The first football game of the season feels the same no matter what team you support. There is a mixture of excitement and anticipation, a first look at new signings, and a clean slate to dream that this might be the year.
The first game of the season at Meadow Lane was so packed that it was like nothing I had ever experienced before.
In July 2009, League Two Notts County was taken over by a mysterious group called Munto Finance. They promised to back their plans to reach the Championship with untold wealth.
The younger fans of the club immediately began to dream of beating their city rivals. Some of the loftier claims were taken with a pinch of salt by the more battle-hardened supporters. They had seen too many false dawns to be carried away.
The new director of football was announced a few days later.
The former England manager addressed the world's media at a news conference. The talk of aiming for the Championship was thrown out the window because of the news that Eriksson was going to take Notts County to the top flight.
This is the same county that went through 534 days of administration six years ago. The same County who had been in and out of League Two since 2005 had been in and out of the Championship.
One of football's biggest names was leading the way as Notts County headed straight to the top flight.
Our journey to the big time was off to a great start.
Lee Hughes scored a hat-trick in a five goal hammering of promotion hopefuls Bradford City in front of a packed house at Meadow Lane.
Being in the crowd with my family that day was one of my best memories.
It was not a real thing.
There were no wealthy backers from the Middle East. The millions did not exist. It was not the first day of glory.
The club, the players, and every supporter who had dared to dream had been deceived by a fraudster called Russell King and disaster was just around the corner.
The Trillion Dollar Conman, which is the latest in a series of stories about Meadow Lane, was created by me, Alice Levine, producer Nick Southall and editor Carl Johnston, who are all fromNottingham.
We discovered that it was far darker than we had thought. It is a story that spans decades and takes us fromNottingham to North Korea. It is a story of lies, greed, fast cars, fake sheikhs, false promises and lives ruined.
The fans didn't know anything about this as they melted into town for a drink after the amazing game.
Most supporters didn't ask about who owned the club or where the money was coming from because the arrival of Eriksson proved we were correct.
The Swede created his League Two fantasy football team very quickly. He told us that he wanted to rebuild from the back and that he wanted to start with a young goalkeeper named Kasper Schmeichel.
The son of a legendary Manchester United goalkeeper had failed to get the number one job at Manchester City, despite being the club's number one keeper.
He told us that dropping down four divisions was a good idea, but he eventually signed a five-year deal worth up to 1.5 million a year.
Roberto Carlos, the legendary Brazil full-back who had just announced his retirement at Inter Milan but was being tipped to extend his career inNottingham, was one of the stars that were being linked with the county.
David Beckham was still an England international at the age of 34.
Beckham was asked several times if he would be going back to England with the coach. He added fuel to the fire when he replied, "There's a few options, put it that way."
One of the best defenders of the era walked through the door.
Three years before he played in the World Cup, Sol Campbell scored in the final of the European Championship and was without a club. He had won a lot of England caps.
It would take more than a month for Campbell to be fit enough to make his debut.
More than 800 people, including my family and I, made the trip to the coast to watch one of the best defenders in the country play.
We would be disappointed.
I have spoken to many of the supporters and they all agree that Campbell had a shocker that day and that the team deserved to win.
After our miserable day out, we all thought it was a blip, but then Campbell walked out on the team.
Campbell's sudden departure was explained away by the club, but less than a week later another bombshell dropped, one that could not be easily brushed off.
The Sun newspaper revealed that a man called Russell King had served a two-year sentence for fraud in the early 1990s, and that he had been secretly at the heart of the Notts County takeover.
The club said King was a consultant who had negotiated contracts for the club.
We now know that was not the case. Without ever having his name above the door, King was in charge of the takeover of Notts County.
The story went beyond that. His takeover of the oldest professional football club in the world was the center of one of the most ridiculous scam in sports history.
King took over almost half of a London investment bank by making false claims that he was managing the kingdom's wealth. He used a bank guarantee from the same bank to take over the county.
He established a huge international mining company and secured a deal with the North Korean regime to mine the country's vast mineral wealth, including coal and gold.
In October 2009, after King persuaded him to go with him to North Korea, the regime officials asked him if he could fix them a good group for the World Cup.
He told us that he was trying to convince them that this was not a question.
With the North Korean mining deal in the bag, King went about making wildly false claims that this was one of the biggest mining companies in the world, with assets worth nearly two trillion dollars, and preparations were made to list the company on the stock market.
According to experts who have tracked King for years, he planned to use his ownership of the club to drive interest in the stock market listing.
King's lies began to catch up with him and his scheme ended in failure. The deal would have been one of the biggest frauds in corporate history had he pulled off the stock market listing.
King fled to Bahrain to work on a new fraud that would lead to the launch of a fake Middle Eastern version of the Financial Times. He was sentenced to jail for a fraud he carried out in Jersey a decade earlier.
He was released from prison last year. We went to speak with him to give him a chance to explain his side of the story. He did not want to.
In Christmas 2009, with King off the scene, Notts County were heading for serious trouble as months of wild spending caught up with them.
The club was in financial ruin for the second time in a decade and faced being closed down.
A local businessman named Ray Trew struck a deal to buy it with days to go before they were due in the High Court. He told us the debts he uncovered were over seven million dollars.
This was a sad moment for the fans. We were relieved that the club had been saved again, but we were also sad that the dream was over.
We all had a bad night. We were left with six months of strange, weird and blurry memories. What had happened? Was it possible that we dreamed the whole thing? The team was drifting further from the top of the league because we had no permanent manager.
The appointment of Steve Cotterill as manager changed everything. Straight talking and confident, the man who is now in charge of Shrewsbury Town gave the whole club the boost it needed to emerge from its collective weakness.
He took over a team that was 14 points behind the leaders. They went on a 14-game winning streak, scoring five goals in four games.
They won the title at a canter, 10 points ahead of Bournemouth.
The League Two title was the most remarkable season in the history of the county. It was real this time.
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