Nicky Bailey on the left wing!
When I was a kid I didn’t attend loads of matches as football wasn’t big in my family and Mam couldn’t afford to get me a season ticket.
Once I got to secondary school (‘99), after a could have years I started to save up my Bus fare (walked instead) and my dinner money to buy tickets every other week.
Once I started working full time at 18, I immediately got a season ticket. Southgate’s second full season in charge. Fair to say, things quickly started going downhill from there!
17 years on, we’re in a much better place looking to the future.
Easy to forget how bad it got at times. I remember a 0-0 at home vs. Palace. It snowed for most of the game. Must have been about 8-9k there max.
Many midweek games you’d get there and whilst the official attendance was about 12-14k, it never looked anywhere near that many in the stadium.
I always felt Southgate would have at least got us into the Play offs in that first season. Replacing him with Strachan put us back so many years.