Glenn Hoddle

Flair midfielder and master of the 60 yard pass. Before his arrival in the big time at The Dell, Hoddle had cut his teeth on management with Swindon, Chelsea and England where it was a case of two out of three not being bad. Hoddle's England reign was more checquered than Harold I's except for the fatal shot being self-inflicted through the foot.

If Eileen's invoices to the FA weren't bad enough, there followed the incident with Gazza, a hotel room and a Kenny G CD suppository then the David Davies-penned autobiography in which Glenn bared everyone else's soul. Finally, Hoddle's view that disability was down to karma, a heretical view shared by only a handful of adherents, 800 million Indians, Buddha and countless millions of people in the Far East too, was too much for the English FA and his services were rejected.

However, belief that punishments in this life are an atonement for sin in previous lives inevitably leads to the job of managing Southampton and so he arrived following David Jones' sabbatical without probation.

Update Aug 2001 : Zero to Nero in one summer of underhand transfer speculation. I hope he gets reincarnated as a Man City fan.

Update March 2001 : Hero to zero in the space of the 5 seconds it took him to make up his mind about the Spurs vacancy. Unbelievably underhanded manipulator who planned his exit from The Dell long before George Graham's dismissal and rang in his resignation to a comprehensively betrayed Chairman while leaving a Saints caretaker manager with just a few days to psych the squad up for a potentially Europe-decisive encounter on Sky with Ipswich. He'd be the kind of employer who'd fire you over tea and biscuits in your own home. Err.