While Graham Potter was sacked by West Ham United after only five Premier League matches this season, he still lasted 22 days longer than Alan Curbishley did at the beginning of the 2008/09 campaign.
Two extremely quick but very different departures.
Potter was sacked, and replaced swiftly by Nuno Espirito Santo, purely because West Ham United had picked up just three points from a possible 15.
Alan Curbishley, in contrast, had six points from a possible nine on the board at the start of September 2008. His Hammers side had just cruised past Paul Ince’s Blackburn Rovers to leave themselves in the European positions.
All smiles in the Upton Park camp, then? Think again. Curbishley stormed out the door after being told that West Ham were sellng Anton Ferdinand and George McCartney – 50 per cent of his preferred backline – to Sunderland for a combined fee of £14 million.
West Ham could have gone on to become a force under Alan Curbishley’s stewardship. This was a huge mistake.
Which player do you think he was talking about?
Speaking 17 years on, Curbishley has no regrets about his decision to walk away.
One thing the 68-year-old Londoner does wish he could change, however, is the fact that he never worked in management again. He was certainly not short of offers. Wolverhampton Wanderers were one such club to come and go.
Speaking alongside fellow former Premier League stalwarts Mick McCarthy and Tony Pulis on The Managers Podcast, Curbishley admits that there were pros and cons about what became a sort-of accidental early retirement from the elite-level.
Former West Ham United boss Alan Curbishley held talks with Wolves
It became a bit of a running joke at the time. Whenever a job became available – such as the Wolves one previously occupied by McCarthy in 2012 – Curbishley’s name was always in the running.
In fact, the one-time Charlton Athletic boss could probably have been found in the betting to replace Daniel Craig at James Bond if you scrolled down far enough.
“I was being offered clubs, clubs in the Premier League that were in the bottom three, which I didn’t want to go into again. I didn’t want to go in somewhere and get relegated after 15 games or whatever,” Curbishley says.
“I left it a year because of the court case [The League Managers’ Association eventually decided that Curbishley was entitled to resign because the sales of Ferdinand and McCartney constituted a breach of his contract, per The Guardian].
“Then, it’s 18 months. Then, a little bit longer. New sporting directors, new owners, and you’re out of the loop.
“I found a different life. I never saw my kids grow up! You’re out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday watching games. Maybe at the weekend you’re going into Europe to watch a game. Then, you find a different lifestyle.
“[But] that is my regret; I should have given it one more go.”
Curbishley recalls George McCartney’s controversial Sunderland switch
Curbishley pulled out of discussions with Wolves. By that point, it had been four years since he left West Ham under the darkest of clouds. Under the stewardship of interim boss Terry Connor, the men from Molineux would eventually finish rock bottom with only 25 points.
How the current crop in Old Gold would relish adding a further 23 points to their tally these days.
“George [McCartney joining Sunderland] was the main one. What happened was he was apparently unavailable,” Curbishley recalls, the saga still fresh in his mind. “He had a groin strain or some sort of injury for the game on Saturday. We were playing Blackburn with Paul Ince.
Which player were you most disappointed to see West Ham sell?
And how did you react when Diangana left?
“He was unavailable. That’s what I thought. We beat them 4-1. I think we were fifth after four games or something.
“I go upstairs to be told George has signed for Sunderland and Anton is on his way there as well. I didn’t even know!
“Obviously, because of the banking crisis, [the Icelandic owners] were just trying to get money in all over the shop. I just thought, ‘it’s untenable. I’m not running the club’. We’d got a window that was [still] going for a month, and I had players knocking on the door saying I was trying to sell them. I wasn’t!
“The Icelandic boys then left, and the receiver was in charge, if you like. I just said, ‘Well, that’s me. I’m not running the club anymore’. I didn’t even know what was happening. I just found out after the game [that Ferdinand and McCartney were leaving].
“So I went home, told the wife and kids, ‘I’m off’.”
Curbishley now wonders if the nature of his departure left interested suitors shying away from offering him a return to the Premier League dugout.
“I have no problem with West Ham,” he says. “I think it left a bit of a cloud over me for other clubs [though]. ‘Is he a bit of a troublemaker? He doesn’t want to sell a player…’
“There was a black mark on me a little bit, I think.”
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