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The Great Mass Debater

Worst/Best Season in your experience

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Simple thread. Which season, if you can pick one out, was the worst/most depressing that you have experienced and which was the best?

Hard to pick out a worst, getting relegated in 94/95 broke my heart, but was it the worst? We had some pretty dire seasons of mediocrity after that which were probably worse, the inevitible relegation under Roeder/Gunn in 08/09 was depressing, but the general downgrade in 05/06 was also pretty bleak.

Whilst we''ve had a lot of exciting seasons in recent years, 10/11 and 11/12 under Lambert spring to mind, its hard to look past 92/93 for me, though of course the European adventure was 93/94.

Some nostalgia here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlpU-u6p6jk

Incidentally, came across this whilst googling!

http://ncfcblogger.blogspot.co.uk/2005/11/do-we-agree-with-this.html?m=0

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Been a season ticket holder since 99/00 sonwill base t since then...

Best: probably the 2 Lambert years, League One was actually great fun at times, but obviously the Championship season wasn’t special as you could feel it building all the way through.

Worst: has to be the Roeder relegation year. We were awful and didn’t even have our own team to play. Controversial I know, but based purely on the home form this season isn’t great watching either. Few chances, fewer goals, even fewer wins. Has made em question why I bother sometimes!

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94/95 Worst

Lambert in League 1 brilliant. Great fun, home and away fans in League 1 proper football fans. Grant Holt - start of a legend!

Wembley under Alex runs this really close though - brilliant performance, and all after beating the binners to get there.

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I don''t recall too much of 94/95 so worst for is Roeder and Gunn taking us down.
Best is the 92/93 and 93/94 season in terms of individual moments. I was only a kid but remember being at Forest away chanting "we are top the league" with about 8 games to go, and then got taken out of school for the day to make the 360 mile round trip to watch us put Bayern to the sword. Those are 2 special moments I will never forget.
Best that I have full recollection of - going up under Worthington - The excitement of Hucks and him being signed permanently over Christmas so no-one really knew until he was wheeled out on Boxing Day live on Sky. McKenzie''s debut brace against the scum to put us top of the league etc - that whole season was special although the Lambert years are right up there, we''d been in the wilderness for so long under Worthy and missed out so agonisingly in the playoff final that I loved it.
Most exciting I have full recollection of was when Neil took us up. I''d avoided scum games since making the trip up to watch us get beat by a Danny Haynes handball about 10 years ago, but made it over for the playoff final second leg. Putting them to the sword and ruining their only decent season in the last 15 years was magic and then Wembley was unreal. Never thought I''d see NCFC at Wembley, let alone winning at Wembley o that was incredible

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Echoing others but the slow train wreck of the Roeder/Gunn season was the worst by a long way for me. (The nastiness of the second Hughton season was a low too.)But this did lead to the Lambert revolution which was a joy. L1 was fun and it was great being the big fish. The second season was a fantastic time to be a City fan as well.

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Don’t think any season will beat the joy and excitement of the championship season under Lambert.

So, so, so many late goals, the best moment I’ve ever witnessed at CR (Derby), thrashing the binners home and away, Holts revenge over Ian Harte, Holty in general cementing his already legendary status, Lansbury and Pacheco, that Crofts goal and the Portsmouth game.

A season that had everything, a dvd I often rewatch and the disappointment my son wasn’t old enough to remember it.

The poorest season I’ve witnessed was the Roeder relegation. Nothing but struggle and decline and the sad inevitability of relegation.

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"worst is no contest... 94/95

what if Gunn hadn''t got injured v Forest? what if we had kept Howie???"

For about 15 years I maintained that if only Gunn hadnt got injured we''d probably be a completely different club. Im over it now though.

We did seem to be going well (6th I remember?) when that injury happened and then it was just desperate. There was no hint we were ever in trouble until that happened and it was just the wrong time to drop out of the league when the money started coming in. That relegation comes with so many ''what-ifs''?

Our return to the Premier League under Lambo helped exorcise a lot of those demons

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The best season was our relegation under Hughton''s negative hoofball - I gave up my season ticket after that.

The worst season was the Championship under Lambert - there was NOTHING to complain about.

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Worst....1994/95....not a lot of disagreement there

Best...well 1992-93 or first season''s of Lambert''''s tenure

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Best season - 11/12 in the PL under Lambert.

Worst seasons - all those under Houghton where he transformed us from an exciting, adventurous side into a fearful one lacking ambition.

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[quote user="The Great Mass Debater"]"worst is no contest... 94/95

what if Gunn hadn''t got injured v Forest? what if we had kept Howie???"

For about 15 years I maintained that if only Gunn hadnt got injured we''d probably be a completely different club. Im over it now though.

We did seem to be going well (6th I remember?) when that injury happened and then it was just desperate. There was no hint we were ever in trouble until that happened and it was just the wrong time to drop out of the league when the money started coming in. That relegation comes with so many ''what-ifs''?

Our return to the Premier League under Lambo helped exorcise a lot of those demons[/quote]I would go along with that season. The game after Gunn got injured Andy Marshall played a shot-stopping blinder against Newcastle and we won 2-1. That may have played a part in Chase assuming we were safe, as I rather did, and so deciding he didn''t need to get in an experienced keeper.Instead we won just once more, at home to Ipswich.Even at the end we could have stayed up. We needed to win at Leeds in the penultimate game to give ourselves a chance and were leading 1-0 (a Lukic howler gifting us a goal) with 10 minutes to go. Then Tony Yeboah (I think it was him) fell over. On MotD Hansen said it was  the worst penalty decison he''d ever seen. McAllister scored, and Carlton Palmer right at the end. The thing was our last game was very winnable, at home to Villa, so if we had held (with a different referee) on we could easily have stayed up.

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yep.. going into that game we had played 20 games and had 30 points and sat 7th... we had a solid spine (Newsome, Milligan, Ward) and the up and coming Eadie, Johnson, Cureton)...

then Gunn got injured (if i remember rightly it was at a Forest corner?).. we had sold Howie for 300k at the start of the season..

then... the remaining 21 (and a half) games we got only 13 points!

Ps. i''m not blaming the then young Andy Marshall.. but between him and the dreadful Simon Tracey.. oh dear

pps. I''ve also thought a lot about the effect of selling Ekoku to Wimbledon - not just missing his goals, but he scored the winning goal in both games we lost to Wimbledon that season..

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[quote user="PurpleCanary"][quote user="The Great Mass Debater"]"worst is no contest... 94/95

what if Gunn hadn''t got injured v Forest? what if we had kept Howie???"

For about 15 years I maintained that if only Gunn hadnt got injured we''d probably be a completely different club. Im over it now though.

We did seem to be going well (6th I remember?) when that injury happened and then it was just desperate. There was no hint we were ever in trouble until that happened and it was just the wrong time to drop out of the league when the money started coming in. That relegation comes with so many ''what-ifs''?

Our return to the Premier League under Lambo helped exorcise a lot of those demons[/quote]I would go along with that season. The game after Gunn got injured Andy Marshall played a shot-stopping blinder against Newcastle and we won 2-1. That may have played a part in Chase assuming we were safe, as I rather did, and so deciding he didn''t need to get in an experienced keeper.Instead we won just once more, at home to Ipswich.Even at the end we could have stayed up. We needed to win at Leeds in the penultimate game to give ourselves a chance and were leading 1-0 (a Lukic howler gifting us a goal) with 10 minutes to go. Then Tony Yeboah (I think it was him) fell over. On MotD Hansen said it was  the worst penalty decison he''d ever seen. McAllister scored, and Carlton Palmer right at the end. The thing was our last game was very winnable, at home to Villa, so if we had held (with a different referee) on we could easily have stayed up.[/quote]

It took me a long time to get over that Yeboah penalty. I remember in school (would have been about 13-14) creating an impassioned leaflet for an English lesson homework project becrying the lack of video refereeing to stop such injustices!

Considering I lived in the midlands, and to parody Russell Brand, most people didnt even know what a Norwich was, most people thought I was pretty weird...

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yep.. going into that game we had played 20 games and had 30 points and sat 7th... we had a solid spine (Newsome, Milligan, Ward) and the up and coming Eadie, Johnson, Cureton)...

then Gunn got injured (if i remember rightly it was at a Forest corner?).. we had sold Howie for 300k at the start of the season..

then... the remaining 21 (and a half) games we got only 13 points!

Ps. i''m not blaming the then young Andy Marshall.. but between him and the dreadful Simon Tracey.. oh dear

pps. I''ve also thought a lot about the effect of selling Ekoku to Wimbledon - not just missing his goals, but he scored the winning goal in both games we lost to Wimbledon that season..

I very unfairly blamed Andy Marshall at the time (I was a kid so very one-dimensional thinking) and held it against him for years. People talk about kids getting opportunities - I wonder whether that experience was good for his development, or whether it was like sticking Scott Carson in for his England debut in a must-win fixture? There werent transfer windows in those days, so couldnt we have forked out for a keeper at any point if we''d really recognised the need? Different times...

I used to fantasise about going back in a time machine and bundling Bryan Gunn into the back of a van and abducting him for the night of that fateful game in Nottingham!

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Best season 1992/93. Worst season 2008/09.Incidently 92/93 was with Chase, who is held up by many as the anti-Christ as majority shareholder and 08/09 was under the guidance of Delia who is venerated by the same as a footballing saint. Make of that what you will, but I suppose that with Delia being very good at PR it would seem to indicate that many City fans are happy with failure as long as the owners go for a pint with them.

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Best 92/93....what a journey......although 88/89 was a he''ll of a season until we ran out of steam in both league and fa cup concurrently.

Worst...2008/09.....although the following season in league one turned out to be surprising enjoyable, the day we were relegated at the valley made me physically sick

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My favourite season was our promotion season under Alex Neal, not just because the 4 Ipswich games and the final in Wembley, but because we played some pretty good football - even before the arrival of AN (like the 6-1 thrashing of Millwall on Boxing Day). The pre-season signings (Jerome, Grabban, Bradley Johnson) mostly turned out to be excellent: we had the best squad in the league. AN, whose debut (as he came down from the directors'' box a day after his arrival in the middle of a game to take over from a baffled Phelan) could have been scripted in Hollywood, just needed to kick them in the backside to turn them into a freescoring team that played the most entertaining football I can remember by City.

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Worst - Roeder/Gunn relegation season in 08/09!

Best - Toss up between 71/72, 85/86, 88/89. 92/93, 93/94, 03/04, 09/10, 10/11 - All great seasons!

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[quote user="Budapest Canary"]My favourite season was our promotion season under Alex Neal, not just because the 4 Ipswich games and the final in Wembley, but because we played some pretty good football - even before the arrival of AN (like the 6-1 thrashing of Millwall on Boxing Day). The pre-season signings (Jerome, Grabban, Bradley Johnson) mostly turned out to be excellent: we had the best squad in the league. AN, whose debut (as he came down from the directors'' box a day after his arrival in the middle of a game to take over from a baffled Phelan) could have been scripted in Hollywood, just needed to kick them in the backside to turn them into a freescoring team that played the most entertaining football I can remember by City.[/quote]

Bradley Johnson? Im guessing you meant someone else?

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Best-92/93

Worst-94/95

Only 2 seasons apart, but the contrast was pretty amazing.

I don''t think I''ll ever experience anything like the feeling after the Chelsea away game in 1992, 2-0 down at halftime with Flecky kissing his Chelsea badge as he walked off, and coming away with a 3-2 win thanks to Dave Beasant''s awful goalkeeping. Top of the league after that game, and we continued to confound the "experts" who said we would struggle that year.

2 seasons later, and the relegation that followed was painful and preventable but unlike others, I think it was Chase''s sale of our attacking players rather than the reliance on Andy Marshall that cost us in the 2nd half of the season. We failed to score in 9 of the games after Gunny was injured, replacing Sutton, Ekoku and Robins with Ward and Sheron was a gamble which didn''t pay off.

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Worst - 94-95 is up there but 04-05 wasn''t much fun either, spending pretty much the entire season in the bottom 3 and not winning a game for the first 3 months of the season. But to be fair any season between 05-06 to 08-09 could also qualify, what dreadful, dross seasons with zero high points, pretty much how Ipswich fans must have felt since coming down in 2001-02.

Speaking of 94-95 and the goalkeeper/transfer situation, we did obviously get Simon Tracey on loan, which was a disaster, but even as a 10 year old I could tell that Andy Marshall wasn''t upto it, and I remember after we lost to Leeds, Alan Hansen saying we wouldn''t have gone down if we''d signed experienced cover to replace Gunn, but what bugged me was we did sign an experienced keeper in the last month or 2 of that season, a guy called Andy Rhodes, but we never played him - does anyone know we persisted with Marshall instead when it clearly wasn''t working? It was so typical we sold Scott Howie earlier that season too.

Best seasons, I think it''s got to between 09-10, 10-11 or 14-15. I think 2009-10 edges it, mainly because we were the big fish and we pretty much walked that league once we got in gear and it was very enjoyable when you consider how the season began, and it also happened to coincide with happier times in my life. Same with 2010-11, what a season that was - so much drama and that realisation that came around January time (when Burnley were sniffing around Lambert!) that we could well go up again.

Good times.

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I loved 01/02 as it all felt so unlikely and I was pretty attached to a lot of that squad.

Might go for 03/04 though- the excitement of Huckerby then the boxing day announcement, beating Ipswich to go top of the League, Iwan getting a fantastic send off. So much to love about that season.

Worst was the second Hughton season. I''d never before felt like going to watch Norwich play was a chore but that season I found it a huge struggle to motivate myself to drag myself down from London to watch us barely have a sniff of goal. Just awful, awful football.

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[quote user="The Great Mass Debater"][quote user="Budapest Canary"]My favourite season was our promotion season under Alex Neal, not just because the 4 1p5wich games and the final in Wembley, but because we played some pretty good football - even before the arrival of AN (like the 6-1 thrashing of Millwall on Boxing Day). The pre-season signings (Jerome, Grabban, Bradley Johnson) mostly turned out to be excellent: we had the best squad in the league. AN, whose debut (as he came down from the directors'' box a day after his arrival in the middle of a game to take over from a baffled Phelan) could have been scripted in Hollywood, just needed to kick them in the backside to turn them into a freescoring team that played the most entertaining football I can remember by City.[/quote]

Bradley Johnson? Im guessing you meant someone else?[/quote]

Indeed, Johnson was signed (a lot) earlier. He had a great season though. I probably included him among the new signing because of his unprecedented amount of goals in that season. :)

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[quote user="STFU"]Best-92/93

Worst-94/95

Only 2 seasons apart, but the contrast was pretty amazing.

I don''t think I''ll ever experience anything like the feeling after the Chelsea away game in 1992, 2-0 down at halftime with Flecky kissing his Chelsea badge as he walked off, and coming away with a 3-2 win thanks to Dave Beasant''s awful goalkeeping. Top of the league after that game, and we continued to confound the "experts" who said we would struggle that year.

2 seasons later, and the relegation that followed was painful and preventable but unlike others, I think it was Chase''s sale of our attacking players rather than the reliance on Andy Marshall that cost us in the 2nd half of the season. We failed to score in 9 of the games after Gunny was injured, replacing Sutton, Ekoku and Robins with Ward and Sheron was a gamble which didn''t pay off.[/quote]

Indeed. Now I look back on it, it doesn''t make sense that we would fall apart purely due to having an inexperienced goalkeeper, but back then, and a kid it was that simple

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Bradley Johnson, definitely his most exciting season for us, adding goals to his game and playing effectively as a wide target man was as revolutionary as moving Wes off the wing. He scored some absolute beauties that season. I was always one of BJs biggest critics, but in a new role he won me over - can understand why you named him. After agitating for him to be sold for seasons, I was as gutted as anyone to see him sold like he was

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