Bob Brown


Died: March 1935.

Managerial Career

Manager: Portsmouth, June 1911 - April 1920.
Manager: Gillingham, May 1920 - June 1920.
Manager: Sheffield Wednesday, June 1920 - December 1933.

Honours

Football League champions: 1929, 1930.
Division Two champions: 1926.
Southern League champions: 1920.
Southern League Division Two champions: 1912.

Bob Brown was Wednesday’ s first professional secretary-manager. For Wednesday, the 1919-20 season had been a disastrous restart to the Football League programme with the club relegated to the Second Division. Bob Brown had never played professional football but he had worked for Wednesday in the early 1900’ s as a scout, looking out for football talent in the North East. In 1911 he became secretary-manager at Portsmouth where, despite the interruption of the First World War, he enjoyed much success.

He was seen as the manager to help restore the fortunes of the club but it was six years before Wednesday were to regain their First Division place in the 1925-26 season. Back in the top grade Wednesday struggled and in 1926-27 finished uncomfortably close to the relegation zone. The following season, 1927-28, relegation was looking a certainty with Wednesday seven points adrift and only ten games remaining. In one of the most remarkable turnabouts the game has seen, they took 17 points from those last ten games, kept their First Division place and went on to win two successive League Championships. In that second championship season, 1929-30, only a controversial defeat to Huddersfield Town in the FA Cup semi-final robbed Wednesday of a possible League & Cup double.

Brown resigned in December 1933 after Wednesday had made a poor start to the season. Earlier in the year, his wife had died and he himself had not been in the best of health. Once his health improved he returned to his old job as a scout, working on this occasion for Chelsea. In March 1935 he collapsed when he was about to board a train and died in hospital the following day. A month later many of the players he’ d developed were in the Wednesday side which won the FA Cup.


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Stuart Jackson