Micky Adams Makes Nest in Sligo

The Bit O’Red have today confirmed that Micky Adams has been appointed as the new manager of the club. Alan Rogers comes in as his assistant manager, with the two having worked together in their previous stint at Tranmere Rovers.

Micky Adams had a long distinguished playing career after making his debut for Gillingham in 1979. He went on to amass over five hundred appearances for various clubs with him lining out for Coventry City, Leeds United, Southampton, Stoke City, and Fulham, before becoming player manager of the London club in March 1996.

Having helped Fulham avoid relegation into non-league football, he went on to achieve a complete turnaround in fortunes in his first full season at the club, as they were promoted to the old Second Division. Adams won the Third Division Manager of the Year award but was sacked in September of 1997 after Mohamed Al-Fayed’s takeover of Fulham.

Short player-manager stints at Swansea City and Brentford didn’t last long, in fact he was only at Swansea for thirteen days, while he was a caretaker manager for a single match for Nottingham Forest in the Premier League after Dave Bassett was sacked in January 1999. Adams returned to management in April of that year when he joined Division Three side Brighton and Hove Albion.

In a near replica of his time at Fulham, Adams kept the club afloat in the Third Division in his first season there before going on to achieve promotion as Champions of the Third Division in the 2000-01 season, with current Brighton striker Bobby Zamora leading the line.

In the summer of 2001, Micky Adams brought his Division Three champions on a tour of Ireland, where they were scheduled to play Sligo Rovers, Longford Town and Athlone Town. After dispatching future club Sligo 1-0, there was trouble in the Longford game with Adams brining his players off the field a minute before halftime due to a Longford and Brighton player being sent off for an altercation.  Such was his unhappiness, the Athlone match was cancelled and the team flew home instead.

Soon after, Adams moved on from Brighton to become an assistant manager to Dave Bassett once again, this time at Premiership side Leicester City. He went on to become the manager in July 2002 after Leicester had been relegated and, despite the club being in administration, he led them to promotion as runners-up behind Portsmouth. However they became a yo-yo club with them being relegated once again in the 2003-04 season. Adams was sacked in October 2004 after a poor start to the Championship.

He then was the manager of former club Coventry City for a season –and-a-half before stints as assistant manager of Colchester United and a return in charge of Brighton didn’t work out. He then joined Port Vale in June 2009 and earned a mid-table finish in his first season at the club. The following campaign, he managed to bring them up to second place by December 2010 before his boyhood club Sheffield United offered him the chance to fill the managerial role vacated by the late Gary Speed, who had become the Wales manager.

However, the move didn’t work out for Adams as Sheffield United were relegated at the end of the season and he parted company with the club. Soon after, Port Vale offered their former manager a return to management and Adams went on to once again lead a financially struggling team to promotion in 2012-13, the second season of his return.

He managed one season in League One with Port Vale, finishing ninth, before a poor run at the start of the 2014-15 season saw him sacked. He quickly was appointed Tramere Rovers boss, with the aim of keeping them out of trouble. However, he left the club in April 2015 with Tranmere still bottom of League Two. His current assistant Alan Rogers, who played under Adams at Leicester City and was his assistant at Tramere, was the caretaker for the final two games as the club were relegated.