It was very frustrating at the start of the 2000/01 season. We just couldn’t get going.
We lost to Manchester City and drew with Coventry, two teams that ended up getting relegated, and then drew against a Derby side that just avoided relegation.
At that stage we were missing a lot of key players due to injury, though. I just felt that, once we got all our players back and the new players had bedded in, there really was great potential in the team.
The ambition for the season was to get into Europe again and improve on the previous year, when we had finished third in the Premier League and made it to the semi finals of the UEFA Cup. The title was out of the question – there were more capable teams than us – but I knew we had a special team and the club just wanted to see improvement on the pitch.