Lawrie Sanchez – One of hardest Premiere League managers

By Andrea Clarke
Photo by Fabrizio Belluschi
FORMER Northern Ireland manager Lawrie Sanchez has been named one of the top five hardest Premier League managers by football blog Who Ate All The Pies.
The newly appointed boss of Fulhamwas rated eight out of 10 in toughness by an online soccer fan, beating Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger, Chelsea’s Jose Mourinho, Liverpool’s Rafa Benitez and Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson.
The website,whoateallthepies.tv , is one of the biggest football blogs on the internet and followed on the heels of Shiny Media’s hugely successful World Cup 2006 blog.
One blogger on the site posed the question: which Premier League boss would win in a fist fight and after whittling it down to five, posted: “Wears glasses but he’d take ’em off if he needed to rumble.
“Was a part of Wimbledon’s famous Crazy Gang, possibly the last group of players on Earth you’d want to mess with in a bar fight, and one of its harder members at that.
“In another life I see Lawrie as a masked Mexican wrestler”.
In the end the former Northern Ireland international was pipped to the post by Blackburn Rover manager Mark Hughes.
Sanchez, son of an Ecuadorian father and Northern Irish mother, has played for Reading, Wimbledon, Swindon Town and Sligo Rovers before becoming a club manager.
While still manager of Northern Ireland, Sanchez was named as caretaker manager of Fulham following the sacking of Chris Coleman in April this year, and after helping the side avoid relegation, was made boss on a longer contract.