Wonder if Dean Blackwell still has sleepless nights about Zola that day. Led him on a merry dance all afternoon. Gutted that day :-(

Spit I think we may have taken 15,000 as there were a few gaps that day. Chelsea complained as they reckon they could have filled three stands.

Reading on Facebook,we have sold just under 7k tickets for Arsenal so far. How many did we take for the fa Cup semi final at Highbury in 97 ?

Recruitment certainly improved. Robodinho’s got some good players Hodges landed.

Of course that great start last season till we got found out and the defence turned into leak/mistake city. Think all that time working with Mark Hughes seem to make Glyn morph into him 😅

KT2 - perhaps, and while I don't doubt he wanted the job - still living in Yorkshire (apparently) must have got more challenging for him when the shit was hitting the fan. Suppose his time in charge was more the symbolism - him being manager when we returned to PL, and also him leaving finally ending the CG era.

REPD - one word you could use to describe various aspects of GH's tenure is 'reluctant'...

Morning all. I think we might look back on the Ardley-Walter-GH-Robbo transition period and realise just how much a culture of failure had to be turned around. Not just on the field, but off it too - it's not perfect under MR but it's almost unrecognisable from three years ago. Though one could say it's very different from last January...

Shaun Derry's yellow and blue army

Great to see Wally doing so well out in Jamaica too. Great project to help young aspiring footballers.

Wally was responsible for removing the excuse mentality we had at the club. Laid the path for progress.

Yes well done to Wally for getting MR closer to the men's first team otherwise we might now have Bassey in charge and not such entertainment (we'll when we are not overpassing sideways in our own half allowing teams to get organised behind the ball)🤣

Obviously we had season's where some players start the season excellently then drift backwards.shane Mcloughlin last season,Dominic Polean etc .

I’d also say MR learnt a lot and quickly under Wally and then Glyn. MR was the main proponent of having a feeder team (U21/23) to ‘bridge the gap’ for the academy players. It took him a while but he did get it. Wally quickly dismantled it with clear benefits: save the money, it’s sterile football, get them game time in lower league men’s football - they need to be playing. Then between Wally and Glyn the loan manager roll evolved and MR got a grip of that quickly. And iirc correctly MR has been positively vocal on Wally and Glyn stepping him into the first team set up. Guess they both saw what Ardley could not.

Hartigan's too good for Bolton, better of staying with us. I guess Marsh is backup for Woody.

And you 😜

Kentish I rarely agree with what you say but I 100% agree with that.

shergy yep I agree - he looked battered by it. Not a nice thing to see.

CW just come through replay with Sutton common and jersey Tom night back at Sutton 730 ko if your interested

Downes & Hodges are best seen as troubleshooters who cleared up the mess and put us on a different path, away from Ardley’s dead end. Particularly on Academy players & recruitment.

Lurker, yes personally I think the stress of the job got to him, and I say that as someone who has suffered with mental health problems myself.

shergy exactly and actually taking your point about Ardley being successful - he went stale. But probably as part of an entire structure that was stale and still so when the next 2 managers were in. It looks like a lot had to change (or happen) to get to this point not just the manager. Look at the situation where we were constantly overspending money we didn't have on dead wood and cripples. The situation where the leadership signed off on the "we don't have time to deal with the likes of Chelsea" approach. How much of what has changed under Robinson comes from the change in club structure as well? It is unfair on all of them to kick them out of context of the bigger picture.

AH does seem set as our Jorginho. 6 weeks in and he’s going well. Meh loan and a melt down under Glyn. Would love him to succeed and we will find out as teams sit on him and force him backward. Got a lot of football under his belt for a 21 year old.

Lurker, I agree with your final point. When MR was appointed i said I was 'neutral' about it because I had no idea how he would cope with the step up. He has done an amazing job. But let's not forget that Ardley was with us 6 years and took us from the bottom of L2 to the bottom of L1 so did a very good job overall. Wally and Glyn both did well to keep us up but then struggled the following seasons. I do think some of our fans are a bit disrespectful to our former managers

Also worth saying it was Downes who came in and said the U23 structure was a waste and we needed players out there playing (e.g. Tzanev). It was also him who binned the likes of Trotter and cleared up some of that mess of signing dead wood players. Robinson would be dead in the water if he was in the position Downes and then Hodges was in. What they did enabled him to do what he's now doing.