@dogmeat said in EPL 2021 / 2022:
@KiwiPie You did have that brief glimmer of hope when Sven was named Manager, signed Sol Campbell and kaspar Schmeichel before it all turned out to be a con job.
Look on the bright side one year later and you could have been the first Premier club relegated out of the Football League. As I recall you did pretty well that year until Easter and then it al went tits up? Surely Luton offer an example of how you can come back. They went down from PL with you didn't they? and you also always have the glory of the Juve association 
How're County doing this year?
The con job is fascinating - if you want to know more it is covered in 6 parts in a podcast "Sport's Strangest Crimes" and Notts is just a part of it. Sven going to North Korea is a great tale which I hadn't heard about until I listened to it. You wonder how Notts fell for it but the conman did actually own a bank in the middle east so when he gave them a banker's draft to guarantee the funds it was pretty convincing.
Even though it all turned sour, we did have a great team on the back of it (Kasper was fantastic, Sol played 1 game but there were better signings) and it did lead to promotion (the only time since Big Sam did it in the late 90s). A couple of years later we managed to be in the Div 1 play-off spots in November and then relegated (kind of a reverse Forest from this season).
Luton dropped out of the league a few years before us. We did compete with Coventry in a League 2 playoff not so many years ago. controversial pen and they were promoted and look at them now.
This season we are 5th in the national league, looking good to make the play-offs but won't be favoured to win them - 6 teams go into the playoffs with just a single promoted team and whichever of Stockport or Wrexham doesn't get automatic promotion will probably go up via the play-offs.