Well that's what one gets when you have some clueless owner promising the world to fans. Anyway at least we seem to have someone sensible owning the club now.
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Well that's what one gets when you have some clueless owner promising the world to fans. Anyway at least we seem to have someone sensible owning the club now.
Earnshaw was bought buy the board behind BD's back. Hence BD's reluctance to play the lad.
There was plenty of poor reffing back then in the PL. Take the Chelsea home game. 1-0 up and looking good. They came back to win it 1-2. Both of their goals came from poor refereeing decisions giving them free kicks in the middle of the park. The move started by the free kicks saw them get their 2 goals. Neither was a foul. More similar instances throughout the season, Not enough to think we'd have staved off relegation but we'd have had far more than 11 points.
Persuade Johnson to play another season? Seth knew that, after picking up the knee injury, not going off would see him unable to play again. He stayed on. After the final he sought medical opinion and that was that his knee was done for and he wouldn't play again. Any suggestion the club should have persuaded him to cripple himself for life is, IMO, ludicrous.
Agree on Johnson, i seem to remember when i saw him limping off at Wembley that you just knew it was over.
I think there was talk of someone (maybe hull) giving him a go, but nothing happened. He wouldnt have managed in the premier league even if he could have done something lower down.
Didnt know about earnshaw and do recall BD referring to him as his 'fox in the box'. Just seemed like it never worked for him, from memory think he also had injury issues, in one of the games he did play he was badly injured but had to play on as no subs, that cant have helped.
Not sure about far more than 11 points, maybe a few but not many.
Even tripling our points haul would have seen is go down. Brum (35) and Reading (36) were the other two relegated clubs. Fulham stayed up because their GD was 3 better then Reading's.
Looking back, we could maybe have got as far as 20 to 25 points. We'd still have been relegated but not humiliated. It's all opinion so pretty subjective material and opinions will differ. I was at the season's opener when we drew 2-2 with Pompey and thought we'd survive. Got that one slightly wrong ;)
I thought we would do better, we started ok, and i seem to recall though might be wrong, the second game was man city and pearson had a golden chance to put us in the lead.
Then games like blackburn, 1 nil up, get a penalty to make it 2 but miss, then lose. Think that was Howards last game.