Colchester United`s former manager Paul Lambert successfully led Norwich City to the Championship just eight months after sensationally quitting the Essex side.
His new team won promotion as League One this afternoon, with a 1-0 victory over Charlton Athletic at The Valley and may yet be crowned as champions before the end of the season.
The mercurial Scot evoked bitter memories for U`s fans of George Burley`s controversial walk-out to Ipswich Town in 1994 when he left acrimoniously at the start of the season.
Lambert`s appointment at City created a brief blizzard of enmity between the two teams, as it came so shortly after he successfully co-ordinated Colchester`s record league win against the Canaries at Carrow Road, mastering a 7-1 win on the first day of the season.
That famous victory will go down in the record books as little more than a fleeting nonpareil in Colchester`s season however, since their recently indifferent run of one win in ten matches prior to today was extended still further with another loss away at Hartlepool. The 3-1 defeat means United`s perhaps inflated ambitions of a top-six finish this have effectively been surrendered to Huddersfield.
United have yet to receive compensation for either Lambert, or his asides Gary karsa and Ian Culverhouse, all of whom broke contracts at Colchester. Talks became deadlocked earlier in the season and the matter was then referred to the Football Association.
Colchester have since hired the ex Watford boss, Aidy Boothroyd,, who was reportedly origionally in the running to replace Bryan Gunn.
Despite intense speculation linking Lambert with possible vacancies at Premiership Burnley and subsequently Celtic, his stay on a one-tear rolling contract in East Anglia has now yielded the first formal accolade of his managerial career.
He started his careeer as a coach with Livingstone before coming to England as Wycombe boss. Lambert’s tenure at Colchester lasted just 312 days.
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Still annoys me the way he left, think the same will happen at Norwich sooner rather then later…