A Bit of Fun Sliding Doors moment

[BILLERICAY BLUE]

23rd October 2018, Tom Hopper doesn't bugger his knee up, what happens between now and then?

I genuinely think a lot of our troubles on the pitch can be traced back to that moment (closely followed by Coker doing his knee in 5 days later), and often wonder what could have been...

 

[Massimo Giovanni]

For me it was the Accrington goalie doing GBH on Stephen Humphries; he was a HUGE miss for the rest of the season (and more) and his not getting goals cost SCP his job and relegation spiral.
I haven't seen much of him since he left us BUT what happened and the subsequent events may have for ever diminished his career.

 

[Suffolk Shrimper In Dorset]

Both posts so far may well be right at least on the pitch and if those injuries hadn't happened we may well have had a period of success instead of the spiral down the leagues that happened, but the rats dream was always too complex and doomed so something would have gone wrong in the end albeit we might not have fallen so far. Yo ho ho, lets look forward instead (or wallow in some better nostalgia )

 

[BoyWonder2]

I don’t think we’d be in as bad a position as we have been had we got relegated against Sunderland.

We wouldn’t have appointed Bond, of that I am sure.

 

[leeblue]

I actually look at the taylor moore OG at blackpool as the straw that broke the camels back, a win in that game.......

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

I don’t think we’d be in as bad a position as we have been had we got relegated against Sunderland.

We wouldn’t have appointed Bond, of that I am sure.

It’s entirely possible that we’d have just been relegated a season earlier. Bond was a disaster and never should have been appointed (although a majority of fans backed it) but it’s not as if the subsequent three appointments - four if we include Waddock as a caretaker - worked either. That team was a disaster defensively. We as good as started every game 3-0 down start of that season.

I think there’s a scenario where we go out of the league a year earlier and the club finds itself in NLS. Do we recover from there? I’m not sure. I doubt we’re have been as attractive proposition to Justin, I don’t think we’d have been able to entice John Still. I don’t know how well we’d have been able to mobilise support during Covid.

The flip side is that maybe we do survive in L2 and we spend the following years 20th, 21st, 22nd in L2, slowly draining any enthusiasm whilst not being enough of a crisis to force out Ron?

 

[sufc4life21]

It's all if and buts...... we still would of had money issues and Ron martin still owning the club. Maybe we wouldn't of fallen as quickly but eventually we would of dropped out the league. Let's be honest Southend have been basket case club for majority of martin ownership. Someone asked me today which team I supported and I said Southend he turned round said they still kicking about and thought they went bust few years back..... probably tells you where Southend are today.

 

[bazzashrimper]

I’ll go the other way around as I think with Ron in charge and FF as it was we were probably destined for a stint like this. So for me it was the day Stan picked up the phone and said enough is enough. Or the day Justin read about us on bbc sport.

 

[* ORM *]

We went downhill after I moved to Hong Kong, my apologies.

 

[leeblue]

The financial shambles would have collapsed regardless.

 

[Tommy2holes]

For me it was when Bristol rovers capitulated at home to Millwall and they snatched the last play off place on the final few mins of the final day.

It's been a free fall ever since

 

[BoyWonder2]

It’s entirely possible that we’d have just been relegated a season earlier. Bond was a disaster and never should have been appointed (although a majority of fans backed it) but it’s not as if the subsequent three appointments - four if we include Waddock as a caretaker - worked either. That team was a disaster defensively. We as good as started every game 3-0 down start of that season.

I think there’s a scenario where we go out of the league a year earlier and the club finds itself in NLS. Do we recover from there? I’m not sure. I doubt we’re have been as attractive proposition to Justin, I don’t think we’d have been able to entice John Still. I don’t know how well we’d have been able to mobilise support during Covid.

The flip side is that maybe we do survive in L2 and we spend the following years 20th, 21st, 22nd in L2, slowly draining any enthusiasm whilst not being enough of a crisis to force out Ron?

But we weren’t.

If we went down vs Sunderland, I’d have liked to have thought that Bond would have been gone straight away and we’d have had a better pool of managers to pick from. Maybe it would have been the kick up the arse that the club needed to have a bit of reset.

Ultimately, we’ll never know how things would have panned out, but it always felt to me as if that wasn’t what the club needed in terms of survival. Don’t get me wrong, I celebrated like everyone else, but I think the club felt they wouldn’t be in that position again, and didn’t do things properly.

Who knows.

That Walsall game where Hopper went off injured, then Coker too, did “kill” us at the time. That Taylor Moore own goal too is another good call.

 

[Chairman Trigg]

Controversial but not getting Evans in at point where we were sinking fast ,and then opting for Sol . Would have kept us up although not in a pretty fashion

 

[Grayson]

I think there’s a scenario where we go out of the league a year earlier and the club finds itself in NLS. Do we recover from there? I’m not sure.

There isn't one. The following season was Covid-curtailed. The EFL chose not to relegate anyone out of League 2. We would've been bottom 2 and got away with it, like Stevenage did. They made the most of that reprieve.

 

[Massimo Giovanni]

Sequentially after the Hopper and Humpfrey injuries came, for me, another "doomed" moment which was not injury caused but self inflicted by the Wally named Bond.
We had scored 3, in control, away at Wycombe, leading, doing okay, maybe some tired legs THEN Bond took off all our forwards and replaced then with defenders; and this was close to full time, 86th minute?
And we then have no outlet, invite pressure, get in each others way, dissarray, collapse and lose (iirc) 4-3 and IT HURT and ANGERED then and now.
Calamity and embarrasing.
Totally lost the game, the fans, the squad etc.

 

[overseas shrimper]

I don't think we ever recovered from the sale of Harold Halse to Man Utd. Thinking where we could be now had we held on to him fills me with sadness.

 

[stewart]

all been downhill since that day we lost a manager and 3 of our best players to the shagger from Birmingham, never forgiven him or her or Birmingham for that

 

[pottster]

Covid. Getting relegated when safety was still possible. The league should have been abandoned for that season. No promotion or relegation.

 

[Dave Smiths Love Child]

November 1998 SEL took control of the club, is the sliding door moment for me , what would have happened if another buyer had took us over…….

 

[Napster]

The rot started when Rubin Snr passed away.