Deano on Curbs leaving
In the latest compelling @richcawleySLP interview, Dean Kiely says this about the 2005-6 season (my emphasis in bold):
“Another factor was that Curbs had announced that was going to be his last year. There was a feeling that this thing seems to be coming to an end - as in this cycle. I felt I was a victim of ‘Curbs isn’t going to be here, so he isn’t too fussed who the goalkeeper is going to be’.
Deano's verbatim comments are a bit all over the place , so I've re-read it carefully; but it seems clear that he's saying the players knew from Curbs at the beginning of the season that he would be off. I don't remember it ever being presented like that to us; I think it was generally known that his contract would be up for renewal but nothing more definite than that. How do others recall it?
The worst thing about Curbs departure was the shock of realising that Richard Murray had no plan B lined up, and we ended up running a recruitment ad in the Daily Mail like we might do for a new ticket sales manager. If Curbs had already resolved that he was leaving at the beginning of the season it seems an even more inexplicable failure of forward planning, which led to our rapid demise. I've flicked through the back end of Curbs autobiography, and he writes only that he was going to wait until the end of the season to decide; although the book never deals up front with the summary in the appendix which says that he refused to consider a new three year deal.
Deano's remark bothers me because Curbs departure proved to be so consequential; but then again, that season was 20 years ago.
Comments
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Deano has mis-remembered it and got his dates wrong.1
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Off_it said:Deano has mis-remembered it and got his dates wrong.That was my working assumption at first, but he uses iit as his rationale for clearing off to Pompey, in Jan 2006. Which of course could be post- rationalising, but a bit unwise if it’s not true since he could easily run into Curbs again.Curbs book is also pretty fuzzy about how and when he decided to leave and how RM reacted to it. There’s a whole chapter on him being in the running for the England job (including a striking reference from Sven) and then suddenly it morphs into a feeling that its 15 years, and time to leave Charlton. Then again, Curbs has always tried to be the gentleman in public, never really dissed refs in post match interviews, and is clearly mending fences with Danny Murphy in his book.0
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Brain washed by palace. Shame0
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From Curbs himself , when he’d told Murray he was happy to do the last year of his contract Murray wanted him to sign a longer one or leave . So Curbs worked one year less than he could have .
He offered Muzza help in finding his successor , that was turned down as well5
