Lennie Lawrence

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Lennie Lawrence, (born December 12, 1947), is a British football manager. He has managed Charlton Athletic, Luton Town, Grimsby Town and Plymouth Argyle. Most recently he managed Cardiff City, and is now Director of Football at Bristol Rovers. He has had a fairly successful career.

He got his start at Charlton Athletic in 1983, doing much to keep the club stable in a season with much trouble over the club's ownership. At the end of the 1985-86 season, he guided Charlton to second place in the Football League Second Division which meant that they were promoted to the First Division after some 30 years in exile. They remained at this level for four seasons until slipping back down to the Second Division at the end of the 1989-90 season. Lawrence remained in charge for one more season before handing over the reins to joint managers Alan Curbishley (who later took sole charge of the club) and Steve Gritt.

Lawrence, meanwhile, was named as Middlesbrough's new manager before the start of the 1991-92 season as successor to Colin Todd. Under Lawrence's stewardship, Middlesbrough finished Second Division runners-up in his first season as manager and gained promotion to the new FA Premier League. But they struggled in 1992-93 and were relegated at the end of the season. Lawrence remained in charge until the end of the 1993-94 season, after which he handed in his resignation and made way for Bryan Robson.

The next stop for Lennie Lawrence was at Bradford City in Division Two, where he was appointed for the 1994-95 season in place of Frank Stapleton. A mid table finish was unremarkable but Bradford made a good start to his second season, the 1995-96 season, and were mounting a serious promotion challenge. Lennie Lawrence left Bradford in December 1995 to be succeeded by Chris Kamara, who would guide them to promotion as playoff winners at the end of the season. He moved to Luton Town, who were bottom of Division One.

Lennie Lawrence was unable to save Luton Town from relegation to Division Two at the end of the 1995-96 season and they failed to gain promotion the following season after losing to Crewe in the playoff semi-finals. Lawrence remained in charge until the end of the 1999-2000 season when he finally resigned, after four-and-a-half years at the helm had failed to inspire a promotion challenge.

He made a quick return to management for the 2000-01 season with Division One side Grimsby Town. They avoided relegation and made a reasonable start to the 2001-02 season, and caused an upset in the League Cup Third round by knocking out holders Liverpool 2:1 after extra time at Anfield, scoring with a Phil Jevons wonder-goal in the last minute. Lawrence was sacked later in the season after Grimsby plummeted from the top of Division One in September to the foot of the table by Christmas, and, after a short while out of the game joined Division Two side Cardiff City as a consultant. Owner Sam Hammam had made it clear to manager Alan Cork that he expected back-to-back promotions, which it did not look like Cork was going to deliver. Eventually Cork was sacked, and Lawrence took over the manager's chair.

Cardiff just missed out of the Division Two playoffs at the end of the 2001-02 season. But they made it one better in 2002-03 by reaching the Division Two playoff final and beating Queens Park Rangers to reach the upper half of the league for the first time in almost 20 years. Lennie Lawrence and his team defied the odds and remained in this division ever since. At the end of the 2004-05 season Lawrence announced that he was stepping down as manager of Cardiff. After acting as a consultant at Cardiff for a while, he was appointed Director of Football at Bristol Rovers, working alongside coach Paul Trollope in a two-tier managerial structure.

[edit] External links

• Lennie Lawrence managerial statistics at soccerbase.com

Preceded by: Mike Kelly	Plymouth Argyle F.C. manager 1978 (caretaker)	Succeeded by: Malcolm Allison
Preceded by: Ken Craggs	Charlton Athletic F.C. manager 1982-1991	Succeeded by: Alan Curbishley & Steve Gritt
Preceded by: Colin Todd	Middlesbrough F.C. manager 1991-1994	Succeeded by: Bryan Robson
Preceded by: Frank Stapleton	Bradford City F.C. manager 1994-1995	Succeeded by: Chris Kamara
Preceded by: Terry Westley	Luton Town F.C. manager 1995-2000	Succeeded by: Ricky Hill
Preceded by: John Cockerill (caretaker)	Grimsby Town F.C. manager 2000-2001	Succeeded by: Paul Groves
Preceded by: Alan Cork	Cardiff City F.C. manager 2002-2005	Succeeded by: Dave Jones