Holloway's first match in charge had seen Leicester win 2-0 at Bristol City, so it was a dangerous time for City to go to the Walkers Stadium to face a confident side eager to impress their new manager in his first home game. However, for the first hour of the match City generally looked the better side, but, with Hasselbaink especially looking well below par, they struggled to trouble home keeper Fulop. Peter Whittingham, a half time substitute for Parry, almost broke the deadlock within a minute of coming on when his shot from twenty five yards clipped the top of the crossbar, but, in a sign of things to come, the closest the game had come to producing a goal as it entered it's last half an hour came when Schemichel made a fantastic first half save at point blank range from Stearman.
Stearman's chance came from a corner and throughout the game Leicester carried little or no threat from open play, but the last thirty minutes of the match saw them lay siege to the City goal as the team struggled to survive against a host of balls knocked into their box from free kicks and corners. However, thanks to more great goalkeeping and a fair smattering of luck, survive they did as the match finished goalless.
Although the performance had been nothing special, a second successive clean sheet after just one in their first fifteen league games offered hope that better days lie ahead. If Dave Jones really had been given two matches to save his job, then four points out of six from them was generally reckoned to have taken the pressure off him in the short term at least and, truth be told, his job security was never that much of an issue for the rest of the season.
City travelled to Hull five days later and, if there wasn't too much goalmouth action at Leicester, this match made up for it! City could already have been in the lead when the home side ensured that there wasn't going to be a third consecutive clean sheet by netting after just three minutes when McPhee swept in a cross from Garcia. However, the team responded very impressively with a new striking partnership of Thompson and MacLean looking particularly dangerous - Thommo really could have scored three or four times in this match, but all he ended up with was the sixth minute equaliser threaded in from twenty yards from Rae's pass.
After that Hull were indebted to keeper Boaz Myhill as he saved well from Thompson twice and touched a Ledley shot onto the post. The impressive Rae also saw a shot go just wide as City dominated, but, they still went in at the break 2-1 down and, it so easily could have been worse! On one of their rare attacks in the first forty five minutes, Hull were rightly awarded a penalty after Purse clattered into Campbell, but Kasper Schmeichel enhanced his growing reputation amongst his new sides fans when he became the first City keeper in eight years to save a penalty in a league match as he kept out Windass' spot kick (in truth, once Schmeichel had chosen the right way to dive, it was quite a routine save). Unfortunately though, our keeper then blotted his copy book shortly after when his weak punch was volleyed back into the net by Garcia after forty three minutes.
It was a travesty that City found themselves trailing at half time, but, if they never quite repeated their previous dominance in the second forty five minutes, they still had the edge in the game and Thommo should really have done better with a couple of decent chances. However, as the game went into added time it appeared that City's mini revival was over, but, then the team went and did what so many sides had done to them earlier in the campaign as Roger Johnson hooked a tremendous left footed shot from around twenty five yards over Myhill and into the net to give them a 2-2 draw which, on the balance of play, was the very least they deserved .
If on the field fortunes were showing signs of picking up, the same could not be said off it. The day before the Hull match, the ground was prepared for the departure of one of our young stars as this article appeared in the local press;-
http://tinyurl.com/28a3hd
For me this was a fairly obvious revelation that we were putting our sought after younger players in the shop window and one or more of Ledley, Gunter or Ramsey would be leaving the club in the January transfer window - as to whether the size of the transfer fee for the one of the three who did go represented the "knock out blow" Peter Ridsdale talked about, we still don't know because the club have never told us how much we got for the player we sold!
The following Sunday, our Chairman was in the papers again this time making all sorts of bleak predictions as to the club's future if the judge ruled in Langston/Hammam's favour in the summary judgement hearing which had been set for Monday 10 December. Although Langston/Hammam had denied a few weeks earlier that they were seeking to put the club into administration, there seemed little doubt that the club, with help from the local media, were winning the "propaganda war" aspect of the dispute - my impression at the time was that they had convinced a majority of supporters that defeat meant administration.
The next few days also saw our Chairman proclaiming in the local press that the worst outcome for the club would be another delay to the court hearing with this story being typical of what was being said at that time;-
http://tinyurl.com/6yftt4
A day or two later came the news that the club had, apparently, been dreading as the case was delayed again (probably until March)! Predictably, both sides blamed each other for the club (there was some dispute as to whether the club had released some papers to Hextalls quickly enough) and this story
http://tinyurl.com/6nfnhx
painted a picture of a club on the brink of disaster and yet, at the same time, just across the road from Ninian Park building work was still going ahead on the new ground that, reportedly, offered the club a great new future - confused? You will be!
City had the chance to build on the Ipswich win and finally get the monkey of their poor home form off their back as they played successive home matches at Ninian Park, but in the first of them, against Charlton they gave a woeful performance as they slipped to defeat with barely a whimper.
Roger Johnson's reward for his last minute heroics three days earlier was to be demoted to the bench as, yet again, Dave Jones shuffled his centre back pack by bringing Glenn Loovens back but it was the front pairing of MacLean and Thompson that had done so well at Hull that really mirrored a thoroughly miserable display. MacLean had a couple of early half chances but fluffed them and, just like the rest of the side seemed to lose confidence after that. Thommo fared no better either and once Charlton, who were nothing special themselves, had gone in front on 34 minutes through Holland's low drive as City, once again, lost the second ball after clearing a corner, there was a sense of inevitability about proceedings.
In the past nine months there had been some truly awful home performances that City supporters had to endure as defeat followed defeat, but if any further proof was required that this was the most depressing experience of the lot, it came at half time when supporters at pitch side had the "privelidge" of being hit over the head (twice in my case!) by "all round entertainer" (all round in this case meaning he is equally bad at everything he does) Timmy Hammer as he swung his mallet about - I think I got that right.
Unfortunately, despite the whacks to the head, I can still remember the pain and suffering I experienced in the second half as Charlton strolled to victory and, for the first time in years, I left a game early shortly after Andy Reid had sealed the points with a penalty given for a foul on Ambrose by the increasingly accident prone Darren Purse.
All the good work of the previous three games had been undone in ninety grizzly minutes and, if the manager had borne the brunt of supporter's frustration up to now, I got the feeling that this time it was the players who were getting it in the neck more - certainly, some people were still calling for a change of manager, but, if only because of what it would mean financially for the club, that seemed less likely now and so, to a large extent, Dave Jones was off the hook.
Even the ultra loyal Terry Phillips used his Echo piece to record his disatisfaction with the way things were going in this piece which I think is a s good as anything he has written in recent years
http://tinyurl.com/6kjan6
I daresay that if somebody had told one of those supporters Mr Phillips met after the match that, just over six months later, they would be watching City play in an FA Cup Final they might have found themselves with a few teeth missing!
For the second successive match Tony Capaldi had been withdrawn at half time and Dave Jones finally bowed to the inevitable when he left the full back out for the game against Colchester which already had the look of a relegation six pointer about it. Kevin McNaughton was recalled to the side at long last in his place and Roger Johnson returned for Darren Purse as, from this game onwards, Dave Jones finally settled on the Johnson/Loovens centre back pairing. There was another change as well with Hasselbaink returning in place of MacLean who, it turned out would only make one more league start for the club.
If there was one single low point of the City's campaign then, for me, it came at half time in this game. In truth, City had completely dominated the first forty five minutes - they had forced keeper Gerkin into action in the opening seconds and he was a busy man for the rest of the time as Peter Whittingham, in particular, peppered his goal. When Gerken was beaten, he watched Hasselbaink's effort come back off the post and Johnson's header being blocked on the line by a colleague - a 0-0 half time scoreline would have been a travesty, but it got worse than that with seconds of the first period left when hate figure Kevin McLeod crossed and McNaughton made fools of those of us who had been demanding his recall by allowing the ball to bounce and letting Jackson fire past the helpless Schmeichel.
For as long as Dave Jones had been manager, the first goal invariably turned out to be crucial in City matches - City never lost when they scored first, but they hardly ever won when they went 1-0 down. Add to that the fact that in home games for much of 2007 City had tended to follow losing first half performances with very poor losing second half performances and the omens didn't look good!
However, there must have been something different in the tea that half time because City came out and destroyed their opponents with twenty minutes of excellent and sustained attacking football. They had to wait for seven minutes for their first goal which arrived when Thommo scored his first goal at Ninian Park since the previous Boxing Day as he stopped to head in Hasselbaink's cross, but, after that, Colchester were blown away as City went on a goal spree the like of which supporters hadn't seen since Crewe were buried under a five goal second half avalanche two years earlier.
That said, the outcome may have been different if McLeod could have exploited a slip by Gunter on fifty seven minutes instead of firing his shot as Schmeichel, but, instead, City broke straight up the pitch and, with the aid of a deflection, Whittingham fired in from Parry's cross. Ten minutes later, a lovely one touch passing movement, involving Ledley, McPhaill, Thompson and Whittingham ended with Hasselbaink sweeping the ball in from six yards and when Thommo and Whittingham combined again shortly afterwards, opposing defender Virgo turned the latter's low cross into his own net.
That was the end of the scoring in a game that City had dominated from start to finish. All of a sudden, the previous Tuesday's lows had been forgotten. If the Ipswich win had marked the beginning of the turning the corner process, this was the day we went three quarters of the way to doing it - there was still one more ingredient to be added before the process was completed, but the transformation whereby promotion not relegation became a possibility was well under way.
City travelled north to play the game in hand they had over nearly all of their rivals as they faced Blackpool in the game that had originally been postponed following the change of date for the Liverpool League Cup match and there seemed to be little doubt that they were in a better shape to face this game than they had been five weeks earlier.
That said, City would have to break a miserable run at Bloomfield Road which had seen them not win there since 1968 if they were to continue their climb away from danger. However, that's precisely what they did do as, having laid the Norwich bogey to rest earlier in the campaign, they now did the same thing here courtesy of Steve Thompson's 13th minute goal. The game turned out to be a reverse of so many City had played during the season with the home team tending to dominate possession and territory, but, although they rode their luck when Taylor-Fletcher's effort hit the post, they carried the greater goal threat - Rachubka in the home goal denied Hasselbaink twice and McPhail with fine saves and they hit the post themselves when Ledley's run from the halfway line ended with him rolling the ball on to the woodwork.
A first league away win in over three months sent City up to fifteenth position. Significantly, they were now six points clear of the bottom three and, although I for one wasn't paying attention to this at the time, seven points off the Play Off positions. City had picked up eleven points in six matches since the defeat at Charlton and, although much of the reason for the pick up in results had come from them rediscovering the art of keeping clean sheets (there had been three in those six games), if I had to name the individual who had been most responsible for the transformation it would be Steve Thompson.
Thommo was certainly in the best form he showed all season at this time and he may well have been in the best form of his City career as well! His goal at Blackpool was his third in four games and it was a real beauty as he took a couple of touches before firing home from twenty five yards.
TBC