Peter Taylor as a manager

[BoyWonder2]

Does anybody have Peter Taylor's record as Southend United manager?

Also, what was he like as a manager for us?

 

[maninasuitcase]

Does anybody have Peter Taylor's record as Southend United manager?

Also, what was he like as a manager for us?

His win/draw/loss record will be on Southend's soccerbase entry.

 

[manor15]

Does anybody have Peter Taylor's record as Southend United manager?

According to Wiki, managed 84, won 27, drew 16, lost 41, win ratio 32%

 

[Beefy]

He had a tough job. I wasn't a fan at the time but I was 15 so I didn't remember him as a player and I'd just had two promotions, Stan Collymore then Barry Fry. Managing Southend looked like an easy job! Then Taylor came in and suddenly this amazing attacking Southend side with the likes of Ricky Otto, Andy Ansah, Jonathan Hunt, Tommy Mooney were looking really ordinary.

I think a lot has come out since about how a lot of the players didn't want to be there any more and it was such a shame because whilst both double-promotion winning sides were great that Barry Fry team was something else. I'm certain we'd have been playing Premier League football the next year had Fry not left. Bournemouth's team this year remind me of that side.

 

[THE SEVENTIES NORTH BANK]

Barry Fry was a very hard act to follow. The players responded to his unorthodox ways, man management, his humour and his rants. Peter Taylor was the complete opposite. The word was that some of those same players didn't respond to him and lost respect. Some were out the door but replaced by inferior quality as Peter Taylor wasn't so good in the transfer market either.
He's obviously improved as a manager due to his vast experience, but it's not a great managerial record to say the least. His best time was probably with the England under 21s.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

He was out of his depth.

Swapping Tommy Mooney for Keith Dublin is in itself one of the worst transfers ever perpetrated, but incredibly we actually gave them money as well.

Swapping our record signing and another future Premiership player for Dave Regis and Harry Willis wasn't the greatest move either.

His set pieces were innovative. There was the free-kick against Watford where our players deliberately run into each other and left it for Watford to break and then the short corner at Stoke where the first time Stoke touched it was when it was presented to Wayne Biggins inside our penalty area.

But he's almost certainly a better manager now than he was then as he seems to have learnt from his experience.

 

[londonblue]

He was out of his depth.

Swapping Tommy Mooney for Keith Dublin is in itself one of the worst transfers ever perpetrated, but incredibly we actually gave them money as well.

Swapping our record signing and another future Premiership player for Dave Regis and Harry Willis wasn't the greatest move either.

His set pieces were innovative. There was the free-kick against Watford where our players deliberately run into each other and left it for Watford to break and then the short corner at Stoke where the first time Stoke touched it was when it was presented to Wayne Biggins inside our penalty area.

But he's almost certainly a better manager now than he was then as he seems to have learnt from his experience.

Swapping Tommy Mooney for Keith Dublin was a cost cutting/money making exercise by VJ. It had nothing to do with PT.

 

[LCBB72]

Swapping Tommy Mooney for Keith Dublin was a cost cutting/money making exercise by VJ. It had nothing to do with PT.

I think a lot went on that we dont know , we dont know what seeds of discontent Judas had sown in the dressing room .

 

[Seedy Nigel]

Tommy Mooney is a Watford legend!

Because of Taylor, Mooney fell out of love with football and came very close to giving up football completely. Here is an interesting insight to Mooney's time under Peter Taylor while he was at Southend, from the Watford Legends website http://www.watfordlegends.com/Tommy Mooney Part 1.html

Hi Tommy. Your Watford career started strangely, scoring against your own club whilst on loan…

I signed on loan from Southend on the Friday and travelled straight up to Sunderland for my debut. I actually played against Southend at home in one of my first games for Watford, in fact it may even have been my home debut. We won 2-0 and I scored. It happens more now but that was one of the first times that somebody had scored against there parent club. It was a bit strange, but I didn’t get on with Peter Taylor who was the Southend manager at the time so I had a bit of a wry smile on my face as I ran back to the half way line after the goal.

I remember you gave a little thumbs up as you ran past the benches on your way back!

Well it might have been a thumb…but it might not have been! He had made it very difficult for me to leave Southend for six months and then in the last week of the transfer deadline as it was then as opposed to a window, he said ‘alright I will let you go’.

When I look back at it now it is different and I have thanked him for it several times since as I had eight great years at Watford, but at the time he was very, very stubborn and a pain in the arse.

Why Watford? How did it all come about?

I knew Glenn Roeder. I had played against him when he was player manager at Gillingham. The move had been on and off for a little while. Peter Taylor wasn’t going to play me in his first team at Southend but he only wanted to sell me rather than loan me out. He had already turned down 9 or 10 loan offers for me, including one from my home town club Middlesbrough. As soon as he turned that down me and him fell out the very same day.

I then played in the reserves for a couple of months. When he finally realised that nobody wanted to buy me but a few clubs wanted to take me on loan, he allowed me to do it. Because of Glenn Roeder and because it was only an hour from my Essex home at the time that was the reason I went there in all honesty. I had no allegiances to Watford at the time. It all came down to knowing Glenn and travelling time.

How far into your time at Watford did you realise that you were really enjoying it enough to get settled?

I loved it from day one. I had spent 6 months at Southend hating it so much that I had put my house up for sale and I was going to go back up north and give up the game completely because of how Peter Taylor was treating me and because of how I was feeling about the game. I was only six months in to a three year contract that I had signed with Barry Fry. Barry then went on to Birmingham and they wouldn’t let me go with him. In all honesty I spent six months at Southend not wanting to be a footballer.

Then I went to Watford and it changed. I think we got a result up at Sunderland, then we beat Southend and in the space of a fortnight I had got my hunger back. The Watford fans had taken to me straight away as well. Basically, I wanted to be a footballer again. There was no way on earth though that I was going back to Southend. It was left right up until the last minute for the deal to become permanent but I knew it was going to happen all the way along. I was delighted when it did officially become permanent.

 

[LCBB72]

Would not let him go to Birmingham , what did I say about seeds of discontent .

 

[rlb999]

My least favourite Southend manager and someone who took the club further backwards more quickly than any other manager I can remember. Looking back it's probably fair to say that the players he inherited wanted to be elsewhere, but we went from having a manager who unearthed gem after gem from lower down the pyramid, to having a manager who took other people's cast offs, at the wrong age, and probably on the wrong money. That first 6 months after Fry was my worst experience as a Southend fan, possibly because expectations had built up earlier in the season.
Managerial appointments were hit and miss in those days though - fortunately Ron currently has a much better record.

 

[LCBB72]

We took all the cast offs because Judas had spent all the money .