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What if...? Biggest Sliding Doors Moments for NUFC


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I say Souness. Didn't take him long to erase all the progress we made during SBR's reign, fucking brain dead appointment. Last season was the first one where I felt we had finally recovered from that but what's 20 years anyway.

 

 

Edited by Pata

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95/96 is littered with them. 

Hislop getting injured at Chelsea and them scoring immediately, think a quickly taken freekick or something was afoot. December and our second defeat in all comps.

 

Think it'll be that season for me because even with a good replacement for Sir Bobby we weren't breaking past Man U or Arsenal or even newly minted Chelsea then but could have prevented Man U dominating and Arsenals foothold if we take their CL money in 96.

 

Then any appointment bar Keegan and none of that would matter.

 

 

Edited by Jonas

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I don’t really remember the background on Ashley buying us but if Souness hadn’t been so relentlessly shite and passionate about fighting with our best players, maybe Ashley would’ve never had a chance to buy us. Instead we get someone decent and spent the rest of 2000’s and 2010’s on at least similar level to Spurs.

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1 hour ago, Pata said:

 

He got a bad injury in his first season in the spring iirc which correlated with our form going bad. I still remember when we won 1-3 at Highbury right before Christmas that season to end the London curse and top of the league. I stared at the updated league table on our Ceefax for at least half an hour. :lol:

I broke a seat at Highbury that night - I jumped for Robert’s third at the same time that a mate bear hugged me.  I landed awkwardly and snapped the seat right down the middle :) 

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2 hours ago, Pata said:

I don’t really remember the background on Ashley buying us but if Souness hadn’t been so relentlessly shite and passionate about fighting with our best players, maybe Ashley would’ve never had a chance to buy us. Instead we get someone decent and spent the rest of 2000’s and 2010’s on at least similar level to Spurs.

Souness is by far, for me, the worst manager we've had but selling to Ashley is solely on the shoulders of the Halls. 

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10 hours ago, Collage said:

I thought the club was in financial trouble and that Les and Ginola were sold by the club, Dalglish had little to do with it? No one in their right mind replace David Ginola with Temuri Ketsbaia. Of course he later signed Nobby.

 

Edit: Make no mistake, Dalglish destroyed a classic team. Just thought his hands were tied, just a little bit.

 

 

 

Yes. Dalglish failed as manager for us. In one year we changed from a wildly exciting team that had finished second in consecutive seasons into a lower midtable team of dullards. 

He got a few transfers right but more wrong.

 

However.....

 

Keegan's great forte was his unbridled positivity and charisma. Hall had spent a lot of money that had been promised to KK. Now he wanted to that money back as he was no benefactor. After KK walked away after one too many broken promises from Hall, Dalglish came in under financial strictures. Also, as pointed out elsewhere, a club restructure had to be undertaken after KK had - peculiarly and short-sightedly - disolved the reserve team. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Looking back in years ahead potentially Tuesday's result against Blackburn in terms of setting our direction going into what should be prosperous years for us.

 

Whether we win the FA cup and what position we finish this season doesn't really matter to some extent but to have gone out against them in that manner could well have been the straw that broke the camels back for a number of our fans given the period of form we are going through. 

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The only time that I will be fair to Kenny….

 

he needed to sell one of Les or Tino that summer, on paper with age etc Les was the right one to be sold and we should have had a front line of Shearer, Tino and JDT.

 

There was a solid midfield behind them in Didi, Speed, Lee and Batty and bringing in Given was a good move. Even Pistone came in with a good rep as an attacking full back.

 

of course we then lost Shearer and Tino was never really on it before he left.

 

Rush and Barnes were emergency signings when the money had been spent and Shearer got injured.

 

i think his approach would have been different if he had been able to play Shearer or Les that season.

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People might not remember this one, but Phillip Neville's horrendous tackle on Gillespie at old trafford during the 1995/96 season when we were unstoppable at the time. 

Gillespie went off and was injured for most of the season. 

We lost the game and the balance in the team. Not only did we blow the league after then, Gillespie, who looked like one of the most promising youngsters in the world then, turned to gambling and although flash moments like Barca, was never the same 

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1 hour ago, TomYam said:

 

He got a few transfers right but more wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

I disagree, I think he has a great eye for a player. He bought a good few players who gave great service to the club, after Keegan I can't think of a manager with a better transfer record. Yes he took some punts on players that didn't turn out well but overall he did well given the financial circumstances. Look at Liverpool his second time around, Carroll, Henderson and Suarez. 

 

Tactically there's a lot to criticise him on but his transfer record is good if you look at it closely, which other manager have we had with a better record apart from Keegan? In defence of other managers it might be difficult to judge them on transfers as Shepherd became more and more involved with certain agents (I think Stretford). 

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36 minutes ago, Colos Short and Curlies said:

The only time that I will be fair to Kenny….

 

he needed to sell one of Les or Tino that summer, on paper with age etc Les was the right one to be sold and we should have had a front line of Shearer, Tino and JDT.

 

There was a solid midfield behind them in Didi, Speed, Lee and Batty and bringing in Given was a good move. Even Pistone came in with a good rep as an attacking full back.

 

of course we then lost Shearer and Tino was never really on it before he left.

 

Rush and Barnes were emergency signings when the money had been spent and Shearer got injured.

 

i think his approach would have been different if he had been able to play Shearer or Les that season.

Absolutely, we had no one to lead the line up front. Tino wasn’t that kind of player while obviously amazing in his own right. In a couple of months our attack lost Ginola, Les, Beardsley and Shearer. Took its toll of course.

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One thing about Shepherds appointments, they made no coherent sense from a continuity perspective, they were so reactive. Keegan too attacking let’s get defensive Dalglish. Too boring, let’s get sexy football Gullit. Too foreign let’s get SBR. Lost discipline let’s get hard man Souness. Constantly chopping and and changing styles which meant huge turnover of players that didn’t fit. We probably needed a Dan Ashworth back then ? 

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It’s surreal to think in 1996 we were legitimately one of the top 5 clubs in the world, sporting ambition wise and appeal to players. The players being linked, superstars like Baggio, Weah etc. 

 

So near and yet so far. 

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15 minutes ago, Collage said:

Gillespie, that kind of winger who doesn’t exist anymore. All about speedy runs down the wing and great crossing.

Is Gillespie another sliding door moment? I wonder if we could have got one of Beckham, Scholes, Gary Neville rather than Gillespie as part of the Cole deal? I doubt it but he was ahead of them in terms of 1st minutes when we signed him. 

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Definitely Souness. Paying £8M for Boumsong 6 months after Rangers signed him for free was very dodgy. His signings were absolutely shit, and the guy was very unlikeable. No wonder he just did punditry for the rest of his career after we binned him off. That hiring set us back minimum 6 years.

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3 minutes ago, macphisto said:

Is Gillespie another sliding door moment? I wonder if we could have got one of Beckham, Scholes, Gary Neville rather than Gillespie as part of the Cole deal? I doubt it but he was ahead of them in terms of 1st minutes when we signed him. 

Or, just as plausible that Ferguson didn’t rate his potential as highly as Scholes, Beckham et al. Gary Neville wouldn’t make much difference imo.

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Just now, Collage said:

Or, just as plausible that Ferguson didn’t rate his potential as highly as Scholes, Beckham et al. Gary Neville wouldn’t make much difference imo.

That's why I said I doubt it that the others would have been included. I'm sure I read somewhere that Ferguson was more than happy to include Gillespie in the deal. Disagree about Neville, that would have been right back sorted for the next 10 years. 

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1 hour ago, Collage said:

Absolutely, we had no one to lead the line up front. Tino wasn’t that kind of player while obviously amazing in his own right. In a couple of months our attack lost Ginola, Les, Beardsley and Shearer. Took its toll of course.

 

He'd dropped Ginola which was fair enough as he played Robbie Elliott LM and his goals arguably clinched us the CL spot that season.

 

He then sold Ginola AND Elliott though. :lol:

 

 

Edited by Optimistic Nut

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7 minutes ago, Optimistic Nut said:

 

He'd dropped Ginola which was fair enough as he play Robbie Elliott LM and his goals arguably clinched us the CL spot that season.

 

He then sold Ginola AND Elliott though. :lol:

Signed Stuart Pearce instead :neutral: Overall, he ruined our attack.

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Pearce was decent that season? Got called up for England again after he left us as well by Keegan ironically.

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Straightforward to me this one. SBR being too honourable to dump his contract at Barca. If he’d taken over when he was offered it when KK resigned we’d have won the league with the team we had and we’d have rampaged through the champions league the following and it would have established us as a long term competitive club at the highest level. 

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1 hour ago, Optimistic Nut said:

 

He'd dropped Ginola which was fair enough as he played Robbie Elliott LM and his goals arguably clinched us the CL spot that season.

 

He then sold Ginola AND Elliott though. :lol:

 

 

 

Sell Ginola, buy Des Hamilton and Carl Serrant. Fucknose. 

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1 hour ago, macphisto said:

Is Gillespie another sliding door moment? I wonder if we could have got one of Beckham, Scholes, Gary Neville rather than Gillespie as part of the Cole deal? I doubt it but he was ahead of them in terms of 1st minutes when we signed him. 

 

On the Black and White video when Cole's sold, the narrator says something along the lines of 'Keith Gillespie comes the other way as part of the deal and is a player who Keegan sees as the best of the crop amongst Man United's youngsters' - I watched it recently and was just like arrrrgh for fucks sake man. :lol: Gillespie was decent, but obviously Scholes was the best in that group. 

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37 minutes ago, Optimistic Nut said:

Pearce was decent that season? Got called up for England again after he left us as well by Keegan ironically.

Was more about what it meant to our overall play. Was he decent? Maybe. Don’t remember much apart from that goal in the CL.

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