As Stanley sits here writing this seasonal review, a fortnight on from City's survival clinching win over QPR, he's still left shuddering at exactly how close we were we to going down, one solitary win was what all stood between us and tier three.
One solitary match, 90 minutes from exit stage left. Exactly how terminal something like that would have been we will be able to see by casting our eyes along the A47 to Leicester over the coming seasons.
The history of NCFC's season 07/08 will always be written around the answers to two key questions. Why did it go so wrong? How did we survive? Whilst the answers to those questions will always be written around two names, Peter Grant and Glenn Roeder.
It's still, frankly, painful for Stan to talk or write about Grant. All Stanley can say is that quite simply he was awful in every way; the worst manager we ever had.
The one good thing you can say about Grant is he was sacked, actually make that two, even someone as abysmal as Grant wasn't quite able to get this fine old club relegated. Another fortnight and he would have done. That is probably the greatest contribution made by the Jarvis brothers to the club during their stay.
Rossi's 'no-show' at QPR left Grant with nowhere to go but out the door.
As for Roeder, well you can't exaggerate exactly how miraculous a job he did in keeping us up.
We were dead and buried. The size of the job he done is, ironically, disguised almost by the scale of it. Our recovery proved so strong that not only did we, for a while, escape the clutches of the relegation battle but we almost walked into another battle, that for the play-offs.
The mini roller-coast ride under Roeder of recovery, collapse and then recovery again just in time to avoid the drop, left you at the end of season feeling like a mid-table team flirting with relegation rather than the 'nailed on certainties' for the drop who had produced the great escape that in fact we were last season.
If the emotional grind of, in effect, not one but two successful relegation battles in a season wasn't enough we also had a season of emotional departures. One departure in particular will come to colour Stanley's memories of this season, as much as the avoidance of relegation, that of Hucks.
Hucks departure hangs sadly over the season for Stanley in two particular ways. Hucks is, and will remain so for quite sometime Stanley suspects, the most gifted player Stanley has seen in a yellow jersey. But further to this he was at the club during the peak years of his career.
So whilst this is quite obviously a major reason for Hucks having a permanent place in Stanley's footballing heart, and his consequently departure an inevitable cause of sadness, Hucks departure saddens Stan in another way too.
One promotion doesn't seem like much of a return for a team containing the best talent Stanley is likely to see wearing the yellow jersey.
The 'Hucks Years' seem to be a bit of a missed opportunity, with City rather than building upon the good fortune of Hucks falling in love with Norfolk ending up in a worse position then when he arrived.
The fact that we got Dion at the very end of his career is more typical of City and merely highlights the good fortune of having a player as talented as Hucks at the club during his peak years. These talents should have been harnessed, and built upon, to better effect.
Hucks' last season should have been played out against the back-drop of City as a re-established top tier team, not fighting against the prospect of tier three football for the foreseeable future.
Furthermore the nature of Hucks departure didn't particularly reflect well on either club or manager. The fans certainly deserved the opportunity to say goodbye, as undoubtedly did the player. This was another cause for sadness in a sad season.
The post-QPR relief, whilst entirely genuine, will not live long in the memory for Stanley when thinking of 07/08, the awfulness of Grant and sadness of Hucks departure will, however.
As for season 08/09, well you'll have a pretty good idea sooner than you think.
With the departures of so many players, including the 'jet-heeled' one, Roeder needs to start getting players through the door fairly sharpish. If we are still waiting around for our first summer signings at the end of June, people will start getting twitchy.
As summer breaks from football goes this could well prove to be a short one for Stanley and his readers. Not such a bad thing, as surely the best way to get such a poor season out of the system is to get on with the next one.
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