Mike Newell

Ex-Team Manager

Newell's Transfer Dealings

For all of Mike Newell's transfer dealings as Luton manager, click HERE.

Mike was appointed as the Luton Town manager on June 23^rd 2003 on a two-year contract after winning a phone poll that John Gurney, the club’s Managing Director, had set up as a unique exercise in sport PR.

Mike replaced the extremely popular Joe Kinnear, who had been amazingly sacked by the new owners of the club just 2 days after they purchased the club from Mike Watson-Challis, who had decided to retire at the end of the 2002-03 season.

Kinnear had in fact been one of the three candidates who made it to the final round of the voting, along with Mike and ex-Cheltenham Town boss and Sunderland assistant manager Steve Cotterill – but Kinnear was pipped to the position by Mike.

Mike Newell shakes hands with Mr. Gurney as he becomes boss.

The phone lines closed at 12 noon and just an hour later Mr. Gurney launched a press conference to announce the new manager and Mike Newell was announced as the new appointment to a media conference. 

Mr. Gurney claimed that the players voted for Joe Kinnear, the season ticket holders voted for Joe Kinnear, but that the board, shareholders and general fans all voted for Mike.  Mr. Gurney actually had to delay the 1:00pm press conference in order to have a recount as the poll was, “So close.”  It turned out that Mike won the vote by just 4 votes from Joe Kinnear. 

There were contracts drawn up for all three candidates and the voting was said to have changed dramatically over a weekend following Mr. Gurney’s appearance on local radio.

Mike had made it to the last three candidates from an original list of 10 people, who had been voted for and included Gardner Spiers, Stuart Pearce, Nigel Clough, Gudjon Thordason, Mick Harford, Joe Kinnear, Steve Cotterill, Kevin Blackwell and Terry Fenwick.

Mike had been sacked as Hartlepool United manager a fortnight before taking control of the Hatters having been boss of the club for 6 months after Chris Turner left to become the Sheffield Wednesday boss. With the club top of Division Three, the side slumped somewhat when Mike took over and, although they were promoted, they didn’t win the title as Rushden & Diamonds pipped them for the championship.

Newell holds aloft a Luton Town scarf on his arrival.

Now in Division Two, the Hartlepool United board decided that they needed a new man in charge and Mike wasn’t handed a new contract. Newell won 13, lost 7 and drew 9 of his 29 matches in charge of the Victoria Ground-based club. 

As a player, Mike represented the Hatters, signing for the club under David Pleat at the age of 20 for £100,000 from Wigan Athletic in January 1986, after netting 25 goals in 72 League games for The Latics.

He made his Luton debut in a 0-1 loss at Chelsea in the Old First Division (now the Premiership) on January 11th 1986, in a side that included Luton legends Mick Harford, David Preece, Steve Foster, Brian Stein, Ricky Hill and Mal Donaghy.

Newell as a Luton Town player in 1986.

On his home debut, he netted his first goal for the club as Luton beat Aston Villa 2-0, Mike netting the first goal and Brian Stein adding a second.  He only missed one game during the remainder of that season, as he netted 6 goals in 16 games as a partner to either Mick Harford or Brian Stein in attack.

He played all 42 League games the following season, the 1986-87 campaign, and he scored 12 goals, which included a memorable hat-trick against his former club Liverpool, who had released him as a youngster.  He helped Luton to their highest-ever finish of 7th in the top flight - and Luton only finished 5 points behind Tottenham Hotspur, who finished 3rd.

He played the first 5 games of the next season, 1987-88, as Luton went on to lift the Littlewoods Cup that season, but Mike failed to score in the opening 5 matches and he he joined Leicester City for £350,000 in September 1987.  He made 63 League appearances for Luton, scoring 18 goals.

He also played for Liverpool, Crewe Alexandra, Everton, Blackburn Rovers, Birmingham City, West Ham United (loan), Bradford City (loan), Aberdeen, Crewe Alexandra (second spell), Doncaster Rovers and Blackpool. He made a total of 530 League appearances during his career, scoring 120 goals and he totalled £3,585,000 in transfer fees. 

His first task as manager of Luton Town Football Club was to meet the players, who returned to the club the following week for pre-season training. He then needed to assess them in pre-season friendlies before taking charge for the first time at home to Rushden & Diamonds on the opening game of the 2003-04 season. 

Mike, who is in charge of all football concerns from schoolboys to the first-team said that he'd "Accepted the job regardless of who did or didn’t vote for him".

Speaking on his appointment, Mike said, ”I came down here as a player at the age of 20 and was fortunate enough to go straight into the team and keep my place for a good two years in what was one of the best sides Luton have had in the past 20 years, full of internationals.

”The voting for the job was not something I had any control over. I was offered the job and I accepted.

”The squad finished ninth in the Division after a difficult start to the season, so I’ve obviously inherited a talented squad. I know a couple of them as players but none at all as people, so my first job will be to get to know them.

”I need to win the players round now and I can only do that by working with them and proving to them that I’m capable of doing the job. If they were happy with the old manager, I can understand that. I’ve just left Hartlepool where the players were happy with their manager.”

You can hear more of what Mike had to say on arriving as manager of the club in two full interviews he conducted and you can hear them using Real Player by clicking HERE and HERE.

Mr. Gurney said, "The vote was much closer than we anticipated. I would now make an appeal for anyone connected with the club to get behind the club." 

His first decision as the new manager of the club was to appoint someone to work alongside him - and after initial speculation linking Kevin Sheedy with the job - surprisingly, but to everyone's delight, Mike managed to persuade Mick Harford to return to the club as Director of Football and First-Team Coach.

The Hatters fans eventually took a liking to Mike, who brought about the return of attractive, passing football to the club and this has seen him 'win over' the majority of Luton Town fans and he led the club to a 10th placed finish in Division Two (now known as League One) in his first season in charge of the club - an excellent achievement considering the club spent the entire campaign in administrative receivership, as well as to the FA Cup Fourth Round.  If he could continue to build upon those initial foundations it was felt that he could well become a very popular manager and the only bright spark to come out of what was an awful summer in 2003 for everyone connected with Luton Town Football Club - and he did just that.

The 2004-05 season began remarkably for Luton Town as the Hatters won 9, drew 1 and lost 0 of their opening 10 League fixtures to put them nine points clear at the top of League One by the beginning of October 2004 - and Mike became a 'hero' to the Luton Town supporters.

Amid the cacophony about Wayne Rooney's move to Manchester United and the drooling over Arsenal's unbeaten run, another fine achievement went all but unnoticed to the rest of the football world. With 28 points from a possible 30 by mid-October 2004, Luton had begun their League One season in a fashion that makes Rooney seem a slow starter. As the club's manager Mike Newell spoke about how he studied videos of Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley as a youngster and dissected training and matches during his playing career, his success sounds no accident.

Though plenty of footballers drift into management, Newell had long been planning a life in the dugout. Even at nine he listened intently to Shankly's words. "I always wanted to be a manager," said the former Everton and Blackburn striker. "A player first, then a manager." A link to the vacant Blackburn Rovers job in September 2004 following Graeme Souness' departure to Newcastle United showed Mike had caught certain eyes.

If it is stretching the point to suggest Newell is trying to turn the club into the new Liverpool, he was hugely influenced by his six years at Anfield as a schoolboy when Paisley was in charge.

"I was there from 12-years-old, training on Tuesday and Thursday nights and all week during school holidays," he says. "I stayed at school and took my A-levels because I was never a cert to be a player, and I got released at 18. But I was going and listening and watching then. That was how I believed football should be played, how training should be and how players, coaches and managers should be.

"I got all the videos of the club history and I could listen to Shankly and Paisley for ages because they never complicated the game. I watched those videos over and over again. I could listen to Shankly talk about anything, he was just so enthusiastic. Paisley was more dour but I still listened. He was really cute and clever. He kept everything simple.

"He would sit in the directors' box. He just let them play and, if he saw something, he would pop down to the dugout, let them know what he'd seen and then go back up. He never flinched or moved a muscle."

Mike favours a detached approach on the touchline. In his previous job at Hartlepool, where he secured promotion to the Second Division (now League One) after taking over in mid-season with the team top, he was criticised by fans for not being animated enough. "As a player, if you're getting earache from the bench every two minutes you switch off," he says. "Pick the side and let them play."

Where he is happy to hear voices is on television, as he takes what leading managers have to offer. "It must drive my missus mad because sometimes I'm shouting at the telly," he says. "I listen to every word the top managers say and when they contradict themselves I shout at the telly. There are a lot of managers I just can't listen to because I think they're talking rubbish. People I like listening to, like Arsène Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson, don't complicate the game or suggest they've got some rocket science."

A keen eye and ear for management were plain during Mike's playing days, which peaked at Blackburn with a Premiership title. "At one stage I used to drive home from games or training and all I would think about was what I would do differently from the manager or what I liked."

No one left a bigger impression than Kenny Dalglish, Mike's manager at Blackburn and someone schooled in the Liverpool way. Mike, like Dalglish then, addresses his players as a group only on match days and does not lead training, preferring to watch or join in. Coaching is left to Mick Harford (prior to his departure) and Brian Stein, the former Luton and England strikers.

"If the players have been listening to me day after day boring them, then when they do have to listen to me on a Saturday they switch off," he says. "I will speak to individuals during the week but not the squad generally.

"I don't want to be a coach or master tactician. I have very old-fashioned beliefs about being a manager. The people who are looked up to - like Shankly, Paisley, Brian Clough, Ferguson, Wenger - are managers. I don't think they see themselves as coaches and tacticians."

So would Luton be worse off without Mike? "I heard it so many times [at Blackburn] that the late, great Ray Harford was a great coach and takes all the training, so why not give him the job? I heard it as well [at Everton] with Howard Kendall and Colin Harvey, that Colin Harvey's a great coach and Everton's success is because they moved him from youth-team coach. They gave Colin Harvey the job when Kendall went to Spain; when Kenny packed it in, [Blackburn] gave Ray Harford the job. It didn't work.

"I'm not saying Mick couldn't be a manager but I see my job as first selecting the side and also taking the shit that goes with it. The problems, players knocking on your door, the phone going, the physio ringing. That's what management is all about - taking responsibility."

Mike has had difficult moments. He clashed with Hartlepool's owners and says he was not upset to lose that job after less than a season despite promotion. Weeks after he arrived at Luton the club went into administration.

"It was turmoil when I came here. The bloke running the club, John Gurney, the supporters wanted out. They wouldn't buy season tickets until he'd gone. It could have been a three-week job if they'd got him out and brought back Joe Kinnear and Mick Harford [who had been controversially sacked]. There was talk of that because the season hadn't started. People were a bit wary of me and I think the reason I got a chance was because I was an ex-player here and I brought back Mick Harford, which was always my intention."

Mid-table last season despite a transfer embargo, Luton have prospered with the help of astute signings and fewer injuries. Mike hopes to end up with a Premiership job.

"I think it's more possible to work my way up as a manager than it was as a player," he says. "As a manager I don't have any restrictions in terms of physical ability."

After the club's scintillating start to the 2004-05 season, Mike led Luton Town to the League One Championship, amassing 98 points and finishing 12 points ahead of second-placed Hull City.  After leading the Hatters back to the Championship (the old Divison One) after 10 years in the bottom two Divisions of the Football League, Mike was a huge success and became a massive hero with the Luton Town supporters.  The team played free-flowing attacking football and always looked like they could score for fun.  It truly was a memorable season and with Luton legend Brian Stein as Mike's assistant, the pair brought back memories of the glory years for the fans.

Mike was rewarded for his magnificent achievement by scooping the League Managers’ Association (LMA) Manager of the Year award for League One for the 2004-05 season.

On his incredible term at Kenilworth Road, he said, "It's more special than anything else I've achieved as a manager because I've only been in the manager's role for three years now.

"I got promotion in my first year with Hartlepool, had a decent second season with Luton last year and this season has just been fantastic.

"I'm so proud of all the players and everybody at the club, because everyone here has played a part somewhere along the line."

Having led the club back to the Championship, Newell was already a Hatters hero with the supporters and he continued to build upon that reputation during the 2005-06 campaign. 

After a scintillating start where Luton Town surprised former Premiership sides Crystal Palace and Southampton – beating them both – and then drawing with former Premiership side Leeds United, the Hatters had begun life in the Championship in fine fashion.  In fact, such was their start, that they led the table after the first three games and were in the top three right up until the end of October 2005.  Even when they slipped out of the top three, they still occupied a play-off place until mid-December. 

However, a blip in form saw the Hatters eventually slip down the table to finish in 9^th place – still a remarkable feat considering the size of the clubs that Luton Town were competing against and their resources, and also given the fact that the Hatters hadn't played at this level for some 10 years. 

Highlights during the season included thumping Norwich City – who had been in the Premiership only a season before – 4-2 at Kenilworth Road, beating Champions Reading 3-2, drawing 1-1 at local rivals Watford to end their automatic promotion hopes, and a memorable 3-5 defeat in front of the television cameras to then European Champions Liverpool in arguably one of the most exhilarating FA Cup clashes of all-time. 

Never one to shy away from the spotlight, Newell raised both his and Luton Town's profile by appearing on Sky Sports' "Soccer Am" and BBC's "Football Focus" programmes during the course of the season and it was a refreshing change for Hatters fans to receive media attention once again after being in the shadows since the "Glory Days" of the 1980s.  He was also involved in allegations of "Bungs" being offered by football agents, a story that saw him feature heavily in the tabloids for a few weeks and also appear in front of the Football Association. 

Amongst Mike's many achievements during his time at Kenilworth Road is his ability to bring in young players and to give opportunities to products of the Hatters youth set-up.  This came to prominence in August 2005 when he sold young defender Curtis Davies – a player he had brought into the first-team – to Premiership side West Bromwich Albion for a club record sale of £3 million.  Other youngsters like Republic Of Ireland Under-21 internationals Kevin Foley and Keith Keane, and local lad Leon Barnett, have also progressed to the first-team under Mike's tutorship. 

Never one to panic and sign players who wouldn't improve the side, Mike spent just £100,000 of that money, singing midfielder David Bell from Rushden & Diamonds and sticking for the rest of the season with the players that had done so well in gaining promotion the previous season. 

His summer signings spoke volumes as well for his ability to spot a good player – defender Markus Heikkinen, a Finland international, was a revelation after a Bosman free transfer move from Aberdeen, and winger Carlos Edwards, another free signing, made an immediate impact after joining from Wrexham.  A Trinidad & Tobago international, Edwards was one of only a few Hatters to ever represent their country at a World Cup finals when he went with the Trinidad & Tobago squad to Germany in 2006. 

His managerial abilities didn't go unnoticed.  Following the sacking of Craig Levein, Championship rivals Leicester City approached Luton Town and spoke to Mike Newell about him becoming their new boss.  However, after speaking with The Foxes, Mike decided that his future lay in Bedfordshire and remained a Hatter, much to the delight of the Luton Town supporters.  There was further interest in Mike from another two Championship rivals - both of whom interviewed him during the summer of 2006 - Ipswich Town and Derby County.  In fact, Mike was even offered the Derby County manager's job, but turned it down to stay at Kenilworth Road.

However, in a matter of just six months, things had turned very sour for Mike at Luton Town.  On March 15th 2007, Mike was sacked as manager of Luton Town Football Club for gross misconduct.  Never one to shy away from controversy, Mike's explicit criticism of Luton Town in the wake of a home defeat to Hull City prompted the board to inform him that the four-year contract he signed in September 2006 would be terminated with immediate effect.

Mike is understood to have reacted with anger and surprise to the decision.  He had been severely reprimanded in November 2006 for a scathing attack on the female assistant referee Amy Raynor and warned that he would be sacked for another outburst. The board stayed true to that promise after his newest comments.

The club had been struggling on the pitch as well, with just 3 wins from 25 League matches seeing the Hatters plummet down the Championship table to sit 2nd bottom when Mike's contract was terminated.  He had come under fire from some supporters too for his tactical decisions and team selections and at one stage Mike rather embarassingly declared, "I don't do tactics."

However, Mike blamed the side's poor form on the sales of four key players - Kevin Nicholls, Steve Howard, Carlos Edwards and Rowan Vine - who were all sold to Championship rivals for a total of over £6 million - and stated it had been the decisions of the Board to sell the players and not his choice.

"The reason we're in this position is because we've sold our best players," Mike said after Luton lost 1-2 at home to Hull City, their fifth successive League defeat.

"Where's the £9 million gone? Give that to me and I'll get five experienced players in. I'll pay them fortunes and we'll get ourselves out of it."

He added: "It takes three or four years to build a reputation as a decent manager and three months to lose that reputation. But if you take the four best players out of any team it will hurt them. Someone should investigate what is going on at this club."

Those remarks, and in particular the last comment, were effectively the final straw for the Luton board. There was a feeling within the club that Mike had overstepped the mark too often and that he could no longer be trusted.

He had courted controversy time and again since his appointment at Kenilworth Road in the summer of 2003. His comments about corruption being rife in football prompted an investigation into transfer deals but his ill-judged remarks about female officials caused an even greater stir. He had also accused the Luton chairman, Bill Tomlins, of "contributing nothing".

It is understood that Mike's final particularly angered the board given that he took a 10% cut from all transfer fees received because of a clause in his contract. He had led the club to promotion from League One in 2005 before exceeding expectations and finishing 10th in the Championship during the 2005-06 season.

His rant on Tomlins in November 2006 saw him remark that, "Everything he has got involved in he has messed up".  On female assistant referee Amy Raynor he stated, "She shouldn't be here. This is not park football. I know that sounds sexist but I am sexist. It is tokenism - for the politically correct idiots."  Other controversial remarks he made surrounded bungs in football, where he said, "A lot of people involved with the agents and doing the deals are taking backhanders. Agents are the scourge of the game."  He also commented on there being too many foreign players in football, saying, "We are going soft because of all the foreigners and the things they do. As soon as they are touched they go to ground feigning injury."

These constant outbursts brought what the club felt was negative publicity to the club and after their warnings fell on deaf ears, Mike paid the price and saw his contract terminated with immediate effect in mid-March 2007.  However, not all of the Board members were in agreement and Director Martin King resigned from the Board, believing that it was the wrong decision to dismiss Mike.

Following his sacking, Mike keep quiet for over two weeks and did not comment until two days after the appointment of his successor, Kevin Blackwell.  Speaking of his dismissal, Mike said, "When something like this happens it comes as a real kick in the teeth.  We had a lot of success but I did not get appreciated for the things I'd done. During my time at Luton I have proven myself as a manager."

Mike left with Luton Town 2nd bottom of the Championship table and a record as Luton Town manager of: Played 200 – Won 83, Lost 68, Drew 49.  He left with the best wishes of all Hatters fans, who will never forget the 2004-05 season when Mike led the club to the League One title at a canter.

Profile By:  James Garley