#OnThisDey in 2000 - Relegation

[thesouthowl]

12 hours ago, bradowl said:

 

I don't think De Bilde was a bad player, he was a 'couldn't be arsed player, we had a few more of these over following years. 

 

I remember coming back to Kent on the train after a home match. I sat with Peter Shreeves on the Sheffield to London train and had a chat about De Bilde. I remember asking him his thinking about not bringing on De Bilde during the game and instead the young loan player Del Piedi.

Shreeves said and I quote "why would I bring on the lazy c*nt "

 

[Rogers]

1 hour ago, WalthamOwl said:

And what a crap 20 years since that day it has been most of the time. 

Even the season we went up with Sturrock, we were still pretty dire.  We won 3 out of the last 12 games, 1 in the last 9. 
 

One of our best seasons in some peoples minds, we finished fifth two points better than ninth in League One. 

[Emerson Thome]

2 hours ago, Rogers said:

Even the season we went up with Sturrock, we were still pretty dire.  We won 3 out of the last 12 games, 1 in the last 9. 
 

One of our best seasons in some peoples minds, we finished fifth two points better than ninth in League One. 

We won 3 out of the last 3. That was the good bit at least. And some of our players - Brunt, Whelan, MacLean, McGovern, Jones (while we had him) were genuinely good to watch. More fun than the Sonner-Jonk-Haslam-Horne midfield this day at Highbury, at any rate.

[owls maniac]

6 hours ago, Emerson Thome said:

We won 3 out of the last 3. That was the good bit at least. And some of our players - Brunt, Whelan, MacLean, McGovern, Jones (while we had him) were genuinely good to watch. More fun than the Sonner-Jonk-Haslam-Horne midfield this day at Highbury, at any rate.

Agreed. Don’t know how any one can slag off the 04/05 season when it was the first bit of success we’d had in years. 

[Bluesteel]

“We’ll meet again...don’t know where, don’t know when”

 

Wednesday fans sang this to Arsenal which was fitting given the run ins we’d had years earlier in good time’s.

 

We are still in lockdown 20 years later. I bought a Premier return ticket too 

[bradowl]

11 hours ago, Rogers said:

Even the season we went up with Sturrock, we were still pretty dire.  We won 3 out of the last 12 games, 1 in the last 9. 
 

One of our best seasons in some peoples minds, we finished fifth two points better than ninth in League One. 

We lost our way a little after Kenwyne Jones went back to Southampton. 

 

We still had some terrific players in Brunt, Whelan, McLean and one or two others. 

[Strings]

It was the year of my majority and still hurts like hell.

 

We have never recovered from Mr Richards and the dodgy Charter House deal, but yet we shall succeed and still follow.

[Bluesteel]

34 minutes ago, Strings said:

It was the year of my majority and still hurts like hell.

 

We have never recovered from Mr Richards and the dodgy Charter House deal, but yet we shall succeed and still follow.

I don’t know the ins and outs of the charterhouse deal but even with that we were quite inefficient and frugal with the cash. I think in that era you either decided you weren’t going to spend and then if you go down you don’t have the baggage, or you had to spend big like everyone else. We seemed to get into as much trouble as the other big spenders without actually spending the same, we got caught between two modes of operating and suffered 

[Guest]

On 09/05/2020 at 12:16, areNOTwhatTHEYseem said:

At the time, as a 15-year-old whose earliest Wednesday memories included watching us win the League Cup, finishing finish 3rd in the league, reaching two cup finals and playing in Europe, I naively assumed we'd be back in the Premiership before too long.

 

To be honest, it took a few years before I started to enjoy watching Wednesday again.

 

I've watched the video of the 2001/02 season this weekend, would have been hard for anyone to enjoy match from that era. 

 

Maddix and Westwood were even worse than I remember them being and Pressman chucked a fair few in but thankfully managed to lift his game in the derby games.

[Guest]

21 hours ago, Rogers said:

Even the season we went up with Sturrock, we were still pretty dire.  We won 3 out of the last 12 games, 1 in the last 9. 
 

One of our best seasons in some peoples minds, we finished fifth two points better than ninth in League One. 

 

Compared to the previous 5 seasons of losing more games than we won that 2004/05 season was much more fun. The players seemed like a close knit group under Strurock and the way the season ended, clinching the play-off place with a late win at promoted Hull, winning both legs against Brentford and the way the final went, it was enjoyable. Had some great away days that season.

 

The wobble at the end of the season was in no small part to Kenwyne Jones going back to Southampton, MacLean getting injured and also Dave Lucas getting injured, I remember Paul Gallacher getting lobbed when just about stood on his goal line in a dismal defeat at Hartlepool. 

[briggowl]

I remember being so bored of the prem by 2000 and saying to my mate it'll be nice to win a few games in the Championship and have a chance of winning something..........................................................

[katie melua]

On 10/05/2020 at 01:54, Bluesteel said:

I think we looked at Robbie Keane but he went to Coventry for 6m and we wanted two strikers for 5m, as usual we were a couple of years behind and bargain hunting. You get what you pay for. 

Even with Di Canio we swapped him for Blinker and we made pitiful bids for Larsson, Beckham and wasn’t there a Brazilian striker Anderson? We supposedly “nearly” signed Dani and he went to Barca. Lost out to Villa on Nillis The only result was not getting the crock Michael Mols...

 

That kind of media “we nearly got him” line lasted well into the Dave Allen years and beyond. Except we did it to Nathan Tyson instead 

 

 

From memory, the Beckham bid was done before he even went on loan to Preston North End. I think it was Francis that made the bid after watching him in Man Utds 4-0 win over Galatasaray. I believe it was something like a million, which back in those days was a decent sum of money for a completely unproven 19 year old.

 

The striker signings, add Egil Ostenstad, Roy Makaay and Matt Jansen to that list as well. All strikers we looked at during that pre-season before ending up with two of the worst strikers ever to play in the premier league. A strike force of Richard Cresswell, Andy Booth, Gilles De Bilde and Gerald Sibon - no wonder we were relegated

[nickswfc]

Great memories of 04/05, but it's hard to look at it as success, same with 11/12. 

 

[Rogers]

7 hours ago, briggowl said:

I remember being so bored of the prem by 2000 and saying to my mate it'll be nice to win a few games in the Championship and have a chance of winning something..........................................................

 

How are you feeling now? 

[Mole]

The defeat at Coventry was the relegation. I remember when De Bilde grabbed our consolation goal, I actually thought it had been disallowed as literally nobody cheered. Never seen a crowd give their own team as much stick as that, although they deserved a few home truths. 

 

Remember the final game against Leicester, I was doing a conga round the kop lead by Tango when the fourth went in

[Bluesteel]

5 hours ago, katie melua said:

 

From memory, the Beckham bid was done before he even went on loan to Preston North End. I think it was Francis that made the bid after watching him in Man Utds 4-0 win over Galatasaray. I believe it was something like a million, which back in those days was a decent sum of money for a completely unproven 19 year old.

 

The striker signings, add Egil Ostenstad, Roy Makaay and Matt Jansen to that list as well. All strikers we looked at during that pre-season before ending up with two of the worst strikers ever to play in the premier league. A strike force of Richard Cresswell, Andy Booth, Gilles De Bilde and Gerald Sibon - no wonder we were relegated

Pleat offered 2m for Beckham after PNE. I remember he talked about calling Ferguson who laughed off the idea of selling him. To be fair that was probably the right kind of ambition but they’d never have sold him. 
 

It was the frugal bids for established players that were typical. We agreed 1.5m for Kennet Anderson and then Caen asked for more cash after he scored in a key game for Sweden and we walked away. I suppose there’s the principle but he scored a respectable amount of goals for some big clubs abroad.

[matthefish2002]

On 10/05/2020 at 09:05, owls maniac said:

Agreed. Don’t know how any one can slag off the 04/05 season when it was the first bit of success we’d had in years. 

 

I enjoyed 04/05 Season.
Was first time for a few seasons we looked organised and hard working, although yes the football was a little functional at times.
The day at Cardiff I would say was Wednesdays most enjoyable day of last 20 years.

 

 

[soldierboyblue]

22 hours ago, Bluesteel said:

I don’t know the ins and outs of the charterhouse deal but even with that we were quite inefficient and frugal with the cash. I think in that era you either decided you weren’t going to spend and then if you go down you don’t have the baggage, or you had to spend big like everyone else. We seemed to get into as much trouble as the other big spenders without actually spending the same, we got caught between two modes of operating and suffered 

The reason we got into trouble was that we brought in a lot of free transfers with huge signing on fees and huge wages - De Bilde, Sibon & Jonk fall into this bracket. We could have spent the money on far better players who actually wanted to achieve something as the 3 clearly did not

[soldierboyblue]

13 hours ago, briggowl said:

I remember being so bored of the prem by 2000 and saying to my mate it'll be nice to win a few games in the Championship and have a chance of winning something..........................................................

I was never bored of going to Liverpool and Man Utd every year followed by trips to Everton and White Hart Lane. Seems we want different things for our club

[Mole]

2 hours ago, soldierboyblue said:

The reason we got into trouble was that we brought in a lot of free transfers with huge signing on fees and huge wages - De Bilde, Sibon & Jonk fall into this bracket. We could have spent the money on far better players who actually wanted to achieve something as the 3 clearly did not

 

Pretty sure we paid transfer fees for those three? But I agree whatever their wages were, we got short changed