charlietoogood

Ah, that old story... just 'cos something appears in newspapers doesn't mean it's true (one journo runs a story, others pick up on it, suddenly it's true) It's true that he had problems with his Sky bill, and it's true that around January '08 he started refusing to speak to them, but it was more down to his perception of them having a negative effect on football. But the bill didn't exactly endear the Sky organisation to him either. 2+2 = 4.5 if you will. It's not just Sky, though, on several occasions he wouldn't speak to any media at all - not even County's own website... although that was more because the club was in a bad situation and he didn't trust himself to avoid saying anything controversial. It's a recurring theme on my posts about him, but you'll find he really does speak his mind.

Boothroyd & Jim are good friends, they took their Pro License course at the same time. Very similar managers.

You're right, he's rubbish. He might as well come back to Stockport...

During his whole time at EP, there was only one time when he made a comment he shouldn't have, and that was describing Bristol Rovers as nothing special (or something) and criticising their club after a controversially postponed game at their place (they had a huge cup game against Bristol City the following Tuesday and didn't exactly put a lot of effort into sorting their pitch out for our game). That's it, though, and he was commendably quiet the week of our playoff games against Wycombe, when their attempt at mindgames failed & turned out very cringeworthy. But as I say above, he'd often criticise officials after games and I'm sure that will have appeared to others as clutching at straws after defeats (no-one noticed when he'd criticise them after victories). He's also very big on football being played the right way, and as such very critical of physical sides - you should also expect to hear him talk of referees "not protecting the players" pretty often. We were a very fair side - by far the best disciplinary record of the top 4 divisions last season, not one red card in the league. He's a man who will very much speak his mind & I've no doubt he will get people's backs up in Scotland. If it's anything like the last 18 months down here, though, it'll be along the lines of "I think he's a knob (wish we played football like that though)"

Wouldn't quite go that far! In fact a number of players didn't like him as a person. But if you join the army, you don't care whether your sergeant is a nice bloke or not, you want him to be a good leader, and he certainly had the players' respect.

Bit harsh to be fair, he's certainly made a lot of controversial comments but they're usually quite justified. He'd often criticise pitches or, most usually, officials - it's very much to his annoyance that a game you spend all week preparing for, with so many professional people putting lots of effort into it, ends up being decided by the incorrect decisions of a man whose day job is a traffic warden. Get ready to hear the word 'professionalism' a lot.

Over time, guaranteed. Just don't go expecting instantaneous success; you might see a couple of years of odd selections, formations not working as well as they should. You'll almost certainly get one or two people upset, probably players. I can't guarantee you'll do brilliantly after a few months, but I can after three years.

Or, as with the Anthony Pilkington example above, if it had been up to Jim it would have been turned down because there was still room for him to improve as a player & the offer was nowhere near his worth. SCFC will always be a selling club, it's just a matter of it being the right time to sell. Any manager who'd weaken his team so that he could build an extension on his house has no professional pride.

The rumour around our message boards was he was on £200k a year, plus a percentage of transfer fees (which I understand is quite a common thing, but not often mentioned. I suppose people might argue that'd make a manager want to sell players for his own profit, but then, surely it'd make him want to develop players to be even better and therefore worth even more?). Seeing as we were staring the Conference in the face when he came in, and he went on to win nearly 50% of games during his time, then I'd reiterate the point about him being worth every penny. And I could go on for ages trying to pinpoint the exact moment things started going wrong, but various factors included - - ending up renting our own ground from a rugby club (a ground we'd owned for 100 years) - being owned by our Trust, hence having no-one to put money into the club - owing tax going back several years which no-one had bothered to sort out (or even mention) - our MD taking out a loan this time last year which gave another company debenture over our bank account The interesting bit is, that MD was put on gardening leave last winter and a new guy came in, managed to nearly sort things out & actually had a deal set up to pay off all our debts over time. On hearing that, the company mentioned above filed for us to go into administration - rug pulled from right under our feet. A cynic might suggest the former MD wanted to take the club over again and knew there was no way the club would be willingly sold to him.. And that cynic might suggest that said former MD is part of the consortium that's close to buying back the club. Such a cynic might also suggest that Jim didn't get along with that MD at all and was waiting to see who'd take over at EP before deciding whether he should look elsewhere, and that's why he's now joined 'Well. Not me, of course... I'm not cynical.

As I said elsewhere, there was more to it than that. But he is a very, very stubborn man. Two players - Anthony Pilkington and Oli Johnson - were signed from clubs in the 9th tier of English football. Pilks took a couple of years to develop (as I say on the P&B site, trust Jim for a couple of years with players and you'll get your reward) but when he did, he was amazing. Sold in January in a fire sale for about £350k, if it weren't for the money problems he'd easily have been going for a million this summer. When we played Swindon away on a Tuesday this season, he put in the best individual performance I've seen in a County shirt... and I've seen a lot of good players. Likewise Johnson, who's lauded as Find Of The Season in this month's FourFourTwo. And there's many other players plucked from nowhere, aswell. At Edgeley Park, he had lists & lists of players for every position, for every eventuality - whether he'd have money to spend or no money, whether he could only get them on loan, whether he needed someone to make an impact or whether there was a spot available in the U21 development squad. He pulled so many rabbits out of the hat that he deserves membership of the Magic Circle. (I know it might seem like I'm his PR guy, but every single Stockport County fan will tell you the same things about him) One final bit on this point - when he went to discuss with Brighton about taking over there, he already knew about their squad and when he sat down with their chairman he told him which players needed to go and which areas needed strengthening and who he'd bring in - he had it all mapped out already, so I'll be amazed if he hasn't got a good idea what he's giong to do at Fir Park already. (He wasn't too impressed with their chairman, plus they offered him less than he'd initially been led to believe, so he turned them down)

Firstly, he was worth every single penny. Second, he wanted Dicker to join Bury not Brighton, the only reason he joined Brighton was because they offered more money & we desperately needed everything we could get. Thirdly, he was born in London (lived near Millwall's old Den) but he's very much an Irishman. Think he was in the Irish army actually.

The 5 year plan thing is overstated. He had umpteen different 5 year plans, because for the last 12 months here he never got to find out what his budget was. (Imagine being SPL and having a budget similar to Airdrie) He never needed money to be successful here, just a club that was run sensibly. I know your man Boyle isn't always Mr Popular, but he's the sort of guy we've been crying out for down here. We don't want squillionaire Arabs round here (if we did, we'd follow everyone else in Stockport and support M#n C##y), just someone with a business head who could keep the club running evenly and give Jimbo a competetive budget would have been nice. Success would have been guaranteed then, I know that much, but it seems he'll find that stability in Lanarkshire instead. The fact Jim kept us competetive for so long shows he deserves an honorary degree in Human Resources. Those results papered over cracks so big you could climb in and discover some new species.

I'm a County fan with a soft spot for 'Well (hence having been registered on here for a while) All I can say is, you literally could not have got a better man for the job. I know MFC don't have many resources, but that's the same environment in which he thrived down here. We were 5th in League One on Christmas when we had one of the 5 smallest budgets in the entire Football League. I'll simply link to a post I made on P&B as otherwise I'd be repeating a lot of stuff. The stuff about faith in youth is particularly pertinent for 'Well I believe. The one thing I'll add, though, is that he certainly wasn't afraid to criticise the pitch at Edgeley Park (which was shocking), but I think your pitch was probably one of the few ones in the UK that was worse. I don't know if it's been sorted yet, if it hasn't he'll certainly make mention of it. Good luck Jim, it's such a shame you were treated so poorly and this club has been stripped bare.