Steve Evans

Fantastic summary of Rotherham's situation on the Rotherhan forum

Steve Evans - My Thoughts & Observations
I have a few observations on today’s appointment of Steve Evans.

Loyalty
One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned yet is the fact that Steve Evans has jumped ship from Crawley with 5 games left. As fans we hypocritically bang on about loyalty all the time; it’s a stick often used to beat Mark Robins with for leaving us (yet on the flip side as soon as a manager loses three games in a row our fans show our loyalty by calling for his head). So Crawley’s chances of automatic promotion have dried up slightly (they are 2 points behind 3rd place Shrewsbury) and Evans has left them. Does he not have a job with them to finish? At least see it through to the end of the season? Nah. He’s jumped ship for a team lower in the league. I wouldn’t be happy if I was a Crawley fan. Let’s hope he shows more loyalty to us if he succeeds.

If you want more evidence of Steve Evans’ loyalty, here it is. On May 8 2007, after being relegated with Boston, he said, "I have a contract at Boston and I will not be applying for the manager's job at Chester City or indeed a job anywhere." Three weeks later he and his assistant Paul Raynor handed in their resignations to join Crawley.

His Record
His managerial record isn’t that good. At Boston he got successive promotions, but Boston cheated their way to promotion. After serving his ban for cheating, he went back to Boston and got them relegated. He then went to Crawley. Bankrolled by a millionaire, they spent heavily to win promotion. Think about Pablo Mills choosing to drop to non-league, spending around £300k on Richard Brodie (the non-league record signing) etc. In football the team that spends the most money usually wins, and Crawley spent the most in the Conference last year. This year they were again favourites to win the league, and as mentioned above, they haven’t delivered. What’s he like at developing young players? Is his brand of football entertaining? Ignoring everything else, is his managerial record really good enough for us to warrant Tony Stewart headhunting the bloke? Not for me.

Convicted Cheat
As if anyone needs reminding, we’ve just hired a bloke who was convicted and banned from football for two years for cheating. One of the arguments I’ve seen on here is, ‘Well, how many have us have stolen a sweety from the Pick ‘n’ Mix at Woolworths? Can we cast the first stone?’ I might not care if the bloke stood next to me on the terraces has fiddled with his taxes, but I do if the manager of my football pleaded guilty to it. At the end of the day, sport is nothing without its integrity, and the new figurehead of our football club is a man who has shown in the past that he has no regard for this fundamental principal in sport.

Personality
Ignoring the criminal conviction, Steve Evans is an odious, disrespectful and arrogant human being. There is a thread on here from about October entitled ‘OT Evans mouthing off again’ which gets bumped with new snippets every month or so. So in the past year these include the following headlines:
* ‘AFC Wimbledon not a big game for Crawley’ – Steve Evans
* ‘Stoke have Championship players’ – Steve Evans
* Evans drops racial abuse complaint against Andy Hessenthaler.

Evans is not respected by his fellow professionals:

Phil Parkinson's quotes after the recent infamous post-match brawl in the Bradford v Crawley game.
"We know what Crawley bring in terms of an intimidating approach before, during and after matches."
He blasted: “That’s the way Crawley play. We told the players before the game not to get involved and we have.
“If you look at Crawley’s record, they incite that type of incident. Speak to every manager and there’s a long list of them.”

These are comments from Cheltenham’s Mark Yates after the two met: "He got under my skin and I fell for it," Yates told BBC Gloucestershire.
"He questioned my integrity in the first half. It was completely out of order, completely wrong."
Yates continued: "I fell for the old one-two. Their manager is incessant and I've held back a number of times and said what a good bloke he is.
"There's a lot of people who don't like him in our league, there's a lot of people who don't like him in football, he does what he does, he riles people and I fell for it.”

Evans is a bad loser:

These are his comments after they lost to Gillingham: “The best side lost. If Gillingham come out and say anything different they are in cloud-cuckoo land. Had the match been an 11-versus-11 contest there would have only been one winner.
"We're disappointed to have lost but we'll get the players in and we'll go again. These kinds of games are not easy ones for us. You saw the reaction from Gillingham. Their celebrations were as though they had won the World Cup’’

Or how about his comments after Crawley drew with Woking last season:
"I showed him a stopwatch which is held by the physio and then went down the tunnel and left it at that. Then we understood that he took the opposition manager into his dressing room for a little chat and a cup of tea.
"That is unacceptable so I told the referee what I thought and he told me to go to the stand.
"He certainly played enough time to let them get the goal and gave enough decisions to Woking to make me think that the chat was friendly.
"I am saying that he had a bias towards Woking. He had a horrible day’’

Furthermore, Evans was once escorted from a game at Grimsby by police. He was removed from a game against Wycombe in 2006 after an altercation with Wycombe’s Tommy Doherty. He was given a 13 match touchline ban in 2009. Time after time he shows no respect for officials or the opposition. In 2005 he was fined £1000 for admitting using insulting or abusive words to the match officials. He, along with his backroom staff, jump around on the touchline attempting to bully and intimidate the officials. Do we really want a man with these traits acting as the figurehead of our club?

The Silver Tongue
During Andy Scott’s reign, people on here kept talking about how Scott must have used his ‘silver tongue’ to ‘smooth-talk’ Tony Stewart into giving him the job. Then Steve Evans talks in the press about what a good club we are and what a good chairman we have and next thing we know he’s the new manager after tickling Tony Stewart’s belly. soapy tit wank.

Three Year Deal
Once again, we’ve given a manager a three year deal. Listening to Tony Stewart speak, all he ever talks about is promotion, success, winning etc. so if we’re not in the top 3 in March 2013 does that mean we’re sacking another manager 12 months into a three year deal? Nice one.

Timing
Darren Patterson must be a little bit annoyed. Since taking over, he’s won 4 out of 5 games. We’ve got a little bit of a run going on. It seems quite harsh to stop it now to bring Steve Evans in.

Bums on seats in the new stadium
It’s a good time to be a Rotherham fan, what with the new stadium on the horizon. We got rid of Scott because people didn’t want him to be the man leading us into the New York Stadium. We had a good opportunity to unite the fans with a sound managerial appointment to take us into this new era. Instead we’ve once again made a decision to hire a man who has split the opinion of the fans. We already have a stick to beat the manager with and he’s not been in the job 10 minutes. The fans will be even less tolerant of bad results with a man like Evans in charge. We’ve even had reactions, albeit hot-headed knee-jerk reactions, from various people saying, ‘I won’t get a season ticket with Evans in charge’. This appointment is not the ‘name’ that will add bums on seats. If anything, it will put people off.

Tony Stewart
It’s a good job the new stadium is so bloody brilliant, because most of Tony Stewart’s decision making has been shaky to say the least. Sometimes other clubs do things and you think, ‘God I’m glad I don’t support them’. We seem to be making these sort of stupid decisions every year.
* We leave Millmoor for an athletics stadium in Sheffield.
* We sack our manager when we’re 6th in March.
* We call our stadium the New York Stadium.
* We sack another manager less than a year into a three year deal.
* We hire an odious convicted cheat as our new manager.
It’s like Tony Stewart’s motto is ‘any publicity is good publicity’. It’s getting a bit daft.

People In The Know
‘Lee Clark is definitely the new manager. I know this for sure’. ‘Steve Evans is just paper talk, it’s not true.’ Let’s face it, most of you know b*gger all, so stop pretending you do. As for TFA and gisbertswhiteboots, I hope you enjoyed ‘moving the markets’ on Mick McCarthy – 33/1 I s a really good price you got there. PMSL.

Other
I know it’s wrong to judge a book by its cover, but Evans looks like a transvestite pig, a cross between Miss Piggy and a Bangkok ladyboy. He wears fake tan and eyeliner. And worst of all, he looks like TFA!

In Conclusion
Once again, I seem to be left in the position of thinking ‘Well Rotherham United have made another stupid balls up of a decision, but I’m a Rotherham fan and therefore I have to get behind them’, which as ever, I’ll do. But it makes it so much harder to get behind a team with Steve Evans in charge. The thought of singing, ‘Steve Evans’ Red and White Army’ doesn’t feel great. I’m struggling to imagine getting to a position of being able to say I like the bloke. It’s a shame. I’d have rather have Mark Robins. I’d have rather have Brian laws. I’d even rather have Gary Megson. I think before today’s announcement I only read two people who wanted Evans – rufc1986, who normally likes to go against the grain, and ash_rufc who would sell his own grandmother for promotion to the promised land of League 2, where the likes of Yeovil and Stevenage await us at the pearly gates. The lion’s share of people think it’s daft.