DAVID PLEAT

'David J Pleat' was (born January 15, 1945 in Nottingham) is an English football manager and former player, who now provides Champions League commentary for ITV and occasional commentary for BBC Radio Five Live.
He was a Football Consultant for Nottingham Forest.
He has managed Luton Town F.C., Tottenham Hotspur F.C. and Sheffield Wednesday F.C. He used to be a consultant at Portsmouth F.C., but his appointment was on a short-term basis.

Contents

Luton Town (1978-1986)

Tottenham Hotspur (1986-1987)

Kerb Crawling

Leicester City (1988-1991)

Luton Town (1991-1995)

Sheffield Wednesday (1995-97)

Tottenham Hotspur (1998-2004)

Portsmouth (2005)

Nottingham Forest (2006)

Commentary career

Managerial stats

External links

Luton Town (1978-1986)

David Pleat moved into management in 1978 at the age of 33, taking charge of Second Division strugglers Luton Town. In his fourth season as manager, 1981-82, Luton won promotion to the First Division and remained there for the next ten years. An impressive Luton side, including 1984 PFA Young Player of the Year Paul Walsh, were soon a match for most other English teams. In 1988, two years following Pleat's departure, they beat Arsenal to win the League Cup under the management of Ray Harford. This is the club's only major honour to date. Although the success was achieved under Ray Harford, David Pleat contributed to the success because most of the cup-winning players had been signed by Pleat.

Tottenham Hotspur (1986-1987)

David Pleat's second managerial job was with Tottenham Hotspur, commencing in the summer of 1986 when he left Luton Town after eight years in charge and moved to White Hart Lane to replace Peter Shreeves.
1986-87 was a good season for Tottenham. They finished third in the First Division and reached the FA Cup final, where they faced Coventry City. Tottenham had won all seven of their previous finals, and Coventry had never appeared in a final before, so they were hot favourites to win. But a 3-2 defeat meant that Tottenham ended the season trophyless.

Kerb Crawling

Pleat left the following October after rumours began to circulate that he had been caught kerb-crawling. Indeed, Pleat has a criminal conviction for the offence and has been caught committing it on three separate occasions.[1]

Leicester City (1988-1991)

David Pleat's third managerial job, at Leicester City, was far from successful. Amongst the promotion favourites when he became manager in the summer of 1988, by the time he was sacked in January 1991 they were fighting against relegation from the Second Division for the first time in their history. This was largely due to Pleat's inability to communicate his over-elaborate ideas and tactics to the players combined with an unfortunate penchant for playing people out of position while simultaneously alienating large sections of the crowd. Eventually the battle against relegation was narrowly won by his successor Gordon Lee.

Luton Town (1991-1995)

In May 1991, David Pleat was named as Luton Town manager for the second time. Their fortunes had slipped dramatically in the previous three seasons, when relegation had been avoided on the very last day of each season. Pleat seemed like the man to secure Luton a place clear of relegation, but instead they were relegated on the last day of the season after ten years in the First Division, missed out on a place in the new FA Premier League and have not been in the top division since. They did reach the FA Cup semi finals in 1994, but failed to make an impact in Division One and Pleat left the club in June 1995 to take charge of Sheffield Wednesday.

Sheffield Wednesday (1995-97)

David Pleat's first season as Sheffield Wednesday manager was frustrating. He had hoped to mount a challenge for a UEFA Cup place, but instead they were involved in a relegation battle right up to the very last day of the season and finished 15th in the Premiership. Not even the addition of expensive foreign players like Regi Blinker, Orlando Trustfull and Dejan Stefanovic could halt Wednesday's decline.
1996-97 was better. Wednesday were top of the Premiership table after winning their first four fixtures of the 1996-97 season, and Pleat was named Premiership Manager of the Month for August 1996. But they were unable to mount a serious title challenge and finished seventh in the final table, not even enough for a UEFA Cup place. Pleat was sacked in October 1997 with Wednesday battling relegation once again.

Tottenham Hotspur (1998-2004)

David Pleat returned to Tottenham Hotspur as Director of Football in 1998, and was put in charge of first-team affairs for most of the 2003-04 season following Glenn Hoddle's dismissal. Tottenham secured a 14th place finish, but there was never any question of Pleat getting his old job back on a permanent basis and he was ousted by new sporting director Frank Arnesen in May 2004.

Portsmouth (2005)

Towards the end of the 2004/05 season David Pleat returned to English football, working for Portsmouth in a temporary consultancy role under new manager Alain Perrin. This role ended at the close of the season.

Nottingham Forest (2006)

On August 11, 2006, Pleat was installed as a consultant/Director of Football for Nottingham Forest, where he will work with current Forest manager Colin Calderwood.[2]

Commentary career

Pleat has since begun a career in commentary, mostly for midweek Champions League matches on ITV.
Pleat's commentary style has developed a cult following among fans as he appears to have an unhealthy interest in the heights of players. Pleat will reference the dimensions of a player. The most famous example of this was when asked, by his co-commentator Clive Tyldesley, to describe the subtle differences in play between Kanu and current Arsenal striker Adebayor, Pleat replied "Well Clive, I think Kanu is a little bit taller."
This has also carried over into his column on The Guardian's website "David Pleat's Chalkboard" [3] where he lavishes praise upon Manchester United's Dutch goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar thus, "he is as good making stunning blocks with his tall frame as he is with quick foot movement to collect crosses."
In June 2006, he mistakenly referred to Johan Djourou as "Hoyte", his Arsenal club-mate. This would be a fairly easy mistake to make in an Arsenal game, but it was during the World Cup when Djourou was playing for Switzerland. The very English Justin Hoyte was not involved in the tournament. Even when he had been correctly identified he still could not be named, Pleat taking to calling him "doo-roy".
Pleat is almost famous for proclaiming that "the sight is in end" for Arsenal when they were 1-0 up against Barcelona in the 2006 Champions League final. Shortly afterwards, Barcelona scored two goals and went on to win the trophy.
Another one involving Arsenal just before Michael Thomas scored a last minute goal in the championship decider on May 26 1989 where he declared "the fact that Arsenal led the league for such a long time, to beat Liverpool 1-0 here at Anfield and they still won't win the league is somewhat poetic justice I feel".
There were also some memorable quotes from World Cup 2006, such as mispronunciations of Gilardino ("Gilardini") and Damarcus Beasley ("Marcus Debeasley"), as well as saying on the USA team's 8 outfield players, "they're playing a 4-2-3", claiming "the steam has completely gone out of the Spanish sails" as well as referring to Gennaro Gattuso as a "splendid ferret". On a missed free kick he claimed "they'll be happy with that, but they'd be more happy if it went in". Another recent ridiculous quote was made during the Manchester United vs Roma Champions League Quarter-Final where he said about Ryan Giggs, "He's a local favourite, born and bred in Salford". Giggs was born in Cardiff. In the same game, he claimed that "Giggs is enjoying the threesome."
In the UEFA Cup Final 2007 between Espanyol and Seville, Pleat referred to the colour of Espanyol's goalkeeper's jersey as aubergine - despite the actual colour being pink. Peter Dury - who was sitting alongside Pleat that evening replied: "That isn't aubergine, David." Pleat responded by saying: "Oh, I must have got my colours mixed up then."
Another classic Pleat comment was witnessed in the Champions League final between Milan and Liverpool, where he referred to "Istanbul" as "Astonbul".
Pleat coined many classic remarks whilst commentating on the FIFA World Cup 2006 match featuring Argentina, when Argentina looked to be going through a shaky period in the game, co-commentator Clive Tyldesley asked Pleat if he thought Argentina were going to concede and he responded 'That's like Riquelme giving away his snake cubs.' (Juan Roman Riquelme being one of Argentinas midfielders). At the same World Cup he conjured up his trademark mis-pronunciation of names, consistently referring to Switzerland's kingpin Philippe Senderos (pronounced Sen-der-os) as "Saunder" and Togo's Emmanuel Adebayor as "Aiderbainus".
Pleat has previously called Tottenham Hotspur pair Dimitar Berbatov "Bervatob", and Pascal Chimbonda "Shibomba".

Managerial stats

Team	Nat	From	To	Record
				G	W	L	D	Win %
Luton Town		January 25 1978	May 16 1986	375	146	125	104	38.93
Tottenham Hotspur		May 16 1986	October 23 1987	71	39	21	11	54.92
Leicester City		December 24 1987	January 29 1991	153	49	60	44	32.02
Luton Town		June 6 1991	June 14 1995	202	55	81	66	27.22
Sheffield Wednesday		June 14 1995	November 3 1997	102	32	40	30	31.37
Tottenham Hotspur		September 7 1998	October 1 1998	6	3	1	2	50.00
Tottenham Hotspur		March 16 2001	April 2 2001	2	1	1	0	50.00
Tottenham Hotspur		September 21 2003	June 3 2004	39	16	16	7	41.02

External links

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