December 18 – Bassett’s Allsorts
FOOTBALL management has about as much long-term job security as winning X-Factor these days and so it proved on this day in 2000 when Dave Bassett was relieved of his duties at Barnsley.
Bassett’s sacking seemed harsh after he had come within a whisker of getting the Tykes into the Premier League the previous season when they lost 4-2 to Ipswich in the play-off final – the club’s first ever appearance at Wembley.
After the disappointment of defeat at Wembley the club sold midfielder Craig Hignett to Blackburn for £2.25m in the summer but in that habit that so infuriates managers and fans the tightfisted chairman preferred the spend the money on boring things like staving off administration than exciting new foreign players.
Although not riding high at the top of the league the Tykes were hardly in trouble and were 14th when Basset left, much to the surprise of the players at the club.
Striker Bruce Dyer said: “There had been absolutely no hint that this was going to happen.
“The feeling has been that we just need a bit of luck to turn things around and once everything clicked we were still capable of climbing the table and challenging for a play-off spot. This is a big blow.”
Meanwhile Basset put the kind of spin Alastair Campbell would have been proud of on his sacking: “I had a chat with John Dennis, the Barnsley chairman, at the weekend and we came to the conclusion that this was the best course of action,” he said.
That’s it old boy, stiff upper lip and all that.
Dave said at the time he had no intention of retiring from the game and he was back in a job within a year at Leicester City where he failed to save the Foxes from relegation before moving ‘upstairs’ to be director of football. Funny how the DoF’s office is always on the floor above that of the manager.
These days Bassett is playing Robin to Denis Wise’s Batman at Leeds United which is going pretty corking you have to say.
Meanwhile only two years later Barnsley would have been perfectly happy with division one mid-table obscurity when they slid into division two (now League 1) in 2002.
They were promoted back up in 2006 and are making a pretty good fist of things in the Championship.
Here are some highlights of the Tykes winning the play-off final in 2006 and come back tomorrow when we will be setting our time circuits for 1990 and kicking our flux capacitor into life to find out about a former player who liked a drink. No clues about who it is but if any of your mates are Arsenal fans you might want to send them this way…
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