I don’t think I’ve hero-worshipped anyone in football since I stopped my Match magazine subscription in the late 90s.
Genuinely, how many points would you have expected from that team in 2006/07? We were relegated on goal difference – at the start of the season we weren’t even expected to be in with a chance of staying up come the final day. However you want to dress up Warnock as “out of his depth”, much like this season we still exceeded expectations. There was no Derby-esque, Sunderland-esque embarrassment. We managed to get within a goal of staying up with an XI where only one player would have interested any of the teams that stayed up. Much like this season we were also in a loftier position than expected until an injury to our key player, and struggled to replace him.
Of the players we had, I’d suggest our best XI available was:
Kenny, Geary, Armstrong, Morgan, Jagielka, Gillespie, Tonge, Montgomery, Quinn, Stead, Hulse.
That’s hardly a team you’d bet on survival with. The fact we got 38 points with that is an achievement that is grossly underrated due to the manner of how the season ended.