As featured in our matchday programme, we recently caught up with former Iron defender and assistant manager Andy Crosby.
With 191 appearances, 17 goals and three promotions in claret and blue, there aren’t too many former United players that can equal the success Andy Crosby enjoyed at Glanford Park.Andy was an integral part of the Scunthorpe squad that rose from the depths of League Two to second tier survival during his six-year affiliation with the club.
Following his arrival in North Lincolnshire in the summer of 2004, nobody could have predicted what Crosby would go on to achieve with the Iron and he spoke to us in the run up to this afternoon’s game, firstly about how his move to Scunthorpe came around.
“I’d known Russ Wilcox for a long time as he was at Doncaster when I was there earlier in my career so the first contact was between myself and Russ,” Andy said.
“I then spoke to Brian Laws and things developed from there. I was at Oxford and wanted to come back up north so it was an ideal move for me.
“Peter Beagrie and Steve Torpey were already at the club but Brian wanted to recruit a few more experienced players, which he did with the likes of myself, Paul Musselwhite and Ian Baraclough coming in to blend with the talented younger players such as Andy Butler and Paul Hayes.
“We started my first season really well and things just spiralled on from there.”
Andy went on to achieve three promotions with the club, with the first coming in his maiden season at United in 2004-2005.
Further elevations followed in 2007 and 2009 but the former centre half finds it hard to pick out one particular high point that stands out from the rest.
He continued: “I have lots of great memories from my time at the club and it’s very difficult to single just one out.
“That first promotion to the Championship was a massive achievement and then to bounce straight back after the disappointment of relegation was another great success for the club.
“The time I spent at Scunthorpe was a great spell in my career and obviously a fantastic period in the club’s history as well.
“We had some brilliant young players, we managed to gather some momentum and we used that to full effect so I’ll remember every moment of my time at the club fondly.”
After Brian Laws’ departure in November 2006 ended his second spell as manager of the Iron, Nigel Adkins was tasked with job of continuing the rise of the club.
And it was at that point when Andy took up his first coaching role in the game, as he explains:
“When Brian and Russ went to Sheffield Wednesday, they left the club in a really good position so Nigel then had the task of carrying on their good work and he asked myself and Bara (Ian Baraclough) to come in alongside him.
“It was a slightly strange experience at first because I was still playing and I was still captain of the team but it gave me a great insight into the way things work on the other side of the fence sort to speak.
“After the 2009 play-off final, I concentrated more on the coaching side of things but that game was certainly a fantastic way to end my playing career!
“Coaching is one of the things that I’m most passionate about, behind my family so the coaching role was a brilliant opportunity for me and one that I’ve loved doing ever since.”
Following two promotions and then Championship survival in his last full season in charge of the club, Nigel Adkins was approached by Southampton to take over as manager in September 2010.
And after developing a solid working relationship with Crosby, Adkins was quick to ask Andy to join him at the south coast club.
He added: “After the job Nigel had done at Scunthorpe, it was only a matter of time before another club was going to come in for him.
“He asked me to go with him and we went on to have a fair bit of success from there.
“The six years I spent at Scunthorpe were incredible, I met some really good people and whenever I go back it’s always nice to some familiar faces.
“But the opportunity to go to Southampton was a massive one. It’s a big club with a magnificent support base who really got behind the team during our time there and embraced how Nigel wanted to play.
“Obviously we took the club from the lower reaches of League One to the Premier League in just two seasons so we had a fantastic time and it was all a great experience.”
Adkins and Crosby parted company with the Saints in January this year but it wasn’t long before the duo were offered a route back into the game.
Following Adkins’ appointment as manager of then Premier League side Reading in March 2013, he was again quick to call on the services of Andy and it was another opportunity that that 40-year-old wasn’t going to turn down.
“The Reading job became available not long after we left Southampton and when Nigel was offered the position, he again asked me to go and join him,” Crosby added.
“I enjoy working alongside Nigel, I know what he wants and he knows what he’s going to get from me so when I was asked to work with him again it was a no brainer really.
“It was another chance to work in the Premier League again, unfortunately only for a short period of time, but we’ve got off to a decent start so far this season and long may that continue.
“The Championship is a very hard division to get out of and you often see the so called bigger teams losing to the smaller teams so you’ve got to be on your metal during every single game.
“It’s a long campaign so we’ll just try to approach every match with a good mentality and with the aim of winning as many as possible and we’ll see where it takes us but our target is to try and immediately bounce back to the Premier League.”