Steve Coppell stood at a Football Writers’ Association dinner, surrounded by journalists and other well-known faces in football. He met then-Crystal Palace Chairman Ron Noades for the first time and, somewhere nearby, Dave Bassett chatted with fellow attendees.
Coppell conversed in a loose group, making small talk with Noades, Bassett and the rest for less than 10 minutes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the conversation wasn’t enough to last in the memory 35 years on. Coppell does “not have a clue what [they] talked about.”
Days later, Bassett rejected Noades’ Palace and left the club managerless. Coppell had returned home to Manchester and, upon hearing the news, turned to his wife and said: ‘Ron Noades will give me a call, I know he will.