PM: Henclrikus

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Yes. There was a dreadful slump in March which put us right back in trouble. I was at the Watford game, where we lost 4-1 to opponents who themselves had been sliding. I had my head in my hands for the most part.

But that was all just a reminder of the incredible neglect of the team which had gone on for years. And a club which leaked to the press that the reserve team would be scrapped, screwing over Rioch totally... before signing a bunch of absolute nomarks on transfer deadline day to show how 'ambitious' we were under the Blarneymeister.

I will always be grateful to Worthington for backing the board into a corner, telling them 'give me the permanent job, or I'm off'... and being the hard headed Saunders-type character we desperately needed. He shovelled through so much s**t over the rest of 2000/1 - but what changed was, under pressure from Palace being interested in him, the club at last loosened the purse strings and he made a whole bunch of brilliantly astute signings in Summer 2001.

It went wrong because he went stale. That's normal. He had four and a half pretty good years before that happened. Under the kind of proper, professional set-up we have now, I'm quite sure he'd have been got rid of in October/November 2005. And none of the subsequent poisoning of the fanbase would've happened.

PS. Pedantry alert: Hamilton wasn't sacked in November. He resigned in early December after five defeats in a row and crucially, the players, God bless them, had a vote of no confidence in him or something awfully close to it. Then the board blamed the most placid, docile local media in the entire country - who'd been reporting the absolute horror stories at Colney (all our four best players were out of contract at the end of that season and none of them wanted to stay under him) - for his exit.

Posted By: thebigfeller, Nov 9, 09:29:14