Despite being a lifelong Sunderland fan, Chandler admits basing his team on Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle – with entertainment even placed above winning.<\/p>\n
“There was a standing joke in the team, two or three at the back? One time we chased a game with two at the back,” he says.<\/p>\n
“The Premier League can be so boring; fans want to be entertained, that’s what we promised.”<\/p>\n
Chandler was already a Whitley Bay hero when he was appointed manager by chairman Paul McIlduff, having scored the winner in the 2002 FA Vase final against Tiptree United at Villa Park.<\/p>\n
After a slow start as the then-35-year-old with no prior managerial experience found his bearings, Chandler built a talented team which became the envy of non-league football nationwide.<\/p>\n
“We played good football. We had pace on the wing, fantastic midfielders, and strikers who were deadly,” says McIlduff, who has been Whitley Bay chairman since 2001.<\/p>\n
“When we brought them in, it was about fitting the psychology of the dressing room. No-one thought they were better than anyone else, they played for each other.”<\/p>\n
A growing influence in the side was the ‘Whitley Bay Maradona’.<\/p>\n
Paul Robinson came through Newcastle United’s academy before a career spent across various non-league clubs in the north-east \u2013 including Whitley Bay from 2007 to 2013.<\/p>\n
Like several other players and staff, he worked with Chandler both in his day job at software company Sage and at Hillheads Park.<\/p>\n
“He was my manager at work and football, I was sick of him,” he tells BBC Sport. “But it helped get time off for matches.”<\/p>\n
And it meant he also had an understanding boss if his mind drifted at work.<\/p>\n
“Zoning out happened regularly, picturing scoring and winning, what the opposition would be like – hoping they were rubbish so we could have an easy stroll,” he says.<\/p>\n
Perhaps Robinson’s greatest Whitley Bay moment came in the 2010 FA Vase semi-final second leg, when his last-minute diving header in the driving rain secured a 6-5 aggregate victory over Barwell, sparking a pitch invasion.<\/p>\n
“Everyone goes to the finals, you were there, you could enjoy it,” says Robinson, who is now academy head at South Shields. <\/p>\n
“But the rounds before were the bigger games. At home, we would get 2,000 or 3,000 at every game. You felt like a real player. You associate those memories with 90s FA Cup you never think it will happen in non-league.”<\/p>\n
Chandler played in a 2-0 win over Preston in round two as they reached the FA Cup third round for the first and only time in the 1989-90 season, and they also progressed to round two the following campaign.<\/p>\n
Those seasons of success – made The Bay a feared side for non-league clubs across England, and meant they were ready for the big games in a way most amateur sides are not.<\/p>\n
“One quarter-final against Biggleswade [in 2009], they turned up in suits and ties,” says Robinson. “We thought, this is their day out, their cup final. We won 5-2.<\/p>\n
“By the end, teams were turning up afraid of us. We had it won beforehand.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite being a lifelong Sunderland fan, Chandler admits basing his team on Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle – with entertainment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-910703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}