The Sun and the Daily Mirror, and they seemed to be competing for who could be the rudest, most rs gold outrageous and most disrespectful. Yet even at those newspapers there were reporters that got along with Robson. The Sun was calling for Robson to go long before their chief football writer, Alex Montgomery, came to that opinion.

And, when he did, Robson respected that it was a sincerely held professional view, not an attempt to concoct a cheap headline. It would have been far easier for Alex to jump on the bandwagon earlier. I don’t think having a critical view is the same as slating a person. It is the presentation and the spin from the time that wouldn’t be replicated now.

England drew 0-0 with Sweden in 1988 and in his press conference Robson was asked several times about his strikers. As Bobby often did, he misspoke. ‘I’m not blaming them for this defeat,’ he said. Emotions still raw, it must have been how the result felt to him: a loss, not a draw. Later, he called Sweden ‘Denmark’ in error.

He did stuff like that all the time. ‘Morning, Bobby,’ he said to Bryan Robson once. ‘No, boss,’ his captain patiently explained. ‘I’m Bryan – you’re Bobby.’ Anyway, The Sun’s headline the day after the Sweden game just said: PLONKER. Underneath, the sub-deck read: ‘Poor old Bobby thinks we lost to Denmark’. 'If this was a war you’d shoot them,' he said of some of the press at the time, and I don’t really blame him. And talking of folk in need of a firing squad: what do you reckon to the England kit.