Lennie Lawrence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lennie Lawrence | ||
Personal information | ||
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Full name | Robin Michael Lawrence | |
Date of birth | 12 December 1947 | |
Place of birth | Brighton, England | |
Teams managed | ||
1978 1982–1991 1991–1994 1994–1995 1995–2000 2000–2001 2002–2005 2006– |
Plymouth Argyle Charlton Athletic Middlesbrough Bradford City Luton Town Grimsby Town Cardiff City Bristol Rovers (Director of Football) |
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Robin Michael "Lennie" Lawrence (born December 12, 1947 in Brighton, England) is a British football manager. He has managed a number of English clubs and one Welsh club in a coaching career spanning over 30 years. He is currently Director of Football at Bristol Rovers. He is one of a select few managers to have managed over 1,000 games.[1]
Lawrence never played league football. He turned out at non-league level for Croydon, Carshalton Athletic and Sutton United. He got his first managerial appointment at Plymouth Argyle as caretaker. He later worked as a coach at Lincoln City, helping them win promotion from Division Four in the 1980–81 season.[1]
Lawrence moved to Charlton Athletic as reserve-team manager, and was later promoted to full-time manager in 1982.[1] During his first few years in charge, the club was in a poor financial situation and came close to going out of business in 1984, and even left its home ground, The Valley, in 1985. Despite this, Lawrence not only kept Charlton in the Second Division but gained promotion to the First Division in 1986, ending Charlton's 29-year absence from the top-flight. With limited resources, he kept Charlton at this level for four years, before being relegated in 1990. He remained in charge for a further season.[1]
Before the start of the 1991–92 season, Lawrence moved on to manage Middlesbrough. Under his stewardship, Middlesbrough finished Second Division runners-up in his first season as manager and gained promotion to the new Premier League butut they struggled in 1992–93 and were relegated at the end of the season.[1] Lawrence remained in charge until the end of the following season before incoming chairman Steve Gibson replaced him with Bryan Robson.
Lawrence then joined Bradford City at the beginning of the 1994–95 season. After a mid-table finish in his first season, Bradford were challenging for promotion in his second season in charge before he left to manage struggling Luton Town in the division above. Lawrence was unable to save Luton from relegation to Division Two at the end of the 1995–96 season, which saw them replaced by former club Bradford. He remained in charge at Kenilworth Road until 2000 when he resigned after failing to take Luton to promotion.[2]
He made a quick return to management shortly after the beginning of the 2000–01 season with Division One side Grimsby Town.[1] 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.[3] However he was sacked later in the season after Grimsby dropped to the bottom of the table.[4]
After a short while out of the game he 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.[1] In his first full season in charge, Lawrence took Cardiff to promotion after beating Queens Park Rangers in the play-off final.[5] He remained at Ninian Park for a further two years before resigning in 2005.[6]
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.[7] In the pair's first full season in charge, Bristol Rovers won promotion into League One after winning the League Two play-offs.[8]
[edit] Managerial stats
Team | Nat | From | To | Record | ||||
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G | W | L | D | Win % | ||||
Plymouth Argyle | 14 February 1978 | 16 March 1978 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 00.00 | |
Charlton Athletic | 22 November 1982 | 10 July 1991 | 393 | 120 | 164 | 109 | 30.53 | |
Middlesbrough | 10 July 1991 | 19 May 1994 | 187 | 75 | 60 | 52 | 40.10 | |
Bradford City | 25 May 1994 | 27 November 1995 | 77 | 29 | 28 | 20 | 41.42 | |
Luton Town | 21 December 1995 | 4 July 2000 | 248 | 89 | 93 | 66 | 35.88 | |
Grimsby Town | 29 August 2000 | 28 December 2001 | 77 | 22 | 36 | 19 | 28.57 | |
Cardiff City | 18 February 2002 | 25 May 2005 | 174 | 72 | 52 | 50 | 41.37 | |
Total | 1161 | 407 | 435 | 319 | 35.05 |
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e f g "Lennie Lawrence manager profile", League Managers Association. Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
- ^ "Lennie leaves Luton", BBC, 2000-07-04. Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
- ^ "Grimsby stun Liverpool", BBC, 2001-10-09. Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
- ^ "Grimsby sack boss Lawrence", BBC, 2001-12-28. Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
- ^ "Cardiff seal promotion", BBC, 2003-05-25. Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
- ^ "Cardiff boss Lawrence steps down", BBC, 2005-05-23. Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
- ^ "Rovers unveil Trollope & Lawrence", BBC, 2005-11-07. Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
- ^ "Trollope & Lawrence pen new deals", BBC, 2007-08-10. Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
[edit] External links
- Lennie Lawrence managerial statistics at soccerbase.com
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