Ken Furphy

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boo radley said:
Stoke on goal average as I remember?
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Yes, but Everton (finished in 4th place) won their appeal against the one club per city ruling for European club competitions. Liverpool (2nd) finished above Everton that season and got their UEFA Cup place and Stoke finishing in 5th place thought they got an UEFA Cup place along with Ipswich (3rd) until Everton's successful appeal.

EDS club was Furphy's idea to beat hooliganism but it was short lived
 
Yep - RIP Ken

There aren't enough Kens in the World and one less is a time to reflect.
One of our better managers that worked with us at the top tier of the game.
 
Ken Furphy was a bit before my time, but i would be interested to know who how he stacked up alongside the more modern day managers we have had.
 
Yes those were fabulous days. RIP Ken. You left me with wonderful memories.
 
RIP Ken
Two games away from being champions of England in my lifetime how long will anyone who started watching United in 1980 or 1990 have to wait to see us being that close in their lifetime. In dark times I do wonder if we will ever be in the top half of the top league again
 
Deleted Member said:
Ken Furphy was a bit before my time, but i would be interested to know who how he stacked up alongside the more modern day managers we have had.
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An interesting question Brownie.

In his one full season in charge he finished in our highest league position in my lifetime and, as such, he deserves some credit and I am obviously saddened by his death.

However, that isn't the whole story. He took over a very good team BUT with a board who make our present one look like Viv Nicholson (as your parents) on acid.
He made us far less entertaining to watch and he recruited Garbutt and Field a duo so poor it hurts me to mention them even today. He then broke the £100k purchase price barrier on a certain Chris Guthrie and was disposed of late October/November time with about three points in the bag (in other words we were doomed).
Add to that his efforts, in the previous year, to try and swap Tony Currie out to Leeds (for an aging Billy Bremner and Trevor Cherry), which the board balked at due to the unpopularity of the Elland Road team as a whole around these parts, and you will see he wasn't a 100% success by any means.
However, as with many cases since, he was better than his successor!
 
Grecian2000 said:
An interesting question Brownie.

In his one full season in charge he finished in our highest league position in my lifetime and, as such, he deserves some credit and I am obviously saddened by his death.

However, that isn't the whole story. He took over a very good team BUT with a board who make our present one look like Viv Nicholson (as your parents) on acid.
He made us far less entertaining to watch and he recruited Garbutt and Field a duo so poor it hurts me to mention them even today. He then broke the £100k purchase price barrier on a certain Chris Guthrie and was disposed of late October/November time with about three points in the bag (in other words we were doomed).
Add to that his efforts, in the previous year, to try and swap Tony Currie out to Leeds (for an aging Billy Bremner and Trevor Cherry), which the board balked at due to the unpopularity of the Elland Road team as a whole around these parts, and you will see he wasn't a 100% success by any means.
However, as with many cases since, he was better than his successor!
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My dad was always pretty lukewarm about Furphy. He inherited a class side. What did he do with it?
 



WalthamstowBlade said:
My dad was always pretty lukewarm about Furphy. He inherited a class side. What did he do with it?
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I'm with your Dad Walthy (not literally).
It was a class side BUT it was aging badly and we had a board who thought we could buy 2nd and 3rd division players to replace the players we had. That's what we did and the results were inevitable. Not all Ken's fault but he picked some piss poor players up.
 
Grecian2000 said:
I'm with your Dad Walthy (not literally).
It was a class side BUT it was aging badly and we had a board who thought we could buy 2nd and 3rd division players to replace the players we had. That's what we did and the results were inevitable. Not all Ken's fault but he picked some piss poor players up.
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Another factor was that the conveyor belt of good young players which produced the Northern Intermediate League side of the mid 60s was never as productive after Archie Clark died.

Or so says Walth Snr...
 
WalthamstowBlade said:
My dad was always pretty lukewarm about Furphy. He inherited a class side. What did he do with it?
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The older element around at the time would agree with your Dad. He inherited a classy, but ageing team that just missed real glory. A decent centre forward was needed (sound familiar?) to replace dear old Bill Dearden and he opted to spend a substantial amount on Chris Guthrie.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but some astute buying in the mid-70s would have made us a major force in English football. Furphy isn't necessarily totally to blame for the demise that set in. :(
 
RIP Ken, I can't see us finishing so high in the league in my lifetime. It realy was a fantastic team we had in 74 sadly we were always a few decent back up players short and then we were crippled paying for the south stand so the foundations built by Harris could not be built on.
 
Yes, I'd echo the sentiments of SEB, Grecian & Walth Sen.
Furph came with some new ideas ( he saw himself as a radical in football management terms) and tried to change old habits quickly.
He alienated himself with some of the established pros and had a particularly difficult relationship with TC.
His budget to replace the ageing players was (as ever with sufc) limited, and his signings struggled to stand up to scrutiny.
Sacked too soon? Possibly, but he ruffled important feathers with his no nonsense outspoken style, off with his head at 1st opportunity!
This forum would have had him sacked even quicker! :)
RIP Furph!
 
Grecian2000 said:
I'm with your Dad Walthy (not literally).
It was a class side BUT it was aging badly and we had a board who thought we could buy 2nd and 3rd division players to replace the players we had. That's what we did and the results were inevitable. Not all Ken's fault but he picked some piss poor players up.
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To be fair, that "class side" from Oct 71 to May 74, was always a low to middling top division team that never troubled tyhe top end of the Division. Whatever he did (and that was after he signed Garbett, Bradford and Field), Furphy turned themn into a team that for one glorious season was a contender.

What then happened in 75-6 was a bit of a mystery. We didn't sell any players and only added Guthrie. One would expect that team to have easily held its own after a 6th place finish, but having drawn our first game we then had 7 straight defeats, beat Burnley and then lost the next 2 before Furphy was sacked with a record of P11 W1 D1 L9.
 
Trigger Blade said:
It's safe to say that he was better than all but a slack handful of his 26 successors :)
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That's an interesting phrase Trig, is a slack handful bigger or smaller than a normal one?
At a quick stab I would say Porterfield, Bassett, Kendal, Warnock and Clough were/are more capable than Ken.
I have a soft spot for Haslam (it's a peat bog in southern Ireland) and suspect he was a tad unlucky and Spackman was promising but no more.
The rest are a sorry shower at the management lark.
 
Darren said:
To be fair, that "class side" from Oct 71 to May 74, was always a low to middling top division team that never troubled tyhe top end of the Division. Whatever he did (and that was after he signed Garbett, Bradford and Field), Furphy turned themn into a team that for one glorious season was a contender.

What then happened in 75-6 was a bit of a mystery. We didn't sell any players and only added Guthrie. One would expect that team to have easily held its own after a 6th place finish, but having drawn our first game we then had 7 straight defeats, beat Burnley and then lost the next 2 before Furphy was sacked with a record of P11 W1 D1 L9.
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Another way of looking at it is that the "hard to explain" portion was the golden patch that got us so high in the league and that the real form was what arrived the following season. Bad as Guthrie was (and my God he was piss poor) he couldn't destroy the team single handed.
 
Grecian2000 said:
Another way of looking at it is that the "hard to explain" portion was the golden patch that got us so high in the league and that the real form was what arrived the following season. Bad as Guthrie was (and my God he was piss poor) he couldn't destroy the team single handed.
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But in one full season, 74-75, excatly the same team (minus Guthrie) had been a average to good First Division team (at no time in that season had we troubled the bottom end of the table) and yet suddenly, three months later, they were shit.

Also re buying lower division players, that's exactly what Harris did - of the squad Furphy inherited, he had Franks from Watford, Hemsely from Shrewsbury, Flynn from Workington and Dearden from Chester, so Furphy was hardly departing from the norm in signing Field, Garbett, Bradford and Guthrie. Even then United could not afford to buy decent top division players.
 
Darren said:
Also re buying lower division players, that's exactly what Harris did - of the squad Furphy inherited, he had Franks from Watford, Hemsely from Shrewsbury, Flynn from Workington and Dearden from Chester, so Furphy was hardly departing from the norm in signing Field, Garbett, Bradford and Guthrie. Even then United could not afford to buy decent top division players.
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Post #17 from Walthy (or his dad) about the production line stopping, is crucial to this. You can get away with risking getting in a Ted Hemsley when you've still got a Len Badger on the other side, or a Billy Dearden to knock in the crosses of Alan Woodward. When you haven't got that home grown talent and all you're doing is buying third division, you end up in the third division (my Dads favourite quote when I'd get home from another shitty away defeat that he'd decided not to attend).
I think what made the Garbett/Field axis so unpalatable (aside from their absolute shitness) was that he'd worked with them before and knew what he was getting!

As to your last sentence, couldn't or wouldn't would be the question.
 
Darren said:
But in one full season, 74-75, excatly the same team (minus Guthrie) had been a average to good First Division team (at no time in that season had we troubled the bottom end of the table) and yet suddenly, three months later, they were shit.

Also re buying lower division players, that's exactly what Harris did - of the squad Furphy inherited, he had Franks from Watford, Hemsely from Shrewsbury, Flynn from Workington and Dearden from Chester, so Furphy was hardly departing from the norm in signing Field, Garbett, Bradford and Guthrie. Even then United could not afford to buy decent top division players.
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I understand we were very close to signing Francis Lee, until the board baulked at paying that much for an older forward, and spent almost the same on Guthrie. But he is probably the exception that proves the rule.
 
Grecian2000 said:
Post #17 from Walthy (or his dad) about the production line stopping, is crucial to this. You can get away with risking getting in a Ted Hemsley when you've still got a Len Badger on the other side, or a Billy Dearden to knock in the crosses of Alan Woodward. When you haven't got that home grown talent and all you're doing is buying third division, you end up in the third division (my Dads favourite quote when I'd get home from another shitty away defeat that he'd decided not to attend).
I think what made the Garbett/Field axis so unpalatable (aside from their absolute shitness) was that he'd worked with them before and knew what he was getting!

As to your last sentence, couldn't or wouldn't would be the question.
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At the start of 75-6, our first choice team would have been

Brown - aged 23

Badger - 30
Colquhoun - 30
Franks - 24
Bradford - 22

Currie - 25
Eddy - 30
Speight - - 24

Woodward -28
Guthrie - 21
Field - 29

Average age - 26

I hardly think we can call that team aging - only 3 players the wrong side of 30 (and then only just) and, as I say, apart from Guthrie, that was the side that had only 2 defeats in the second half of the 74-5 season and saw us finish 6th. My view is that the confidence went after the first 3-4 defeats at the start of 75-6 and the players never recoverd from that.
 
Darren said:
At the start of 75-6, our first choice team would have been

Brown - aged 23

Badger - 30
Colquhoun - 30
Franks - 24
Bradford - 22

Currie - 25
Eddy - 30
Speight - - 24

Woodward -28
Guthrie - 21
Field - 29

Average age - 26

I hardly think we can call that team aging - only 3 players the wrong side of 30 (and then only just) and, as I say, apart from Guthrie, that was the side that had only 2 defeats in the second half of the 74-5 season and saw us finish 6th. My view is that the confidence went after the first 3-4 defeats at the start of 75-6 and the players never recoverd from that.
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How does that team compare to the one for the back end of the previous season? I mean, were Franks, Bradford, Speight, and Guthrie in it?
 



The South Stand was built at that time and probably curtailed any plans for player investment for several years after that.
With an ageing squad and too low a budget to replace with any quality the inevitable happened, I guess
 
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