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Paul Sturrock

Scottish footballer and manager (born 1956)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ2533562 ↗
Source-derived summary

Paul Whitehead Sturrock (born 10 October 1956) is a Scottish former football coach and former player.

As a player, Sturrock spent his entire senior career with Dundee United, making more than five hundred appearances between 1974 and 1989. He won the Scottish Football League title with United in 1982–83 and the Scottish League Cup twice, in 1979 and 1980. He was named the SFWA Footballer of the Year in 1982. At international level, Sturrock played twenty times for Scotland and appeared at the 1982 and 1986 World Cups.

Sturrock's managerial career began with St Johnstone in 1993, where he went on to win the Scottish First Division title in 1996–97 before returning to Dundee United as manager. Since 2000, Sturrock has worked as a manager in English football, initially with Plymouth Argyle where he helped the club to win two promotions before moving on to a brief spell with Southampton. He has subsequently also managed Sheffield Wednesday, Swindon Town and Southend United as well as returning to Plymouth for a second spell. He became Yeovil Town manager in April 2015, but left the club eight months later. According to an analysis by the Financial Times he was among the country's best ever managers, even though he has mostly managed clubs at Championship level and below.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Paul Sturrock” is scottish footballer and manager (born 1956). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Paul, Sturrock and Scottish, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1956, 1974, 1989, 1982—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1956-10-10. For this dossier, Paul, Sturrock and Scottish is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “scottish footballer and manager (born 1956)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2533562. VIAF identifies the subject as 3103148574348124430002. The Library of Congress control number is nb2017001220. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 1974, 1989 and 1982.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Paul Sturrock”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Paul Sturrock primary sources, Paul Sturrock archive and Paul research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Paul Sturrock”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Paul Sturrock” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.