That was the Decade that was

With the football-supporting corner of the Internet awash with 2010-2019 Best-offs, and other decade spanning statistics, we've tried very hard to resist jumping in and depressing everyone further.  Who needs to wallow in the kind of painful nostalgia that, at best, simply reminds you that you are 10 years older now?  Plus, there aren't many readily accessible websites where you can look back at what has happened to your football club on a week by week basis over the past decade.

Or is there?

Well, the blog you are hastily glancing over at work is now such a historical document!  PATGOD online has now been creaking along since 2009!  Sure, it's not wall-to-wall full of verifiable statistics.  Or, any statistics come to that.  But it does offer a flavour of what a few peeved middle-aged men thought of what was occurring at the Poppies at any given time, and that, in this "post-truth" world, is worth any amount of actual facts....

This....

Was the last decade the most traumatic in our history?  I haven't lived through all of them, but it is difficult to image a 10-year period where so much happened.  Four grounds.  Three relegations, including an impressive two in a single season....!  Two promotions.  More last gasp survivals than a professional Russian roulette player.  Possibly 14 Managers.  15 if you include Imraan....

We came into the 2010's on the back of games against Leeds United where they couldn't beat us in normal time home or away, through, less than 2-years later to losing 7-0 at "home" to Bashley on a day we could summon up only ten players, and barely more supporters.  Since then we have been steadily climbing back to a position in the footballing hierarchy somewhere near where we feel we should be.

Not to blow our own trumpet, but there is some fascinating stuff on PATGOD from the past 10 years.  Some of it is so alien that I'm sure it happened to a different club.  Other stories so fresh it seems like yesterday.  And at times we were such demanding drama queens!  We really had no idea of the amount of sh*te about to be dumped on us at the start of the decade, did we?

....to this in just a couple of seasons

Case in point, our incredible bleating about the lack of potency from our forward line towards the end of 2009.  We had on our books, Moses Ashikodi, Anthony Elding, JP Marna, Damian Spencer, Francis Green AND Danny Thomas.  And all PATGOD could do was WHINE about our inability to completely thrash former League Clubs, and cement our position within the Play-Off spots in the Conference.....

We didn't know we were bloody well born!!!

Within 3-years barely 150 of us froze our bits off at Steal Park watching our relegation certainties lose 7-0 on the coldest Tuesday night in the entire history of everything.  If nothing else, whenever I hear of complaints nowadays, this is the game I mentally drift back to.....Brrrrr.