Why not Billy?

I'm a headhunter and up for it

Vulpes it's all very well saying no and no, but these guys have good records in this league. You could appoint Mark Hughes, but he may not deliver in this league. MON, is probably everyone's choice, but expectations would be so high and if he failed - well the implications are unbearable. Eriksson was a gamble worth taking for the Thai owners, high profile, attracting the right type of player, great publicity, however, the choice of the next manager has got to be right for the football club to move forward, not just the commercial aspect. If the Thai owners want Premier League football, they need to invest in a manager who has the knowledge of how to succeed at this level and not gamble of a world famous manager who will take time to adapt to the demands and challenges of the Championship. Like I said earlier, Leicester fans hounded Mandaric not to make Warnock manager - had he done so I firmly believe we would be playing Premier League football now 'cos the man knows how to get out of this division, whether you like him or not.

MGLCFC
Sorry, just a knee jerk reaction to the idea of having such a horrible giteshab representing our club.

You may be right in what you say about BD being the person to get us out of this league, but it's clear from Sven's appointment that the owners are looking for someone who can do that, as well as keep us up and even thrive in the prem.

That's probably a mistake, but have they learned?

Sure, put Davies in charge of a lower half Championship side and he'll give you an upper table Championship side. But is that where we are or what we need?

You can be utterly pedantic and say that today we are 13th and therefore a lower half club by definition. But that's not what I mean. Intrinsically, we do not have a lower end of Championship side, and a losing fling in the play-offs is not where we need to be going.

People point to Davies' promotion with Derby, but I would frankly rather not go up than be humiliated the way they were. And Derby crashed back down with their parachute payments already effectively spent, so it can't be true that Davies had no money to work with – he just didn't know how to build at that level.

Can anyone remind me who the 'better players' were that he bought when he sold us Howard and Oakley? And do we want Leicester to be 'improved' in the same way?

Fat Fox

Jewell sold Howard & Oakley to you, not Davies. I think Oakley felt loyalty to Davies and Howard was sold to generate funds.

Otherwise, I thought your second-to-last paragraph was spot on , Davies spent the parachute payments badly, though I'd say it was joint poor effort by our then board & manager.

Some Derby fans, such as myself, have been chastened by the experience, hence why it is better to build something long-term than gain short-term success that can actually put you back several years.

I agree, it is better to go up with a side that will at least not disgrace itself if it goes down.

The two outstanding candidates for me are O'Neill and Hughes but whether they would come is debatable.

Beyond those two, I think the next best would be Lee Clark who's done very well at Huddersfield and played good football as well. The likes of Jones and Davies are OK appointments for me. Wouldn't be too disappointed with them. Both decent Championship managers. Both didn't have good experiences in the PL though.

generally think billy davies would be a fantastic appointment dont care what anybody says, as it says above you cant argue with the facts, though i was indeed very shocked at erikssons departure i dont see it as the end of the world, from my point of view we werent going up this season i thought we would do a qpr and be not so good this year and next year be an absolute force... dave jones a good manager also wouldnt mind him. o'neill would be great granted, but we have to b realistic and as much as id love him at leicester again i dont think hed come but would love to be proved very wrong, i think we need to back the owners decisions and support them alot because of A. what they have done in the transfer market and B. given us leicester fans a new lease of hope for the future... we are a big club in a league full of big clubs so i think we will be just fine and personally if the two managers above were employed by the owners then i would say that they have more sense than money because they will probably get us out of this league. ( chris powell would be a fair shout i feel too or pearson would love that)

Billy would be a great choice. You have all the players he wanted when at Forest

CapnBob: You are, of course, right about it being Jewell who sold those players to us. But they were effectively 'pre-replaced' (to coin a phrase) by Davies in the summer. There was little if any of the Premiership windfall left for his successor to work with by the time Billy upped sticks, and I know County supporters who would say emphatically that the post-spend Davies side was less capable than the one he'd gone up with. He let go better players than he bought!

I also agree with your point about the dangers of being promoted half-cocked – though, to be fair, the club/manager could hardly turn down the promotion having won it!

It's possible that my memory is being selective, but it feels to me like Billy has spent his management career whining about lack of investment – or as Jimi puts it, when things go wrong, it's never his fault. At the end, I've no doubt that he really was being starved of funds at Forest, but I'm pretty sure that he had one summer of being the highest-spending manager in the Championship, and still ended the season losing in the play-offs.

Greatness: I feel rather 'jury still out' regarding Jones and the Premier League. His Southampton career was wrecked by the outrageous prosecution brought against him, and I seem to recall that he was given a paltry £4m to upgrade Wolves when they were promoted, which didn't exactly put him in the catbird seat.

Fat Fox,

I was going to add in my original post that our Wembley team was already weaker upon victory after Seth Johnson suffered a knee injury. Certainly we never replaced the sort of combativeness he brought to the team. I'd agree with your comment that somehow, paradoxically, our PL side was weaker than the Championship one.

Regarding promotion, of course, one never turns down the opportunity because otherwise you think 'if only' etc. It was a humiliating, but ironically the end of season £30m payment helped clear part of our historic debt.

Personally, I think Davies & the board approached the PL challenge poorly and Davies sought to distance himself from 'the car crash' that followed. I felt sorry for Jewell regarding the situation he inherited; his failure to sort things out in the Championship another matter.

I agree with your other points about Billy; he'd have made a wonderful politician.

A kind of Scottish Urquhart from the House of Cards! I mean, he always has his solicitor by his side when he makes a comment. Or should that be 'I couldn't possibly comment, but you may think that.'