Preston North End have had some interesting characters as managers over the years. Billy Davies, Phil Brown and Darren Ferguson split opinion across the footballing world with plenty of controversies between them.
But the manager who stands out despite only being at the club just over 12 months is Graham Westley. The former Stevenage boss rubbed up many players and fans the wrong way with his unconventional methods, and was always in the headlines for the wrong reasons.
His football was not easy on the eye but he was part of a difficult but necessary rebuilding process at the club, which saw a lot of the high profile players shipped out, but not before they were separated from the rest of the squad, with private training for them at Rossendale.
Since leaving Preston, Westley had two more spells at Stevenage, as well as managing Peterborough United, Newport County and Barnet, but couldn’t replicate his success earlier in his career.
Westley recently was interviewed by the Undr The Cosh podcast, which includes former Preston players Chris Brown and Jon Parkin as hosts. The self proclaimed medal winner addressed plenty of stories including that nickname, but one former Preston player said he wouldn’t be bothering to listen to it.
Neil Mellor was still at Preston for the first few months of Westley’s spell and clearly wasn’t impressed with his methods. Commenting on X, formerly Twitter Mellor said ‘Worst manager I ever experienced by a mile, I will not be listening’.
I doubt he will be alone with those thoughts. Mellor eventually retired after an injury plagued career, in May 2012, and now works as a pundit on Sky Sports. He still regularly comments on Preston, and is always complimentary of the club.
Whilst Westley oversaw a huge change in the playing staff, the results on the pitch weren’t good enough, and when he was sacked we were just five points above the drop zone in League One. Simon Grayson was his replacement and many of Westley’s signings including Joe Garner, John Welsh and Paul Huntington were key to the side getting promoted in 2015.
The podcast is an interesting listen, but I wouldn’t say Westley puts to bed any rumours or preconceptions of him in any convincing way. You can certainly see why it would have been hard work playing under him, with a lot of strange methods.