Not moving heaven and earth to keep Curbishley and fund him.
That dodgy decision v Fulham too.
For the 7 millionth time: Curbs didn't want to talk about staying - it's in Curbs own book in his own words FFS! That horse wouldn't drink. Murray had to do something! Waiting for Curbs to make his mind up would just have wasted 6 months or more. Don't conflate Curbs departure with the poor outcomes from the decisions that followed. Preventing it wasn't an option
Not moving heaven and earth to keep Curbishley and fund him.
That dodgy decision v Fulham too.
That decision 're Fulham is a good shout though I don't remember the full context from the time.
I recall they got one of those mad 'should never be given' free kicks out wide late on (last minute) from which they scored. It was unjust and I could not believe a Fulham fan at work gloating about it the next day.
Having looked in to the results around that time, I'm none the wiser as to why this result was so crushing. It was cerianly an unjust decision in a game where we fully deserved a win. 27th December 2006. 2-2. We were 19th in the table at the time. Had beaten Blackburn 4 games previously (talal, last minute, free kick?), and beat villa at home 3 days after this Fulham game.
It was Pardew's first game in charge. I think that three points that night - which we totally deserved - would have boosted the club no end, new manager bounce and all that. But the manner of the goal was such a "Charlton" moment, it deflated all optimism.
Though that wasapivotal moment, I still think the turning point was Parker's departure. That was not the club's fault, he wanted to go, Chelsea resented the part he played in the Boxing day demolition of their expensive team, and knew that we were so reliant on him that removing him from the equation would knock out a rival (and we were genuine rivals at that point). I never thought they had any intention of playing him more than a few times, and so it proved when he started only seven games that season.
Not moving heaven and earth to keep Curbishley and fund him.
That dodgy decision v Fulham too.
Absolutely that decision re Curbs. I understand it, but the timing was awful with the squad needing rebuilding. We handed our future to Dowie to fluff the vanity of our chairman when we should have been asking Curbs to build a squad for the future and identify a successor.
Not moving heaven and earth to keep Curbishley and fund him.
That dodgy decision v Fulham too.
Then appointing Dowie, forgetting his history with palice. To have established ourselves in the Premier league it was criminal we went for Billy Davis, then Dowie. We should have been aiming higher than this. At a Bromley meeting a few weeks after Curbishley's departure, Murray insinuated that Gullit and George Graham had applied for the job. George Graham would have been a fantastic appointment. It went to s*** from this moment.
Not moving heaven and earth to keep Curbishley and fund him.
That dodgy decision v Fulham too.
Then appointing Dowie, forgetting his history with palice. To have established ourselves in the Premier league it was criminal we went for Billy Davis, then Dowie. We should have been aiming higher than this. At a Bromley meeting a few weeks after Curbishley's departure, Murray insinuated that Gullit and George Graham had applied for the job. George Graham would have been a fantastic appointment. It went to s*** from this moment.
Not moving heaven and earth to keep Curbishley and fund him.
That dodgy decision v Fulham too.
We could have survived the Parker departure had we, sorry, Richard Murray, let Curbs do one more year as he offered rather than appointing Dowie just to annoy Jordan.
1) Not having a clear succession plan to replace Curbs with someone at least as good 2) The stupidity of always selling our best young talent 3) Appointing idiots such as Dowie and Pardew 4) A Board that lost its way. They had no ambition beyond "staying up" and that was why we eventually went down
Its been a slow decline and whilst the sale of Parker was a shocker, as others have said, his head was turned.
Think how it might have been if we had found a better Curbs replacement and kept our best young talent in the years since.
1) Not having a clear succession plan to replace Curbs with someone at least as good 2) The stupidity of always selling our best young talent 3) Appointing idiots such as Dowie and Pardew 4) A Board that lost its way. They had no ambition beyond "staying up" and that was why we eventually went down
Its been a slow decline and whilst the sale of Parker was a shocker, as others have said, his head was turned.
Think how it might have been if we had found a better Curbs replacement and kept our best young talent in the years since.
1) Not having a clear succession plan to replace Curbs with someone at least as good 2) The stupidity of always selling our best young talent 3) Appointing idiots such as Dowie and Pardew 4) A Board that lost its way. They had no ambition beyond "staying up" and that was why we eventually went down
Its been a slow decline and whilst the sale of Parker was a shocker, as others have said, his head was turned.
Think how it might have been if we had found a better Curbs replacement and kept our best young talent in the years since.
Great shame
Who's money were they going to use?
They should have sold out, or attracted new investment when we were in the top 10 of the Premier League.
I expect they would have attracted better buyers than the cockroaches they brought in, namely RD and then RD to TS, when we were clearly on the way down. Poor leadership & governance.
We used to be a well run club in the Premier League and now we're a poorly run club in the third division. Who or what was to blame for our demise nearly twenty years ago is now immaterial and talk of 'If only...' even more so. For any realistic ambition of returning to the gaudy heights of becoming an established Premier League side, we would need a billionaire owner/owners whose every whim - like those of the current owner - we would be servile to, which I imagine any number of people would readily accept without rancour. The lad will be back from Bristol for the Brighton game and had bought us tickets before Varney's 'Do us a favour' tweet. Spot of supper at mine, then watch us labour away to defeat at The Valley, game of darts and a couple of pints at the Broak afterwards. Can't wait...
Not so much the pivot point for the club - that was Curbs leaving - but for me personally it was selling Yann. That ripped out part of what I felt for the club and I have never felt the same since.
I think we can all agree when it happened, which is the relegation season, but I don't think it's just one thing. Curbishley was done, I don't know if you could have convinced him to stay. If you did though, a total overhaul was needed, and he knew it. The final Curbs team was a bit like the final Ferguson team. It might have been fine for the final stretch with him there but it was finished. Bartlett, Euell and Powell were all finished (I don't think Perry was but he went anyway), and Talal, Hreidarsson and Kish were on the outs. We needed to replace what we'd kept as well as what we'd lost. If Murray had managed to keep Curbs and give him the money he gave Dowie to do that then maybe, but Murray's jealousy took over. Hiring Dowie just to upset Jordan was insane, but then who else was around instead? When you look at it there's no obvious manager we should have gone for instead. The most likely other that wasn't Billy Davies was Mick McCarthy. Not exactly a game changer. Giving all that money to Dowie is realistically what got us to where we are now though. We gambled two seasons' transfer budgets on a big outlay and we got two of the worst Premier League players of all time on the same day. The return on that investment was relegation and we didn't have enough in the squad or the bank to bounce right back up. When we didn't go back up straight away we were dead in the water and that's why we've had over 10 successive years of sharks circling us and lowest ever league finishes.
Maybe the answer is Richard Murray's ego tipping over from 'understandable self-confidence' to 'self-destruct sequence'.
Claudio Ranieri was out of work when they got rid of Curbs No?
Comments
I think losing Smertin and Murphy was probably the beginning of the end.
Murray had to do something! Waiting for Curbs to make his mind up would just have wasted 6 months or more.
Don't conflate Curbs departure with the poor outcomes from the decisions that followed. Preventing it wasn't an option
Though that was a pivotal moment, I still think the turning point was Parker's departure. That was not the club's fault, he wanted to go, Chelsea resented the part he played in the Boxing day demolition of their expensive team, and knew that we were so reliant on him that removing him from the equation would knock out a rival (and we were genuine rivals at that point). I never thought they had any intention of playing him more than a few times, and so it proved when he started only seven games that season.
Appoint Hodgson, say, at that point and we'd have ticked along nicely in the Premier League for a while longer.
To have established ourselves in the Premier league it was criminal we went for Billy Davis, then Dowie. We should have been aiming higher than this.
At a Bromley meeting a few weeks after Curbishley's departure, Murray insinuated that Gullit and George Graham had applied for the job. George Graham would have been a fantastic appointment.
It went to s*** from this moment.
Billy Davies at Derby
Southgate at Boro
Pulis at Stoke
O’Neill at Villa (my choice at the time)
Keane at Sunderland
1) Not having a clear succession plan to replace Curbs with someone at least as good
2) The stupidity of always selling our best young talent
3) Appointing idiots such as Dowie and Pardew
4) A Board that lost its way. They had no ambition beyond "staying up" and that was why we eventually went down
Its been a slow decline and whilst the sale of Parker was a shocker, as others have said, his head was turned.
Think how it might have been if we had found a better Curbs replacement and kept our best young talent in the years since.
Great shame
I expect they would have attracted better buyers than the cockroaches they brought in, namely RD and then RD to TS, when we were clearly on the way down. Poor leadership & governance.
Zero vision when it mattered.
Who or what was to blame for our demise nearly twenty years ago is now immaterial and talk of 'If only...' even more so.
For any realistic ambition of returning to the gaudy heights of becoming an established Premier League side, we would need a billionaire owner/owners whose every whim - like those of the current owner - we would be servile to, which I imagine any number of people would readily accept without rancour.
The lad will be back from Bristol for the Brighton game and had bought us tickets before Varney's 'Do us a favour' tweet. Spot of supper at mine, then watch us labour away to defeat at The Valley, game of darts and a couple of pints at the Broak afterwards.
Can't wait...
our luck couldn’t hold on after the ban.