The 7 Funniest Managerial Stints of All Time

TL;DR

Seven managerial stints ranked by comedic value, from Gary Neville's broken Spanish at Valencia to Claude Anelka buying his way into managing Raith Rovers with zero experience.

Key Points

• 1.Claude Anelka's Raith Rovers reign is ranked #1. Nicholas Anelka's brother invested £300,000 for the manager role, signed amateurs who'd never played 11-a-side, lost 7 of 8 games, and finished 30 points from safety before admitting he had no plan.
• 2.Jokánir at Newcastle coined accidental new player names. He called Johan Kabay 'Johan Kebab,' Charles N'Zogbia 'Charles Insomnia,' and falsely claimed 400 appearances when he played 258, winning just 4 of 18 games before resigning for medical reasons.
• 3.Kevin Cullis lasted 6 days at Swansea with zero professional football experience. A civil engineer and amateur Sunday coach, he was ignored during his own halftime team talk on day two; he later served two 9-month prison sentences for fraud.
• 4.Troy Deeney's Forest Green stint was chaos from the start. Owner Dale Vince only discovered after sacking the previous manager that he was contractually obliged to hire Deeney; he won zero of six games and publicly blamed players rather than himself.
• 5.Michael Knighton sacked his own manager at Carlisle to replace him with himself. After nearly buying Manchester United for £20 million (now worth $6.5 billion+), he became owner-manager, oversaw relegation, earned the nickname 'most reviled man in Cumbria,' and later claimed aliens sent him a telepathic message.
• 6.Gary Neville's Valencia spell was built on a business friendship, not football credentials. Hired mid-season by owner Peter Lim despite never managing professionally and knowing only the Spanish word 'concentration,' he suffered a 7-0 defeat to Barcelona and fell from 8th to 11th before being sacked after 4 months.
• 7.Ange Postecoglou's Nottingham Forest tenure highlighted a catastrophic tactical mismatch. Brought in mid-season with no transfer window to replace a low-block system with aggressive pressing, he won zero of eight league games, lost six, and was serenaded with chants for his predecessor.
• 8.Honorable mentions include Diego Maradona using 108 players across 24 Argentina matches and suffering a 6-1 loss to Bolivia, Hristo Stoichkov deploying a 2-4-4 formation and claiming he didn't believe in tactics before Celta Vigo were relegated, and Nathan Jones boasting he was among Europe's best before winning just 15 of 42 points at Southampton.