A Christmas Carol
It was December 3rd 2005 when Harry Redknapp returned to his spiritual home, concluding the most bizarre episode in perhaps any football club's history and consigning the 2005-2006 season to an all-time annus horribilis.
For me, December 3rd 2005 marked a new low in my 30-odd years of support, worse even than that dreaded day in May, and far, far worse than any score line had ever inflicted.
Like me, you've probably tried to consign this period to a place in your mind you don't visit very often, but a quick review of the game that followed immediately after Redknapp's departure is enlightening. In fact, a review of the team sheet that day spells out the story of our relegation and resurgence.
Hard Times
Of the players fielded against Burnley on that December day last year, only David Prutton played any part in a match almost exactly twelve months later against Hull.
True, there are five players in the squad that day who remain at the club – Belmadi, Cranie, Jones and Powell, in addition to Prutton. But, what was considered to be our strongest team at the time has been replaced wholesale in a rebuilding job worthy of Multiplex.
Great Expectations
The team who faced Burnley were drawn from the nucleus of the team that had contested our relegation season - the cutting edges of Camara and Crouch replaced by Henry's understudy - but the same Rory Delap, Danny Higginbotham, Brett Ormerod, Antti Niemi, Darren Kenton, Matt Oakley and Kamil Kosowski.
Those players, we believed, might not have been good enough to keep us in the Premiership, but they were surely sufficient to get us back there. Wasn't the retention of so many experienced players, used to playing together, an obvious advantage in the promotion race? Didn't we, as a result, boast the strongest squad in the league? Sadly, no and no were the soon to be apparent answers.
Bleak House
Off field antics aside, the winter of 2005/2006 was nothing if not discontented, lightened only by Santa delivering George Burley three days ahead of schedule on December 22nd. Even then, who can have imagined the malaise which he inherited, spending his early games listening to a growing clamour for the removal of both his bosses (Woodward and Lowe – the former from bewildered shareholders, the latter from the rest of us).
A Tale of Two Teams
So what has brought about the transformation in fortunes that now sees us unbeaten in seven games, winning five of them and scoring 16 goals in the process? Well, it would be too easy to cite the simple change in squad personnel and fantasy to credit the changes at the boardroom table.
In truth, the team has been reshaped using some of the resources available to the past five managers of this club – namely the impressive centre-back pairing of Lundekvam and Baird. But from here forward and down the flanks this is a new team unencumbered by the desolation of relegation. And to me this is the key.
Twelve months ago we had a team used to losing, a team shaped not just by the soap opera behind the scenes but by frequent dramas of their own making. Fairly or not, the likes of Delap, Oakley, Ormerod, Kenton and Higginbotham were carrying the burden of relegation like a mill-stone they might never have shaken. A new start wasn't just essential for us, but for them too.
What difference has twelve months made? That old team has gone, and thank the Lord, and George Burley, for that.