Joe Royle

Club career

Royle was born in the Norris Green area of Liverpool on 8 April 1949. He attended Ranworth Square Primary School in Norris Green and Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool's Allerton suburb, where he was an all-round sportsman. Unusually for a grammar schoolboy, he played for the Liverpool schoolboys team, which was usually drawn from secondary modern schools. A number of clubs were interested in signing Royle, including Manchester United, but it was his hometown club Everton that succeeded in recruiting him to their ranks. He went on to make 270 appearances for Everton, scoring 119 times. He made his debut at the age of 16 and held the record of being the youngest player to play for Everton until James Vaughan beat the record on 10 April 2005 by 11 days. For five seasons he was Everton's top scorer, notably scoring 23 goals in the Championship-winning side of 1969–70. Manchester City manager Tony Book bought Royle for £170,000 in 1974 and he went on to claim further honours as he helped them to win the League Cup in 1976. He left Maine Road in November 1977 to join Bristol City and had a further stint with Norwich City, including winning Norwich City player of the year in 1981, before being forced to retire from the game in 1982 (aged 33) due to a knee injury. In 2002, he was voted into the club's hall of fame by Norwich supporters. His time at Bristol City, however, had not been so fruitful. After a storming on-loan debut, scoring four, he only tallied…

Oldham Athletic

In June 1982, Royle moved into management in the Second Division at Oldham Athletic. He spent more than 12 years in charge at Boundary Park, taking them into the First Division in 1991 (a year before it became the FA Premier League) as Second Division champions. Royle's teams won many friends with their cavalier style of play, which was particularly evident during the season that they played on artificial turf on their home ground. Oldham reached a cup final for the first time in 1990 when they reached the final of the League Cup, but they were defeated 1–0 by Nottingham Forest. They also reached the FA Cup semi-finals that season, and held Manchester United to a 3–3 draw in the first match at Maine Road before losing the replay 2–1. When England national football team manager Bobby Robson announced in May 1990 that he would be quitting the job after the World Cup that summer, Royle's name was strongly linked with the role and the Football Association shortlisted him along with Graham Taylor and Howard Kendall. This was despite Royle having yet to manage in the First Division; whereas in contrast Kendall had won two league titles, an FA Cup and European Cup Winners' Cup with Everton, and Taylor had taken both Aston Villa and Watford to runners-up spot in the top flight and Watford to an FA Cup final. Royle was selected on the shortlist ahead of Terry Venables, the Tottenham Hotspur manager whose managerial CV included taking Barcelona to the Spanish…

Player

Everton

Football League First Division: 1969–70 FA Charity Shield: 1970 FA Cup runner-up: 1967–68 Manchester City

Football League Cup: 1975–76

Manager

Oldham Athletic

Football League Second Division: 1990–91 Football League Cup runner-up: 1989–90 Everton

FA Cup: 1994–95 FA Charity Shield: 1995 Manchester City

Football League First Division runner-up: 1999–2000 Football League Second Division play-offs: 1999 Individual

Premier League Manager of the Month: February 1994 Football League Championship Manager of the Month: November 2004