The debate now began as to who we should bring in to replace Earnie - the impression I got was that a lot of supporters shared my feelings in that we would only have a portion of the money for any new recruits with the majority of it being used to help alleviate our debts.
There probably wasn’t a good time to play at Wigan, but with us in disarray after selling our star striker and having suffered three straight league defeats, this certainly wasn’t it! Wigan had started the season in fine form, they were unbeaten, they had already won very impressively at West Ham and had drawn at Sunderland two days earlier. Bearing that in mind, I suppose there wasn’t much pressure on City because everyone expected them to lose and lose they duly did!
For a quarter of an hour or so, City held on fairly comfortably, but then Rhys Weston brought down Jason Roberts for an obvious penalty which was put away by Nathan Ellington. After that, City struggled to cope with the home team and in particular their front two, however, ironically, Wigan’s second goal came after City had created one of their few chances of the first period when keeper Filan’s long clearance was not dealt with by our centre backs and Roberts went on to smash the ball in.
2-0 down at half time with morale at rock bottom, City were staring down the barrel of a thrashing, but, to their credit, they came out fighting after the break and by the end, although no one could doubt they deserved the win, it was Wigan who were grateful to hear the final whistle. City gained a foothold in the game midway through the half when Campbell burst on to a pass and was brought down by Filan inside the box for a penalty which Alan Lee converted and, with Jobi McAnuff prominent down the right, there was the promise of an equaliser which, unfortunately, never came as the final whistle signalled a fourth defeat on the trot with only winless Rotherham keeping us off the bottom of the table.
Three pretty interesting snippets of news emerged after this game, firstly, Sam Hammam had, apparently, talked to some City fans at the game at half time about Earnie’s sale, then Lennie Lawrence had said no West Brom players would be coming to City as part of the Earnie deal, but he didn’t rule out the chance of some joining us shortly (this set my mind at rest because I was beginning to suspect that Sam Hammam hadn’t been telling the truth when he told that supporter before the Stoke game that we would be getting a couple of West Brom players!).,Finally, Kav implored Sam Hammam to spend at least some of the Earnie money on beefing up a squad which he said had been too small last season and had now got even smaller.
The answer to whether Kav’s plea would be acted upon would surely be provided at the meeting Sam Hammam had arranged for the following night. Apparently, our owner was surprised at the extent of the anti Lennie Lawrence feeling amongst the 100 fans who attended the meeting, but he gave the impression that the manager’s job was safe for the moment. Essentially, there were three main points made by Sam Hammam and David Temme who also was in attendance;-
1. Earnie had only been sold to provide the revenue that would enable much needed reinforcements for the squad - our owner stated that by the time the team next played (at Forest in 11 days) there would be three or four new players in the team.
2. Sam Hammam acknowledged that the start to the season had been nowhere near good enough and stated that changes were going to be made to the coaching staff.
3. David Temme stated that work on the new ground may have to be put back a couple of months to January, but the scheme would definitely go ahead.
I don’t think I was the only supporter who was reassured when I learned on here what had been said at the meeting - here was evidence of what made Sam Hammam different from other chairman/owners, he was prepared to meet and explain things to supporters in the bad times as well as the good and now he would be acting quickly to put right our poor start to the campaign, all us supporters had to do was wait for the promised new signings to arrive.
We waited and waited and waited, but the rest of the week brought nothing. The start of Wales’ dismal World Cup qualifying campaign meant there was a free weekend for the City, so, surely, the new players would arrive during the coming week? Well no they didn’t actually - things appeared to be moving when a message appeared on a Swindon board that their club had accepted a £400,000 bid from us for their striker Sam Parkin, but that turned out to be a false alarm. Apart from that there wasn’t even a hint that we had been talking to any players and when Lennie Lawrence stated in the pre-Forest press conference two days before the game that despite “hitting the bar and the post” as far as new signings were concerned, there would be none available for the game at the City Ground, in the eyes of some City fans (it’s impossible to say how many) San Hammam’s credibility had taken a blow which I don’t think he will ever recover from.
Speaking for myself, I had begun to have my doubts about six months earlier because our owners continued assurances to the tune of “don’t worry, everything’s fine” seemed completely at odds with the decision the club were taking, but this was the event that finished me off as far as he was concerned. I don’t know if he was deliberately lying when he said we would sign all of those new players or not, but, if there was the slightest chance that we wouldn’t be, why say anything? In fact, why did he go to the trouble of arranging the meeting in the first place? Supporters might not have liked being told that Earnie had to be sold because of financial necessity, but I believe many of them would have had a moan and groan and then accepted it - to make promises that in the end just turned out to be so much bull seems to me the worst thing he could have done and, given the way things worked out, to this day I still cannot see what he hoped to gain by holding that meeting.
It has to be said though that Sam Hammam did act on the second of the promises he made at that meeting in that he fired assistant manager Ian Butterworth and fitness coach Clive Goodyear in the days before we played at Forest - using hindsight, it appears that these two were carrying the can for a disastrous start to the season which had seen the team in general and, some players in particular struggling for fitness.
The previous season City had announced their arrival in their new setting with a brilliant win and performance at the City Ground. At the time of that game, Forest were widely tipped to be promotion candidates, but they ended up in the relegation dogfight and it looked like a repeat of that could be on for them this time around as they had four draws and two defeats to show from their first six matches.
As it turned out, a game which saw Tony Warner cut his head so badly that he had to be replaced early on by Martyn Margetson finished goalless. Apart from a shocking miss in the second half by David Johnson when Margetson dropped the ball at his feet, it was a game of very few chances. I took heart from our clean sheet and Robert Page’s best performance so far in a City shirt. I thought this match could represent a turning point in our season and said as much on here the following day only to be firmly put in my place by someone who had been to the game who said it was an awful match between two very ordinary teams and that, on that evidence, we were in for a season long relegation scrap - after I had witnessed the two awful home defeats that followed during the next week, I had to agree with him!