Originally Posted by
nw6pie
Great point about keeping us up in 1982 and 1983. Couple of factors for me in the decline:
1. Losing Wilkinson. Strange as it may sound nowadays when he's perceived as an old-school, long ball type, he was ahead of the curve with his coaching ideas at Notts. Kept us up comfortably in those first two seasons, playing some sublime football along the way. (We all remember the one-touch goal at Ipswich, but I remember absolutely battering Liverpool for the first 45 minutes at Meadow Lane when we should have gone in 3 or 4-0 up. Phil Neal v John Chiedozie was like Wile E. Coyote against the Roadrunner).
2. Losing Raddy Avramovic and replacing him with a clown (McDonagh). Raddy wasn't perfect by any means, but he was Mr. Reliable compared to "international goalkeeper" McDonagh, who ended up being Mr. Liability.
3. Jack Dunnett realising that the crowds weren't turning up in big-enough numbers and therefore not signing the likes of Glenn Roeder. Who knows what might have happened if the Roeder fund had hit the magic number and we'd signed him permanently? Still, when you look at some of the crowds we got in those years (under 10,000 against the likes of Man. City, Everton and Aston Villa), you can see his point.
Of course, we were competing with Brian Clough across the river at the time. What's surprising, though, is that their crowds weren't that impressive either. Here are the two clubs' attendances from 1981-1984:
Us:
1981-1982 - 11,613
1982-1983 - 10,266
1983-1984 - 9,463
Disciples of Satan:
1981-1982 - 19,937
1982-1983 - 17,851
1983-1984 - 17,698
In other words, at its narrowest in 1982-83, the difference was about 7,500 (compared to over 20,000 last season).
4. And yes, Larry Lloyd was an idiot - though we must be one of the few teams to beat a team 6-1 in a season and still get relegated.