Stud mark of doom

From what I saw he seemed fairly ok, so clearly a massive upgrade on Baz.

Has reminded me that Chivers also played and scored against us in our first game back at the top level in 78/79 - a 3-1 loss at Norwich.

First football game I can remember is the 76 cup final, watched on our black and white TV, celebrating in the road outside afterwards and in town the next day. first game was a 2-0 win against Sheffield United in 77/78 and then every home game until the end of the season culminating in our promotion against spurs and a pitch invasion. Within a few years I’d been to Wembley, saw us play in Europe with Keegan, Ball, Channon, George, etc - all before I’d gone to secondary school.

Surely most people with a good knowledge of the game would say the benchmarks are - The Banks one, in some summer tournament in Mexico before most people had colour TVs, and Alan Blayney’s superlative save from Alan Shearer at SMS, on the last day of ‘the hardest league in the world’ season 2003/4 - officially awarded the ‘Sky save of the season’ later that day. I think Blayney’s is generally considered to be the most memorable across the globe. COYR.

Just had a call from my son. teams are out - one change from Saturday Bazunu (long pause) is still playing - Sceinza is on the bench. FFS /COYS

Corner of the goal is generous - the exact middle of the goal also works fine, as Oxford’s frontman found.

The bit that summed it up for me was Fraser getting caught offside - and the commentator suggesting he had “gone too soon”. Not sure how you go too soon where the only play you ever make is back inside to the midfielder, to take the sting out of things, so we can recycle it yet again.

Let’s hope there are no late Christmas presents handed out today…

I was also at Loftus Road that day - quite a good shout for the best away performance I’ve ever seen from us. We blew them away. I recall one of the broadsheets saying we had a successfully imported the ‘catenachio’ style of play from Italy. Was it Jason Dodd’s debut? Benali also breaking through to claim a regular spot. Famously, we blew the champions Liverpool away 4-1 (going on 8-1) at the Dell the following week. Happy days.

I enjoyed us beating Exeter City 3-1 in league 1 in front of a sold out St Mary’s.

If we had swapped keepers for the season so far, we’d probably be neck and neck in the table.

From memory the first Sky game was a Monday night game against Man united in August 92. I remember the air being so dense with firework explosive after the match it was difficult to breath. I think the CKTK game might have been Leeds United the following month - also an evening game. Didn’t the lead singer goad the Leeds fans during their ‘set’?

I thought it was a game where the lead changed several times. I think I recall Danny Wallace saying he’d left the pitch thinking we’d lost 5-4 as there were so many goals flying in (and it was before we got the late 80s scoreboard at the Archers end).

Great shout - legend has it that Neil cocked his head back as he crossed the halfway line in preparing for the inevitable ‘butt’ and instant straight red. That has reminded me - what about the bruise brother (Neil and Shearer) coming on as subs to turn round the Swindon cup tie, from 0-2 to 4-2 in the Nichol era.

The day we changed the transfer target algorithm weightings, setting potential future resale value to maximum and team improvement to minimum.