Mad Eyed Screamer
Moderator
Following on from the Big Sam thread.....
After Alan Ball was sacked in August 1996, and City lost to Lincoln City 4-1 away in the 2nd round 1st leg of the League Cup, Dave ''Harry'' Bassett was approached to become City's manager. He was currently manager of Crystal Palace.
According to reports at the time he accepted the offer to become City's manager (much to the many eyebrows raised amongst the dwindling rank and file supporters) - yet in the morning had a change of heart, turned City down and remained at Palace.
Around 2010, I was involved with a national youth organisation in which a 5 a side competition was held. Regional games were played at Whalley Range High School and each team was assigned a current or former manager to mentor each team. The team I was with was mentored by Keith Alexander, then manager at Macclesfield who sadly passed away a year or two later. Dave Bassett was mentoring another team. During a break I asked him if he liked The Smiths, er, I mean, I asked him about his short lived tenure as City manager.
He was very open - and as usual spoke 100 miles an hour!
He said Francis Lee drove him to Hough End and said ''In 3 years time we will have a 60,000 stadium here.'' He then took him somewhere else and made some other claim or two about that, and so it went on (he definitely said at one of the places Lee took him to, Lee was going on about a bowling alley as well as a stadium!)
He said Lee never once spoke about ''This is the mess we are in and this is how we want you to get us out of it and this is what we can do to support you to achieve that''.
He said he went home (or back to the hotel) and couldn't sleep / spoke with his wife etc. In the end he said he just thought Lee was a fantasist with no sense of reality and therefore called him in the morning and retracted the acceptance of the managers job and remained at Palace.
Enter one Steve Coppell into the hot seat..........
After Alan Ball was sacked in August 1996, and City lost to Lincoln City 4-1 away in the 2nd round 1st leg of the League Cup, Dave ''Harry'' Bassett was approached to become City's manager. He was currently manager of Crystal Palace.
According to reports at the time he accepted the offer to become City's manager (much to the many eyebrows raised amongst the dwindling rank and file supporters) - yet in the morning had a change of heart, turned City down and remained at Palace.
Around 2010, I was involved with a national youth organisation in which a 5 a side competition was held. Regional games were played at Whalley Range High School and each team was assigned a current or former manager to mentor each team. The team I was with was mentored by Keith Alexander, then manager at Macclesfield who sadly passed away a year or two later. Dave Bassett was mentoring another team. During a break I asked him if he liked The Smiths, er, I mean, I asked him about his short lived tenure as City manager.
He was very open - and as usual spoke 100 miles an hour!
He said Francis Lee drove him to Hough End and said ''In 3 years time we will have a 60,000 stadium here.'' He then took him somewhere else and made some other claim or two about that, and so it went on (he definitely said at one of the places Lee took him to, Lee was going on about a bowling alley as well as a stadium!)
He said Lee never once spoke about ''This is the mess we are in and this is how we want you to get us out of it and this is what we can do to support you to achieve that''.
He said he went home (or back to the hotel) and couldn't sleep / spoke with his wife etc. In the end he said he just thought Lee was a fantasist with no sense of reality and therefore called him in the morning and retracted the acceptance of the managers job and remained at Palace.
Enter one Steve Coppell into the hot seat..........
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