By the very nature of a club like ours there are so many, one thing we’ve never had is stability.
Positive pivotal moment: Losing to Kings Lynn in 1961- because that persuaded a hitherto undecided Jimmy Hill to take the manager’s job, as “i can’t fail here can I, things are already rock bottom”
Negative pivotal moment: investing in Washington Diplomats, which failed, costing us about 500k (a hell of a lot at the time), which drove us to sell Gillespie, Thomas, Hateley, Thompson, Sealey et al. Nobody will ever convince me that we didn’t have the nucleus of one of our most exciting teams ever in that era, and we had to get rid of them in a fire sale, and I guess thinking about it an upside as a result Gould brought in a lot of the cup winning team shortly after.
positive and negative pivotal moment: McAllister having his bad injury in 1997/98.Things weren’t working with him in midfield, we had to reinvent our style & team after he was out, and we had one of our best seasons in many years.
but as other people have said, I don’t think you can look beyond 99/00 post season as the biggest. Whelan, Keane and a rejuvenated McAllister all gone, Bellamy in. This isn’t a Bellamy rant, but losing those three and failing to replace or compensate elsewhere (a defence that could defend perhaps) led directly to relegation, and the next 20 years with all the fun & games we’ve endured can in my opinion be traced directly back to that summer.