As with many things at Notts County I think it was bad timing. When he arrived at Meadow Lane he had done reasonably well wherever he had gone. His tenure at Notts and his tenures since have been poor. He averaged .98 points a league game at Notts followed it up by doing almost as badly at Oldham and the Spireites with a brief period of doing ok at Carlisle. I think the fans were right as was Ray Trew to want to bring him at the time as long as the then owner was not aware he was a raving alcoholic! He had a good record which since he joined Notts has gone down the pan big style. Probably the biggest flop in terms of appointments other than possibly Paul Ince.
You don't think it might have been working at The Lane that made them take to the bottle?
Some Notts managers....
John Sherrydan
Colin Murphys
Mark Stupor
Craig Short
Is that the lot?
All of the time Sheridan was here, we were up for sale under the least interested Chairman we've probably ever had. Did Trew attend a single game whilst Sheridan was in charge?
That's not to say Sheridan hadn't lost the plot, but he probably would have done a lot better had he been appointed a few years earlier.
Sheridan started off well then Trew seemingly decided to just give up. We went on that disastrous 13 game run when apparently players weren't being paid allegedly and all that stuff before we was bought and Nolan put in charge. Take those 13 games out (and the 3 points we gained in that period) and we had 53 points from 33 games at 1.6 points a game. If we applied the 1.6 points a game to those 13 games and we'd have 20/21 points extra putting us safely in the playoffs that season. Also the fact pretty much that same squad got us into the playoffs the season after shows how much off field events impacted us
What I find galling about that period is the attitude of some of our players. Other teams (e.g. Macclesfield last year) seem to be galvanised by off the field hardship. I get that behind the scenes problems are really unsettling, but we seem to have had a problem with player attitudes and motivation for some years. One aspect of the current squad that cheers me is that things seem to be a whole lot better now in this respect.