One reflection

[Chris Black come back]

Quite interesting thinking about what a fantastic job McCann has done twice now and the plaudits he has rightly got. SOD also gets the garlands of getting and keeping us in the Championship.

Few people give Dave Penney much airtime though. When was last manager before him who managed to get us not only up two consecutive leagues but to do it in two consecutive seasons? Has anyone ever matched that for us? Throw in the Carling Cup run as an aside and Penney has an exceptionally strong record.

[Bessie Red]

Still probably my favourite time watching Rovers was when Penney was manager. I loved the way we played with absolutely no fear of any opponent even Premier League teams.

[drfcsteve]

I remember it always being exciting under Penny regardless of the result. I think John Ryan was right that Penny had taken us as far as he could and I think that was proved right with how we moved forward with SOD, but I’m surprised Penny didn’t have more success in management after he left us.

[pib]

He did a great job for us and I'll always fondly remember his time in charge.

I think perhaps JR came to the realisation (and he may have been right) that Penney was struggling to take us to the next level.

Up until the 2005/06 season Penney generally relied on free transfers and relatively inexpensive buys like Coppinger. From 2005 we started to spend a bit more money on players (in terms of transfer fees at least) and despite a slow start only missed out on the play-offs by 2 points, and had the League Cup run as well.

We then invested again in the squad before the 06/07 season but had another slow start which led to his sacking. I do wonder what would've happened if Penney had been given longer that season. He'd turned around a slow start the previous season, and was equipped with better players. Maybe we'd have gone one better than 05/06 and challenged in the end?

I remember the feeling at the time that he had run out of steam and had gone as far as he could with us, but it might have been interesting to see how it had played out if he'd stayed. Not that we should regret SOD coming in and delivering what he did.

IIRC Penney was regarded as quite sought after by other clubs in around 2004, and as above it was a bit of a surprise he didn't go on to do much else, other than a couple of decent seasons with Darlo in L2. Perhaps the game left him behind a bit.