2 – Chris Sutton

The worst thing about Chris Sutton wasn’t his performance as manager, he wasn’t the worst we’ve had in the last decade by a long shot (Tilson….) but it was his dour lack of personality and his complete disregard for anything other than himself.

That’s why he’s second. He is my own personal horror movie character, the man who makes me close my eyes whenever he’s on telly. I used to wake up frightened of that scarecrow Worzel whats-his-name, but not no more. Now, it’s Sutton.

Worst of all, beyond his signing of Khano Smith, beyond his reliance on young loan players, more than jacking in like a petulant child, was the fact he signed his programme notes for one of his last matches against Crewe with – ‘Come on the Imps’.

Cringe. That is what your teacher or Nan used to say when trying to understand football and be cool, but not actually having a bloody clue.

1 – Relegation, twice

1987 was bad for those who remember it, not being bottom all season and then being relegated away from home because of a dog on the pitch at Torquay and (of course) the fact we couldn’t get a win. We’d been in the play off frame at one point, but a complete post-Christmas collapse saw us tumble into the bottom spot. The first team to be relegated from the Football League.

Few horror sequels are as frightening as the first, but this one was. 2011, same story. At one point in March, a play off assault looked just about feasible, but then came those terrible 11 games. Danny Hone said at the Legend’s Dinner in 2019 that in that dressing room, you always felt we were going to go out and lose. He wasn’t wrong.

That last day against Aldershot truly does wake me up at night. It’s the biggest Halloween horror we can glean from living memory, aside from the two seasons that followed, of course.