Good read , I wish we could have given him a proper send off ,he turned our troubled disjointed club around and more.
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Life since Cardiff City
It's a 24-hour-a-day job, football at any level. It's probably never been as difficult a job as it is at the moment. It's been nice to have some time off, when you work like I have, it's just switching off, it's been great. If I had left three weeks earlier they would be top of the league now!
Neil Harris' start
It's a good squad, I've left a good squad there. I think they will get in the top two, never mind the top six. The squad is really... after last year, when you get relegated you worry about what will happen to you.
We lost four or five, (Aron) Gunnarsson, Bruno Manga, Harry Arter, Camarasa, (Victor) who hasn't had a look in at Crystal Palace yet, so to lose all those players and try to replace them.
I just thought 'the fans had been absolutely amazing with me' so I just thought 'I should probably stay and steady the ship'. I probably should have left but I had to stay to steady the ship and I'm glad I have now because I've left them a good squad and it's a great club, fabulous club.
On his management career
What I like to think is when I have been at a club, I've left it in a better place. Most of the clubs I have had, they have been in a precarious situation when I have taken over and I have had to change it, even going back to Scarborough and all that.
I've got great memories, with all those promotions. They all have reunions, they are those sort of players and I think it's great, nowadays, if Manchester City win the league, I'm sure they won't have a reunion in 10 years' time.
QPR was special, that was a fabulous year, to do what we did with the squad and use Adel Taarabt who created everything. Then at Cardiff, that was a miracle really, that has got to be the best achievement.
As daft as it sounds, probably keeping Rotherham up, just before I went to Cardiff, with 14 games to go and all the top teams to play but Cardiff was special, the club was fragmented when I went in, it was all over the show. To put it back together and give the fans some pride, when they sing the national anthem down there it's amazing. The fans down there are amazing.
I don't know it but I hum it! The hairs on the back of your neck stand up, they have their own songs, they really got into me and my family, the fans, and it was great to reward them. They've got a good side now, a great stadium, the club is together and it's a fabulous place to be now. I'm sure Neil (Harris), who has taken over now, probably can't believe how you get a job like that with a squad of players like that. It was the right time (to leave) as well.
Masterminding promotion
I brought some players on free transfers, Vincent (Tan) only used to only talk about my bad signings! We brought in people like Neil Etheridge, (Nathaniel) Mendez-Laing, Sol Bamba, Junior Hoilett, all on free transfers.
We blended that in with some good players, Gunnarson was a good player. He was a manager's dream for me in that respect.
Together, we built something and we shouldn't have really gone up. You look at the Fulhams of this world, who have far better and bigger squads but we had that little bit extra, that desire. We wanted to do it that little bit more and we kept surprising people when they wrote us off.
It was a tremendous achievement, success-wise, that is probably the most difficult promotion that I have had.
Why he chose to leave
I just felt that, not guilty, but because we went down, I didn't think we should have gone down, I think we got a rough deal, if I'm honest. When you get relegated, some teams collapse, Huddersfield haven't done that well this year.
I just felt if I stayed and steadied the ships, I felt we could get back up and I still do. We lost four or five really good players but we replaced them so I think we have a steady squad now.
Probably in the best, it's probably in the top two, maybe top three squads in the division. They have a great chance, especially with the fans, like I said, I loved doing my wind-up after the game when we won. It was great to walk round and chat to the fans and give them something.
That's what you want to do as a manager, finish the game, get in your bath and think about the kids going home, the young kids going home. That's what it's all about. It was just a special time, I'm glad I've given them the pride back in the club. The number of people who come up to me, it's funny because when I go into Tesco I'm just pushing my trolley, and they come round and say 'thank you for giving us our club back'.
His relationship with the board
The chairman, Mehmet Dalman, he was brilliant for me. He helped me left, right and centre, he lives aboard now but he was my shoulder. You need someone to talk to. Between us, it was probably the most successful period we will ever have as chairman and manager really.
They'll remember my time for years to come I hope. Like I say, it was so fragmented the club, to bring it back together, especially fans who have been there 50 years. I like all that, it's lovely when people come and tell you the nice things because there is so many bad things in football. It's lovely to put something back into clubs.
Of the eight promotions and the clubs I have been at, they always remember the good times we've had in those periods. They should, it's a hard job, 40 years I've had now. This is my first Christmas I've had off I think!
Refereeing standard in the Premier League
(Against Burnley) He (referee) gave it, then he disallowed it, then he gave it, you don't know if you're coming or going. I think that's a penalty. I was more concerned with their goal because they scored a goal that was offside, which was blatantly offside. I just think he could have avoided it.
I think if we had VAR last season... had they got the one of the goalie wrong, Barnes was offside. I've got a collection of probably 10 letters from the Referees' Associations apologising, telling me they got it wrong the week after, it doesn't help you the week after.
The linesman should've flagged and Mike Dean should've seen this and that but it doesn't help you. Then there's the Chelsea thing. You haven't got that here have you? That's a shocker.
When you look at, that's not even close, the standard of referring. I went to see him after, Eddie Smart the linesman, I've got his name engraved in my mind, I don't know what they can say. Even their players (Chelsea) were embarrassed. That killed us.
You know like watching Silva on the line against Leicester when they scored last week, the last-minute winner, I knew this had done us because I knew we would have got three points that day.
What can you say? I was fined £20,000 for TV interview where I barely said anything. The FA brought an outside barrister in to do me. A big place like the FA, they don't have their own in-house lawyer? I got done £20,000, that's more than Montenegro got fined for the racist abuse. It's an absolute joke and that cost us.
On Emiliano Sala
2019 or even just before that, ours was the first game against Leicester when the helicopter accident happened and we had to deal with that which was difficult at the time.
When this happened on top of it, it was like everything, you don't get taught how to deal with things like this as a manager. It was the most difficult period I've ever had in my life. You have to try and move on because you're in charge and you've got your players and the club.
It was unreal really, I've never witnessed anything like it and I wouldn't want to do it again. Emiliano, we only met him a couple of times, but he was a lovely lad. It was just such a tragedy.
We worked hard to sign him for weeks, I thought he would be the answer to keeping us up. I still think he might have scored eight, nine or 10 goals between then and the end of the season. When you look at things, it just puts things in perspective in football, his family is more important and you've not got to forget about things like that.
I don't think Emiliano will ever be forgotten, the way our fans got behind him and mourned him really.
Good read , I wish we could have given him a proper send off ,he turned our troubled disjointed club around and more.
I'm glad he mentioned how he saved the club.....again.
Luckily he left us with such a great squad. Mind you, if they're so great, how come he didn't do more with them?
Thanks for everything Neil.
Lots that I didn't like about the way we played, but you kept us up when we were going down, and you got us promoted the following season.
Always a hero for me. Just a shame it ended the way it did.
Fans have such short and unforgiving memories!
He doesn’t really answer the questions - in particular, why he left the club and his relationship with the board. It’s a whitewash.
I think it's fair enough to say that we did not get decisions going for us in crucial matches last season and the Emiliano Sala situation must have had an impact. Add to that the fact that we were in a very awkward position when we played Leicester after their Chairman's tragic death and we did have an awful lot to cope with that most relegated sides don't get to experience. However, despite all of that, after going to Brighton and winning a potentially crucial six pointer, the selection and tactics against an already relegated Fulham side beggared belief - I reckon we'd have stayed up if we had won that game and what happened in the short time left after Fulham scored suggested that we would have done if we had gone there with a more positive approach.
Also, I don't get the logic which says it was a "miracle" that we went up in 18/19 and yet the current squad is good enough to finish in the top two. Apart from, perhaps, the Forest game (which took place after Neil Warnock left the club of course), has anyone seen a single game this season which suggests this squad could go up automatically?
Whatever Warnock’s legacy it certainly does not include leaving a top two squad and well he knows it! A massive £49m net spend - so who does he think would walk into a Leeds or West Brom side?
Far from steadying the ship, by staying beyond the end of last season Warnock left the club with an even greater task sorting out the squad he left behind.
Thanks to the lengthy contracts and big wages dealt out by the so-called ‘transfer committee’ progression from the out-dated football of the Warnock era is not going to be so easy.
Its you that should ‘hoof off’ after a post like that. You and the other miserable gits who have so far posted on this thread. Most of whom don't even go to matches. Luckily you/they are not representative of the actual main fan base who are very grateful for what Warnock did for the club.
He’s right when he says he should have left at the end of last season and I’m still none the wiser as to why he didn’t. He implies he stayed as a favour to steady the ship, but I thought it was widely recognised that we had a squad well equipped for the championship and in fact our transfer market activity before and during last season seemed to factor in a plan B.
Had he retired after the win at old Trafford he would have been rightly regarded as a very good manager for this club. And while I think he still should be, this season will obviously bring that into question somewhat. What shouldn’t be forgotten is the way he did bring things together and get everyone behind the team again after the self-inflicted mess of the past few years. But he doesn’t half blow his own trumpet. I’d love to read his self-review for his annual appraisal
I’ve never gotten those types of comments either “thank god this is only a small percent” yeah then I read Instagram comments, twitter comments, other boards, listen to people in work and out socially who seemed to all follow the opinion in some way, but yeah the reality is that 95 percent of us are in fact happy clapping arse licking dimwits like DML
I think if he left we keep Reid, maybe Zohore stays (wasn’t it Warnock who commented on KZ leaving?) that’s 2 of the 4 who looked really good when the pressure was off at United that left us, Murphy looks like he’s had the life and spark trampled out of him after a year with Neil as well.
Does a new manager address the obvious weaknesses in the squad? No other RB, pace and ball control needed at CB, does Cunningham stay? Do we add pace to the middle?
What favour did he do us by staying?
You can throw as many comments off me by dimwits like DML as you like I will not be convinced otherwise we were better off with him here “steadying then ship”
Neil Warnock is all about Neil Warnock.
Can't surprise people he was bigging himself up on a national tv show. Can't agree with him on third best squad in the champ but he admitted he should've gone earlier so fair do's on that. He done a good job and stayed a little too long, but probably got out just before it went completely sour. There's not much more too it than that, he will rightly go down as one of our best ever managers even if his "plucky underdogs" line got a bit tiresome.
Sounds like he wants a job to tie him over until the end of the season. Sunderland could do a lot worse than getting him in to see them over the line promotion wise.
My take on it is that he left us with an aging, expensive squad of players who weren't getting results and some of whom he couldn't even play. Now that Neil Harris has had a little run with them he wants to take credit for it. Which is his wont. Along with blaming refs for bad results.
I'm grateful for what he did in his first two years of the club, but let's make him out to be some sort of messiah.
Isn’t our wage bill higher? And we have and ageing squad too.
I understand the wages go up as we went up a division, but we hardly have a complete squad. There’s still plenty of gaps to fill. If he left us with competition in all areas and lowered the age I’d get your point. But he hasn’t.
Remember where we were when he took over.
We do indeed have a mediocre squad but it’s a solid enough platform for Harris to work with and improve over the next couple of transfer windows.
We have no fear of relegation and I’m sure that.
We also have parachute payments.
Neil warnock was a superb manager for cardiff city
He dragged the club up by its bootstraps
A bluebirds legend
Thanks Neil
Seems like Neil Harris ain't doing a bad job either
Warnock is a show off and a whinger but by heck he's a superb manager and we were lucky to have him
It's only a few weeks ago Neil harris was being compared to slade and trollope by a few on here and some even suggested he was warnock in disguise with boring route one football
Some of our supporters are off their heads