WHILE we all have the gift of 20:20 hindsight few would have predicted the turbulent times Town would go through after winning promotion, finishing fifth in the first season back in the Premier League and playing in Europe once more.

Derek Davis

WHILE we all have the gift of 20:20 hindsight few would have predicted the turbulent times Town would go through after winning promotion, finishing fifth in the first season back in the Premier League and playing in Europe once more.

With that benefit David Sheepshanks now feels the only way Town could have avoided the fall from grace in 2002/2003 was to have sold the club two years earlier - something that would have been unthinkable back then.

He said: “Looking back we could have sold the club in 2001. We never had an offer or any suggestion, apart from a share issue, to recapitalise the club but then we didn't see the need then.

“But then if we had sold the club back then to an individual owner there would have been a public outcry.

“I wish we had been bold enough because then we would have been able to cope with anything that would befall us.

“We never had any fat on the bone to withstand the worst sort of rainy day you can imagine. It was not so much a rainy day as a tempest.

“The old board have asked ourselves that if we had the same circumstances in 2000/01 again now, what would we have done differently?

“The answer is very little, we would have done the same.

“But with the benefit of hindsight we would have done a lot of things very differently.”