thing my people did. And you can’t exactly robustly argue back in that situation so had to just smile and nod.
Beggars belief really why we appointed a manager so intrinsically linked with our biggest rivals – I remember being appalled at the time of his appointment, no way did I want him as our manager. And then the utterly deplorable act of employing his useless (and dishonest) son on a two-year deal further added fuel to my ire, along with shocking performances on the pitch. And to think, Buckley had the likes of Marriott, Morgan, Holmes, G Brown, Sedgemore, Thorpe, Finnigan, Bailey, Barnett, Bimson and Walker at his disposal and he still nearly sent us down.
Not only linked, but key to their period of (relatively) huge success. I dare say a poll of best Grimsby managers would have Buckley in there