Mike Newell (footballer)
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| Mike Newell | ||
| Personal information | ||
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Michael Colin Newell | |
| Date of birth | January 27, 1965 (age 42) | |
| Place of birth | Liverpool, England | |
| Youth clubs | ||
| 1982 | Liverpool Reserves | |
| Senior clubs1 | ||
| Years | Club | App (Gls)* |
| 1982-1983 1983-1986 1986-1987 1987-1989 1989-1991 1991-1996 1996-1997 1997 1997 1997-1999 1999 1999-2000 2000-2001 |
Crewe Alexandra Wigan Athletic Luton Town Leicester City Everton Blackburn Rovers Birmingham City → West Ham United (loan) → Bradford City (loan) Aberdeen Crewe Alexandra Doncaster Rovers Blackpool |
3 (0) 72 (25) 63 (18) 81 (21) 68 (15) 130 (28) 15 (1) 7 (0) 7 (0) 44 (6) 4 (0) 16 (3) 18 (2) |
| National team | ||
| 1983-1984 | England U21 | 4 (0) |
| Teams managed | ||
| 2002-2003 2003-2007 |
Hartlepool United Luton Town |
|
|
1 Senior club appearances and goals |
||
Michael Colin Newell (born January 27, 1965, Liverpool, England) is an English football manager and former player in charge at Luton Town until March 15, 2007. He also played for them in the late 1980s. Newell is a self-confessed Liverpool fan.
Contents |
[edit] Playing career
Mike Newell represented 13 different clubs in his career, playing a total of 530 league games and scoring 120 goals. He was part of the Blackburn team which won the FA Premier League in 1995, and totalled £3,585,000 in transfer fees over the duration of his career.[1] While playing for Blackburn against Rosenborg in the 1995-96 season, Newell scored the fastest-ever hat-trick in the UEFA Champions League, netting his three goals in a spell of only nine minutes. This was also a "perfect hattrick", meaning he scored the goals with his right foot, left foot and head.
Newell was released by both Liverpool and Crewe as a youngtster, Newell finally found form at Wigan. After a brief period at Wigan, Newell went to Luton Town. After another successful time he moved onto Leicester in 1987. His form here attracted Everton to Newell, and he moved back home to Liverpool in 1989 for £1,100,000. In just over two years at Everton, he made 68 appearances, scoring 15 goals. He was on the move again in 1991 to Blackburn Rovers, were he was to become a vital member of the Premier League winning side of 1994/95. He had 5 years at Blackburn before his move to Birmingham City in 1996. However, this spell proved to be unsuccessful, and was the beginning of a spell of five years at seven different clubs. Newell left Birmingham to join West Ham on loan in December 1996, before a similar spell at Bradford City in March 1997. In the summer of 1997, Newell moved to Aberdeen before drifting back into the English leagues with Crewe, Doncaster and Blackpool before retiring from playing in May 2001.
[edit] Managerial career
[edit] Hartlepool United
Newell replaced Chris Turner as manager of Hartlepool United during the 2002/03 season, when Hartlepool were top of the league. After horrendous away form, the club lost a 16 point lead it held. After this, and many personnel differences between Newell and the board at Hartlepool, Newell's contract was not renewed in the summer of 2003, and he was replaced by Neale Cooper.
[edit] Luton Town
In the summer of 2003 he was appointed Manager of Luton Town by controversial chairman John Gurney, who had purchased the club from the previous owners for £4[citation needed], then sacked popular management team Joe Kinnear and Mick Harford. It was widely reported[citation needed] that Newell won a Pop Idol-style poll to become manager but he was offered and signed a contract before the "results" were announced.
The club soon went into administrative receivership and John Gurney was removed from power to be replaced by Barry Ward, an Insolvency Specialist. Due to the financial problems the club were severely restricted in terms of squad capacity having to make do with only 20 senior players. However, despite losing several key players to transfers and injuries, Newell led Luton to just outside the play-offs in his first season (2003-2004), a fantastic achievement as Luton were tipped for relegation.
The next season saw Luton and Newell exceed all expectations as they stormed to the League One title. Finishing the season on an incredible 98 points, Newell was to lead Luton in the the Championship, the first manager to do so in 10 years.
As a newly promoted club, Luton were expected to be involved in a relegation battle, but this was not the case as Newell led them to 10th in the table. His record did not go unnoticed as he was linked with managerial jobs at Leicester City, Derby County and Ipswich Town, but decided to stay at Luton for the beginning of the 2006-2007 season when he signed a new four year deal.[2].
On 15 March 2007, Newell was sacked as manager of Luton Town after publicly asking the board of directors where the money received from player sales had gone. The board terminated his contract with immediate effect after suffering more criticism. The following game would see the Luton Town fans confronting the board chanting 'Where's the money gone?' and 'Sack the board'.
On 20th March, it was alleged that Newell had a clause in his contract that entitled him to take 10% of any transfer fee received for players sold while he was manager. Newell reportedly received £500,000 from Luton as a result. As a result of these revelations, commentators have criticised Newell for "taking money out of the club" and have accused him of hypocrisy regarding his well publicised complaints about corrupt agents and managers taking money out of the game.
[edit] Controversy
Newell caused a huge stir in the footballing world, when he claimed that corruption was rife in transfer deals. In particular, he claimed that he had been offered "bungs" or bribes by football agents and agreed to name the offending parties when called upon by the FA. [3] As a result, an enquiry was launched by the FA and was headed by Lord Stevens, a former Metropolitan Police commissioner[4]. On 20 December 2006, Stevens presented his preliminary report, which found that, although the level of corruption within English football was not a high as had been anticipated, there were several causes for concern.[5] 17 transfer deals were still subject to further scrutiny.
Following a match against Queens Park Rangers on 11 November 2006 Newell criticised female assistant referee, Amy Rayner, using sexist comments, and later apologised. He also criticised the chairman of Luton Town FC, Bill Tomlins. For this he was reprimanded by his club, which publicly disassociated itself from the comments concerning Rayner.[6]. Newell stated recently that his attack on Rayner was pre-meditated, and that he only said what he said so to draw attention to his fierce criticism of Tomlins. Newell claims he hasn't spoken to Tomlins since the summer of 2006, when he alleges that Tomlins tried to sell club-captain Kevin Nicholls and top-scorer Steve Howard for far less than their real value.
Following a match against West Bromwich Albion on 12 January 2007 Newell criticised the influence of foreign players in English game, stating that it was "going soft."[7] This was after an incident in which Luton midfielder David Bell appeared to be fouled, but play continued in spite of his injury and West Brom went on to not only equalize minutes before the end, but to claim a last gasp winner to leave Luton empty handed once again.
After the defeat to Hull City on March 13, 2007, Newell again criticised the board and their lack of investment following player sales during Newell's tenure. He was then sacked by the board on March 15.
[edit] Honours
As a player
Blackburn Rovers
- FA Premier League: Championship
- 1994/95
As a manager
Luton Town
- Football League One: Championship, promoted
- 2004/05
Hartlepool United
- Football League Two: Runners-up, promoted
- 2002/03
[edit] Managerial stats
| Team | Nat | From | To | Record | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| G | W | L | D | Win % | ||||
| Hartlepool United |  |
November 21, 2002 | May 30, 2003 | 29 | 13 | 7 | 9 | 44.82 |
| Luton Town | |
June 23, 2003 | March 15, 2007 | 200 | 83 | 68 | 49 | 41.50 |
[edit] Trivia
- Newell scored the 1,000th Premier League goal in April 1993, in Blackburn's 3-1 win at Nottingham Forest.
[edit] References
- ^ Soccerbase
- ^ "Newell to stay a Hatter", Sky Sports, 2006-07-27. Retrieved on 2006-07-27.
- ^ FA to meet Newell over bung claim (HTML). BBC Sport (2006-01-12). Retrieved on 2006-09-18.
- ^ Ex-police chief leads bungs probe (HTML). BBC Sport (2006-03-03). Retrieved on 2006-09-18.
- ^ Bung inquiry targets 17 transfers (HTML). BBC Sport (2006-12-20). Retrieved on 2007-01-28.
- ^ Newell rapped but keeps Luton job (HTML). BBC Sport (2006-11-15). Retrieved on 2006-11-15.
- ^ Newell angered by foreign players (HTML). BBC Sport (2006-01-13). Retrieved on 2006-11-13.
[edit] External links
| Preceded by Joe Kinnear |
Luton Town F.C. manager 2003–2007 |
Succeeded by Kevin Blackwell |
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since January 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since March 2007 | 1965 births | Aberdeen F.C. players | Birmingham City F.C. players | Blackburn Rovers F.C. players | Blackpool F.C. players | Bradford City A.F.C. players | Crewe Alexandra F.C. players | Doncaster Rovers F.C. players | English football managers | English footballers | Everton F.C. players | Hartlepool United F.C. managers | Leicester City F.C. players | Liverpool F.C. players | Living people | Luton Town F.C. managers | Luton Town F.C. players | West Ham United F.C. forwards | West Ham United F.C. players | Wigan Athletic F.C. players
