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look at the intensity we started the game with - I know it was a better City team than weve had in the derbies since 2019, but Im talking about attitude, not ability.
https://youtu.be/4WHd2rUnEPw
That squad should have got promotion. Football nowadays is a different sport to what it was.
Whenever someone is asked to compare football in the past with the current day game, they often say that the game has speeded up compared to the past - watching that game and thinking about this season’s games with Swansea, it seems to me that the game is slower now than it was a dozen years ago.
For someone who claimed not to be too interested in the derby, "it's just another game", Dave Jones had a pretty decent record. Think he won 2, lost 2 and drew 2 of the league games he was manager for. Also, all those games were very close and we were always super competitive against the Jacks under him. Maybe it was just all a bit of mind games from Jones back then.
We've been automatically promoted to the Premier league twice since then and spent hundreds of millions in promotion money. Yet we've never got near the talent we had there going forward. Bellamy an exception because of his unique circumstances but the rest picked up for next to nothing by dave jones after being rejected elsewhere.
People say about money dave jones spent but how much did loovens, Roger Johnson, mcnaughton, mcphail, chopra, whittingham, Marshall, Burke, bothroyd, mccormack, Thompson cost? A lot less than we sold them for I'm sure!
My favourite city side by a distance. On their day probably the best and most entertaining side the club has ever had.
Thank you Bob, that brought back such great memories.
Good post, going back to the point I made in the OP, I was struck by the way they started that game, not in terms of ability, but the attitude they showed. That side lost to the jacks on occasions in games that they deserved to lose, but I can't ever remember seeing the sort of abject surrender from Dave Jones sides that has become the norm these days.
I think around half that lot either left at the end of their contracts so we didn't sell them for a fortune, though the point is probably more that we got them relatively cheaply.
There's a podcast out on social media from TWS, recorded by autistic kids where they interviewed Jones. It is well worth a listen. At one point he mentions that the club couldn't afford good players so they signed alcoholics and gamblers! If I get the chance later, I'll find a link
1 key there Arron Ramsey. Straight away hes dominating the centre of the park bursting through.
Sadly he was on loan.
Our central midfield was often weak. Put Ramsey in and it was transformed.
Love the Maradonaesque run by Darcy Blake past 3 Swansea defenders around 9:30!
Hit the post - what a derby goal that would have been.
Our bench for that game included Marshall, Koumas, McPhail and Burke.
Of the list of player Father Dougal gave, here's what we paid and then had for them (according to several sources, not Transfermarkt):
Kevin McNaughton - £0 / £0
Roger Johnson - £250k / £5m
Steven Thompson - £250k / £small
Jay Bothroyd - £300k / £0
Chris Burke - £0 / £0
Michael Chopra - £500k / £5m, bought back for £4m, sold again for £1.5m
David Marshall - £750k / £0
Ross McCormack - £120k / £350k
Stephen McPhail - £0 / £0
Peter Whittingham - £350k / £0
I make that around £6.5m spent and around £12m recouped.
Missing from the "made a profit from them" list are:
Glenn Loovens - £2.25m
Steven McLean - £0.75m
This adds up to a profit (excluding small fees for others) of around £8.5m.
We also received big fees for Cameron Jerome, Chris Gunter and Aaron Ramsey and, while Jones would have played a part in their development, they don't come under the category of signings that Jones made on which we made a profit. They certainly wouldn't bump the figure up to £28m.
There are probably some figures there that are debatable, depending on your source.
I think the fact we were both battling for promotion was a big thing. There was, for me, a battle to be the first Welsh team in the Premier League (I know you're not fussed on such stats, neither am I). We were seen at the time as the biggest club in South Wales and Swansea wanted to knock us off that perch. I remember one member of Swansea's board saying that it was essential for them to get to the Premier League first.
We didn't want the be the first to have the doube done over us and we were fantastic from start to finish that day.
Malky's side that won 1-0 at home played in a similar way. He knew the importance of it.
Ever since then, we've always played down the derby.