Ian Holloway

Ian Holloway

Personal information
Full name	Ian Scott Holloway
Height	5 ft 8 in (1.73 m)
Position(s)	Midfielder (retired)
Team information
Current team	Plymouth Argyle (manager)

Ian Scott Holloway (born 12 March 1963 in Kingswood, Bristol) is an English former professional football midfielder. He is currently the manager of Championship side Plymouth Argyle.

Playing career

A native of Bristol, Holloway grew up in Cadbury Heath where his mother Jean still lives in the same council house. Holloway was in the same class as fellow player Gary Penrice at school and they still remain close friends today. His father Bill, an outstanding amateur footballer, was a seaman, then a factory worker. Holloway began his playing career as an apprentice with his hometown team Bristol Rovers, turning professional in March 1981 and making his league debut the same year. He usually played on the right side of midfield, and made his name as one of the more promising players in the Third Division (now League One). After four seasons at Rovers, he was transferred to Wimbledon in July 1985 for £35,000.

His stay at Wimbledon was a short one. In March 1986, after less than one year at the club, he was sold to Brentford for £25,000, where he also spent just a little over a year. In January 1987 he joined Torquay United on loan, playing 5 times. In August 1987, after two disappointing years in London, Holloway returned to Bristol Rovers for a fee of £10,000.

Back at Rovers, who were now playing "home" games at Twerton Park in Bath, and under the wing of new Rovers manager Gerry Francis, Holloway flourished. In four seasons, he missed only five games, and was a key player as Rovers gained promotion to the Second Division in 1990. When Francis was appointed manager of Premiership side QPR in 1991, one of his first signings was Holloway, for a fee of £230,000 in August 1991.

Undeterred by his previous failure to settle in London, and the fact that he had never played at the highest level before, Holloway made the most of his second spell in the English capital, and became a crowd favourite at Loftus Road with his tireless running and determination. He spent five seasons at QPR, playing more than 150 games for the club, before returning to Bristol Rovers for the third time in August 1996, this time as player-manager.

Managerial career

Holloway took over a club that was struggling both on and off the pitch. In his first season in charge of Rovers, he led the club to 17th place in Division Two (now League One). The next season, however, to the surprise of most pundits, Bristol Rovers gained 5th place and made the playoffs. The 1998-99 season ended with a somewhat disappointing 13th place. Holloway retired as a player following that season, having played more than 400 matches for Bristol Rovers, to concentrate fully on management. In 1999-2000, his last full season at the club, Rovers finished 7th, narrowly missing the playoffs.

In February 2001, midway through the 2000-01 season, Holloway was appointed manager of QPR, where he was given the seemingly impossible task of keeping the now-struggling team in Division One. He failed to do so, as QPR finished second from bottom and were relegated to the third level for the first time in 34 years. Despite the relegation, Holloway stayed on and rebuilt the side. After steadying the ship in 2001-02, and a near miss in 2002-03, Holloway and QPR were promoted back to the second level in 2004, finishing second behind Plymouth Argyle.

Holloway's first full season in The Championship ended with a respectable 11th place, and during the following season 2005-06, the club continued to hover around mid-table.

Ian Holloway was suspended (sent on gardening leave) as manager by Queens Park Rangers on 6 February 2006. The reason given by the Q.P.R board was that the constant rumours linking Holloway to the vacant managers seat at Leicester City was causing too many problems for the club. As it turned out, the Leicester job went to Rob Kelly, and QPR went on to finish 21st, just one place above the relegation positions.

On 28 June Holloway became the manager of Plymouth Argyle, and promised to take the club to the Premiership. On 12 August after Plymouth beat Sunderland away 2-3, in celebration of his first away win as manager Holloway offered to buy every one of the 700 fans who made the 805-mile round trip a drink: "Anyone who travelled up there please send me a letter. I would love to buy you a drink.".

On 10 October 2006, Ian Holloway made a remarkable return to football, playing for Plymouth Argyle against South Western side Liskeard, however he only did this due to a number of players being injured, and has since vowed to hang up his boots permanently.

Holloway is one of the featured managers in the internet viral sensation 'Pass It On', created to publicize the launch of 24 bespoke football designs by Mitre. One for each of the clubs in the Championship.

Stress Test

In June 2004, Holloway took part in the BBC series "Stress Test". The documentary addressed the fits of rage which were disrupting Holloway's home life, with the help of psychologists and an anger management expert. Holloway said afterwards: "If I hadn't done that programme, I wouldn't be sitting here now. Before I did it, I believed that I was a person who was kind, considerate, and believed in free speech. The anger management expert showed me I was a jumped-up, obnoxious little git who wouldn't listen at home because of what happened at work. If I'd carried on the way I was, I would have destructed everything I had." As a result he changed his attitude, and painted Promotion, an abstract canvas in the style of Jackson Pollock which hangs in the lounge of the family home.

Personal life

Holloway met fellow Bristolian Kim when she was aged 14, and after marrying nursed her through Lymph cancer. The couple have four children: William, twins Eve and Chloe, and Harriet. The twins were born profoundly deaf, as both Ian and Kim had a gene which means that they were more likely to have deaf children. The doctors told them that there was only a remote possibility of any other children being deaf, but Harriet was also born deaf.

With three children in one family deaf, it has challenged Ian and Kim to get their children the best education. But the couple made the choice to put the children first, meaning that for the last three years of his QPR career, Holloway commuted daily from Bristol to London so the children could attend a deaf school in Bristol. They then moved to St Alban's when the children were of secondary school age, for the same reason. Holloway has learned to communicate via sign language, and his quirky media-loving quotes have made him a high-profile campaigner on deaf issues and concerns.

Holloway is well-known for his many strange and bizarre comments in post-match interviews, which are often quoted in the national media. His creative use of metaphors has made him one of the most popular interviews and one of the cult personalities in English football. In June 2005 a book of his quotes, "Let's Have Coffee: The Tao of Ian Holloway", was published; and in June 2006 he came 15th in a Time Out poll of funniest Londoners, ahead of Paul Merton and Ali G.

Since moving to Plymouth, Holloway has grown an admiration for local basketball team Plymouth Raiders, who play in the professional top-tier British Basketball League. Many of his columns in local newspapers are focused on the Raiders, and he even admits to being tactically inspired by basketball plays used by the team in games.

Quotations

• "I'm as chuffed as a badger at the beginning of the mating season."
• "To put it in gentleman's terms if you've been out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good looking and some weeks they're not the best. Our performance today would have been not the best looking bird but at least we got her in the taxi. She weren't the best looking lady we ended up taking home but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let's have a coffee"
  - on the "ugly" win against Chesterfield. This is perhaps Holloway's most famous quote.

• "It's like the film Men in Black. I walk around in a black suit, white shirt and black tie where I've had to flash my white light every now and again to erase some memories, but I feel we've got hold of the galaxy now. It's in our hands."
  - Holloway on QPR's financial situation.

• "It was lucky that the linesman wasn't stood in front of me as I would have poked him with a stick to make sure he was awake."
  - Holloway states his opinion about the linesman's performance in a game against Bristol City.

• "I call us the Orange club - because our future's bright!"
  - on QPR's potential.

• "He's been out for a year and Richard Langley is still six months away from being Richard Langley, and I could do with a fully fit Richard Langley."
  - on midfielder Richard Langley's injury rehabilitation.

• "It's all very well having a great pianist playing but it's no good if you haven't got anyone to get the piano on the stage in the first place, otherwise the pianist would be standing there with no bloody piano to play."
  - after being criticised for using defensive players in midfield.

• "I am a football manager. I can't see into the future. Last year I thought I was going to Cornwall on my holidays but I ended up going to Lyme Regis."
  - asked whether QPR would be able to beat Manchester City.

• "You can say that strikers are very much like postmen: they have to get in and out as quick as they can before the dog starts to have a go."

• "I always say that scoring goals is like driving a car. When the striker is going for goal, he's pushing down that accelerator, so the rest of the team has to come down off that clutch. If the clutch and the accelerator are down at the same time, then you are going to have an accident."

• "I've got to knock that horrible smell out of my boys, because they smell of complacency."

• "I have such bad luck at the moment that if I fell in a barrel of boobs I'd come out sucking my thumb."

• "Every dog has its day, and today is woof day! Today I just want to bark!"
  - Holloway after securing promotion to the Championship.

• "When my wife first saw Marc for the first time, she said he was a fine specimen of a man. She says I have nothing to worry about, but I think she wants me to buy her a QPR shirt with his name on the back for Christmas."
  - on QPR's new Danish striker Marc Nygaard.

• "Paul Furlong is my vintage Rolls Royce and he cost me nothing. We polish him, look after him, and I have him fine tuned by my mechanics. We take good care of him because we have to drive him every day, not just save him for weddings."
  - on veteran striker Paul Furlong.

• "We need a big, ugly defender. If we had one of them we'd have dealt with County's first goal by taking out the ball, the player and the first three rows of seats in the stands."
  - after a defeat against Notts County.

• "You never count your chickens before they hatch. I used to keep parakeets and I never counted every egg thinking I would get all eight birds. You just hoped they came out of the nest box looking all right. I'm like a swan at the moment. I look fine on top of the water but under the water my little legs are going mad."

• "There was a spell in the second half when I took my heart off my sleeve and put it in my mouth."

• "I don't see the problem with footballers taking their shirts off after scoring a goal? They enjoy it and the young ladies enjoy it too. I suppose thats one of the main reasons women come to football games, to see the young men take their shirts off. Of course they'd have to go and watch another game because my lads are as ugly as sin."
  - about the new rule restricting footballers from removing their shirts during a match.

• "Sometimes when you aim for the stars, you hit the moon."

• "I believe in what I am doing totally and once people speak to me they do too - I could sell snow to the Eskimos."

• "We've got a good squad and we're going to cut our cloth accordingly, but I think the cloth that we've got could make some good soup, if that makes any sense".
  - Despite popular belief, Holloway was in fact misquoted as saying "soup" but actually said "suit".

• "I want to try and spread the support with my Bristol connection. Rovers are in the bottom division so why can't I try and convert some of them into Argyle fans? We're in the West Country so it's not that far away. Only two and a half hours away in a slow car, an hour and a half in a fast one - or 10 minutes in a rocket! As long as you aimed it right, you'd be down here really quickly. Don't land it on the pitch, though, because you'd ruin it!"

• "It was a bit cheeky wasn't it? But I don't think it was that bad. It would have been worse if he'd turned round and dropped the front of his shorts instead. I don't think there's anything wrong with a couple of butt cheeks personally. (...) If anybody's offended by seeing a backside, get real. Maybe they're just jealous that he's got a real nice tight one, with no cellulite or anything."
  - on Manchester City midfielder Joey Barton mooning Everton fans

• "Hasney's bust his hooter. He can smell round corners now."
  - on an injury sustained by central defender Hasney Aljofree

• ""Sir David Beckham? You're having a laugh. He's just a good footballer with a famous bird. Can you imagine if Posh was called Lady Beckham? We'd never hear the end of it!"
  - on rumours about a possible knighthood for David Beckham.

• "If I was in there I wouldn't try to be everybody's friend. I'd have to say 'Excuse me, hang on a minute, I think you're wrong there. Don't raise your voice at her like that, don't get like that. It's just an Oxo cube, we got it wrong and we're all in this together'. It's like the Witches of Eastwick. They need Jack Nicholson to come in and sort them right out."
  - on the bullying of Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity Big Brother 2007.

• "We threw everything at them. The kitchen sink, golf clubs, emptied the garage and threw it at them. Unfortunately, it was not enough, but at least my garage is tidy."
  - after Argyle's defeat to Watford in the FA Cup quarter-final, 2007.

Managerial stats

Team	Nat	From	To	Record
				P	W	L	D	Win %
Bristol Rovers		May 13 1996	January 29 2001	247	90	87	70	36.43
Queens Park Rangers		February 26 2001	February 6 2006	252	100	81	71	39.68
Plymouth Argyle		June 28 2006	Present	41	14	10	17	34.14

External links

• Ian Holloway at Soccerbase
• Ian Holloway management career statistics at Soccerbase