At last. Some true perspective regarding Horton. Take out the back end of the 93/94 season when Lee gave him the money to buy Walsh, Rosler, and Beagrie - signings that arguably kept us up - and the first half of the 94/95 season, and there isn't much left to write home about. Just because Ball was a disaster for us, doesn't mean that Horton should've kept his job.
I say all this as someone who was seemingly in a minority of City fans who knew who Horton was when he was appointed! I also backed him to the hilt from day one, starting with that warm midweek evening when we won 3-1 at Swindon in his first game in charge. The way I saw it was that even though Swales was a twat and Maddock was an even bigger twat, none of that was Horton's fault. He came in during a very difficult time but once the takeover happened and we strengthened the squad, we should've kicked on a bit more than we did IMO. Everyone talks about the 3-0 v West Ham, the 4-0 v Everton, and the 5-2 v Spurs in those opening couple of months or so of the 94/95 season, and to be fair they were all very entertaining matches - along with the back-to-back 3-3 home draws against Forest and Saints - but nobody talks about all those heavy away defeats in the same period. I seem to remember that after beating Ipswich away in December 1994 we were 6th in the league but then once our unbeaten home record went against Arsenal the following week, the wheels came off and we weren't far off going down. When Easter came, I remember buying my ticket for (I think) Forest away from the ticket office on Good Friday 1995 - same day we played Liverpool at home - and telling people in the queue that I couldn't see where our next win was coming from. Nobody disagreed with me. As it happens, we went on to beat Liverpool that same day and famously beat Blackburn away 3 days later in 2 very good performances and those wins ultimately saved us from the drop. But don't anyone tell me that we would've won things under Horton or that he was the long-term answer. He wasn't, and nothing he has done before or since in management will convince me otherwise, including that couple of months or so as Huddersfield manager where he briefly had them top of the 2nd tier. Ultimately, he was sacked a couple of years later with them bottom of the division.
